Project Orion
"Project Orion" chronicles a fascinating episode in U.S. scientific research, while capturing a unique time in American history and culture. It is the improbable story of the wildest idea--a space craft powered by hydrogen bombs--to come out of the space race. 8-page photo insert.
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7recommend
11mentions
10people
2008–2023years
73% recommend27% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship by George Dyson.
A mindblowing vision and project of a vehicle that would offer the capability to truck TONS of stuff as far as, say Saturn, or offer speedy travel to Mars.
Born in the nuclear optimism of 1950's, killed by politics and bad optics of nuclear bomb enabled spaceflight.
The more I read of the book the more exciting the topic became. I did not realize how superior and feasible the nuke powered spaceship would be if built.
I hope Orion will fly one day, it's that awesome.
- Have you had a look at Project Daedalus ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus
Or Project Orion :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...
and the excellent book on Project Orion
https://www.amazon.com/Project-Orion-Story-Atomic-Spaceship/...
- The book written by Freeman's son George Dyson is also very good:
https://www.amazon.com/Project-Orion-Story-Atomic-Spaceship/...
Alas there is no ebook and the print book is quite expensive.
There is a documentary on Youtube from the BBC about it all:
- I can recommend to get a copy of
* Datapoint: The Lost Story of the Texans Who Invented the Personal Computer Revolution, by Lamont Wood.
* The Soul of A New Machine, by Tracy Kidder.
* Books by George Dyson (son of ...): Darwin Among the Machines, Turing's Cathedral. (unrelated, but also give Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship a go)
* The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley, by Leslie Berlin.
* Richard Feynman Computer Heuristics Lecture at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA
* Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing, by Thierry Bardini.
- The book "Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship" by George Dyson is really fascinating.
The Orion project was all done before the Apollo project was planned, so it is kindof an alternative way the US space program could have gone. Rather than launching dinky little space capsules, they were planning on launching thousands of tonnes into orbit. The spaceship would be a literal spaceship, build similarly to how you construct submarines. The scientists involved kindof assumed that they personally would get to go on a voyage to Saturn (why not, there's plenty of space in the ship...). Compared to what we actually got, with chemical rockets, it was way more impressive!
- I also enjoyed "Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship" by Dyson. It's about another grand engineering project at the edge of possibility: Building spaceships powered by nuclear bombs that theoretically could lift whole cities to the stars and accelerate to 3% of the speed of light.
