A whacky Sixties Project of Nuclear Whimsy
And which blog would be complete without one? Has anyone else in Blogland read about the (very real) Orion Project which ran from the late 1950s until 1963? The idea was to use Coca-cola production technology to throw atomic bombs as though they were bottles on a production line out the back of a rocket. Thus powered, a starship could have been constructed with materials available at mid-century to leave earth orbit and to attain one-tenth of the speed of light.
The technology was tested at various atmospheric nuclear tests (underground tests obviously having been ruled out with Peter Sellers/goon show logic) and found to be perfectly feasible. Were the craft to be manned, they would have had to incorporate huge springs. Anything from the size of 5 saturn rockets to a small city in weight could have been moved around the solar system.
They thought big, those junior officers and boffins who survived world war two. The idea was cancelled by President Kennedy in 1963 as it was not only in violation of the atmospheric test-ban treaty, but also because it had an unhealthy effect on those who desperately wanted to use nuclear bombs--yes, bombs, not reactors--for peaceful purposes. For instance, atomic weapons were the projected mechanism in Project Plowshare to carve out bays and docks in Alaska until that mad programme was cancelled. A new Panama Canal was mooted. You can bet it would have been through Cuba if the geography had worked. The Joint Chiefs of Staff in charge of the American Military envisaged a 'nuclear howitzer' at one point, a sort of proto-supergun which ended up, by a circuitous process, as the blueprint for the Iraqi supergun years later. These developments, coming at the dawn of 'tactical battlefield' nuclear madness, needless to say, somewhat scared JFK.
One of the interesting things--and it is off topic--that the projects also depended upon was that some nuclear devices were not projected to leave that much radiation behind. Before climate change, there were all sorts of other statistical arguments around about whether figures could prove anything--but that is a subject for another entry.
It wasn't simply an American fetish to use nuclear weapons, though. The USSR went one further in the madly-named 'peaceful nuclear explosions for national economic development' scheme of the mid-sixties. I can't add any more to that. As with extreme tiredness, extreme silliness doesn't lead to automatic laughter; just to a sort of stunned mental flatline that stops any sort of comment. dead.
Nevertheless, the central Orion idea survived cancellation. In 1973, British scientists recommended it as the only practical way of immediately diverting an asteroid, or achieving manned interplanetary travel. It is amazing that during the age of oil, now ending, engineers thought on such a scale. The later ideas would have involved giant lasers and a less crude sort of nuclear propulsion, but essentially were the same amazing idea.
And by 'amazing' I do not mean wholly comforting. In my mind, I am filing this story away to divert and ultimately cause to explode the next tedious self-righteous anti-American Green I meet. They won't know whether to laugh or cry.
That said, what if? What if detente had begun earlier or nuclear disarmament had really meant that we got rid of the weapons? can anyone out there beat carl Sagan's suggestion that the world should have used the leftover warheads for this purpose?
We could staff a big ship with neocons and hoodies. It could represent a new sort of conditional discharge for anti-social and contemptuous behaviour. There's a headline for you--not NASA but ASBO, to Mars! And seriously, since space exploration is a fantastic use of human talent, why not? Orion could rise again.
post-script.Say what you like, you cannot parody him. Nor outguess him. Don't try. President Bush has inaugurated a new project called Project Orion. No worries, since it involves chemical rockets to the moon for a base. Honestly. Nothing uber-secret about it... .
And which blog would be complete without one? Has anyone else in Blogland read about the (very real) Orion Project which ran from the late 1950s until 1963? The idea was to use Coca-cola production technology to throw atomic bombs as though they were bottles on a production line out the back of a rocket. Thus powered, a starship could have been constructed with materials available at mid-century to leave earth orbit and to attain one-tenth of the speed of light.
The technology was tested at various atmospheric nuclear tests (underground tests obviously having been ruled out with Peter Sellers/goon show logic) and found to be perfectly feasible. Were the craft to be manned, they would have had to incorporate huge springs. Anything from the size of 5 saturn rockets to a small city in weight could have been moved around the solar system.
They thought big, those junior officers and boffins who survived world war two. The idea was cancelled by President Kennedy in 1963 as it was not only in violation of the atmospheric test-ban treaty, but also because it had an unhealthy effect on those who desperately wanted to use nuclear bombs--yes, bombs, not reactors--for peaceful purposes. For instance, atomic weapons were the projected mechanism in Project Plowshare to carve out bays and docks in Alaska until that mad programme was cancelled. A new Panama Canal was mooted. You can bet it would have been through Cuba if the geography had worked. The Joint Chiefs of Staff in charge of the American Military envisaged a 'nuclear howitzer' at one point, a sort of proto-supergun which ended up, by a circuitous process, as the blueprint for the Iraqi supergun years later. These developments, coming at the dawn of 'tactical battlefield' nuclear madness, needless to say, somewhat scared JFK.
One of the interesting things--and it is off topic--that the projects also depended upon was that some nuclear devices were not projected to leave that much radiation behind. Before climate change, there were all sorts of other statistical arguments around about whether figures could prove anything--but that is a subject for another entry.
It wasn't simply an American fetish to use nuclear weapons, though. The USSR went one further in the madly-named 'peaceful nuclear explosions for national economic development' scheme of the mid-sixties. I can't add any more to that. As with extreme tiredness, extreme silliness doesn't lead to automatic laughter; just to a sort of stunned mental flatline that stops any sort of comment. dead.
Nevertheless, the central Orion idea survived cancellation. In 1973, British scientists recommended it as the only practical way of immediately diverting an asteroid, or achieving manned interplanetary travel. It is amazing that during the age of oil, now ending, engineers thought on such a scale. The later ideas would have involved giant lasers and a less crude sort of nuclear propulsion, but essentially were the same amazing idea.
And by 'amazing' I do not mean wholly comforting. In my mind, I am filing this story away to divert and ultimately cause to explode the next tedious self-righteous anti-American Green I meet. They won't know whether to laugh or cry.
That said, what if? What if detente had begun earlier or nuclear disarmament had really meant that we got rid of the weapons? can anyone out there beat carl Sagan's suggestion that the world should have used the leftover warheads for this purpose?
We could staff a big ship with neocons and hoodies. It could represent a new sort of conditional discharge for anti-social and contemptuous behaviour. There's a headline for you--not NASA but ASBO, to Mars! And seriously, since space exploration is a fantastic use of human talent, why not? Orion could rise again.
post-script.Say what you like, you cannot parody him. Nor outguess him. Don't try. President Bush has inaugurated a new project called Project Orion. No worries, since it involves chemical rockets to the moon for a base. Honestly. Nothing uber-secret about it... .
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