"The story of Orion is significant...

"The story of Orion is significant, because this is the first time in modern history that a major expansion of human technology has been suppressed for political reasons."
-freeman dyson

Orion is still the ONLY way forward for humans. Convince me otherwise

Attached: orion-126.jpg (1200x670, 889K)

also general futurism thread

Attached: Helios.jpg (413x300, 32K)

I will go ahead and dispel the 3 most common myths/fallacies/misconceptions regarding the Orion project;

Attached: spacecolony1.jpg (1280x936, 383K)

popular assumption:
>the propulsion is harmful to the vehicle's occupants or the vehicle

all Orion designs are working with immense payload capacity and inherently plan for a wider than necessary radiation umbrella to protect the crew. larger designs utilize saline water, lead and large mechanical areas to buffer radiation to background levels.

the pusher plate used to receive the mechanical force as well as thermal shock of the bomblet has been demonstrated in testing to *not ablate* when coated with a graphite-impregnated oil.

Attached: orion_overview.gif (531x316, 11K)

popular assumption:
>the propulsion is immediately dangerous to human and natural ecosystems

using unmodified nuclear weapons, Dyson calculated the Orion would cause between 1-3 eventual fatalities from cancer per launch from exposure to fallout.

however, this was purely a thought experiment on his part. The Orion would not need to use fission bombs for propulsion.

modern fission-primed fusion bombs have been used in excavation projects with a 98.9% fusion yield. Meaning these bombs can operate with more power than fission weapons and with virtually no fallout at all.

other radiation such as gamma and xrays are scattered to safe levels of distribution by the time they reach the ground. this can be enhanced actively with different pusher plate designs or a small chemical booster first stage or passively by creating water vapor clouds over the launch site.

Attached: bomblet.png (204x247, 11K)

popular assumption:
>being built around a magazine of nuclear devices, the rocket is a safety hazard

this is perhaps the most ignorant assumption.
nuclear devices do not chain-react. if a single bomblet were to detonate accidentally it would not cause a catastrophic failure.

this brings us to the next point; within the Orion design, the explosive and fissile material of the bomblets are mated at the last moment, fractions of a second before the bomblet is released and detonated. further, tamper designs of the fission component allow the bomb to have extremely small yields until milliseconds before detonation, drastically reducing the damage of accidental nuclear detonations to within the range of their weight in tnt

Attached: shocktube.png (877x877, 136K)

Bump for interest

Attached: eclipse.jpg (1680x2308, 406K)

Attached: o-neill-cylinder.jpg (1020x610, 276K)

>ONLY
Bullshit

Double-K drive

fagggoooottttttttt. no one cares. take your dumb shit to reddit

We need to end space.

No you're actually wrong. I've posted this thread several times before and there have been great discussions. we have reached bump limit on this topic infact.

There are always dumbfucks like you of course. good thing people like you are quintessentially both nihilistic and wrong.

what's that?

What's a double-K drive?

Attached: black knight.jpg (1000x737, 160K)

As in cease space programs?

I find Orion is be subpar in all use cases to a Nuclear Thermal Rocket.

However both are subpar to Spacex's methalox systems. Can you imagine trying to mine, enrich, and manufacture new cores on mars?

Continuing my opinions. I think are greatest advancmeent would be building something similar to Starshot on the moon. We would have no atmospheric distortion to deal with, plenty of solar energy. That will be how we reasonably sent people to Saturn and Jupiter systems. Lasers+Sails to get there, the remaining propellant on board to execute gravity assist maneuvers for capture in the system.

The K comes from Kraken.

>Continuing my opinions

keep it all in one dumb post pls, no need to bump

Orion is indeed subpar to any fully fledged NTR or any methalox engine (for any craft needing to perform only limited deep space maneuvering) in terms of efficiency.

However, the major appeal and justification for Orion is that the R&D is already done. If the USAF and NASA wanted to, they could have a test vehicle built in a matter of months. Manned flights in less than a year.

Methalox and to a greater degree NTR, on the other hand, have limited to no actual engineering done for *full scale* vehicles.
The Raptor works, but it's not a current solution for breaking free from prohibitive rocket assembly and launch costs. It doesn't allow the same immediacy or benefit of even a small Orion drive.

Orion bomblets don't need to be fabricated in-situ. You can comfortably carry enough to go to Jupiter and back in a few months and maintain a crew of 100 on a 4,000-7,000 ton Orion.

Attached: niven_pournelle_footfall.jpg (1600x1086, 1.4M)

>no need to bump
>bumps

My gf calls my dick Kraken but I guess that's not it right?

Yes for long term use that's an obvious solution. You then scale the network up for eventual interstellar use and the infra is already in place and being developed.

So, how do you take that first step? We need a moon base, either automated with an orbiter command station or with boots on the regolith.

An Orion can place an entire prefab moon base on Luna with supplies, parts, fuel, resources and consumables and crews of hundreds all at once if needed. A single launch and everything is ready for the long term operations.
No other launch system, proposed or extant can dream of doing anything like that. Yet the tech is fully developed, the designs are proven to the military's specs and the resources to build it are relatively cheap. Nothing other than politics is prohibiting an Orion.

Attached: palermo-italia-easvele.jpg (1050x700, 170K)

>waaaa more porn threads
Imagine being annoyed at a good thread just existing

>my redchip broke
>angel carried me to hell and back
>i wonder if moxy actually was molly

While the ISP is attractive on Orion I just cant get past the idea of launching fissionable material as a fuel. At least with NTR the rods can be much more stable and in a cato event much less dangerous. Option number two would be to construct a massive rail gun in orbit or on the surface of the moon. The moon could be easily used for transporting humans because of the length you could build cheaply. And if it was only used while its shadowed from the sun the cryo costs would be cheap. Some other fun launch systems are the in orbit catapults and slings. Nothing stopping you from having a 5 km lever arm in the form of a kevlar teather.

muh redpill readbait
>bluepill

And get our shit together before we go fucking up other planets, yes.

I think some absolute geniut will come from using drone swarm assembly. There shouldnt be the need to send humans this day and age to construct something. Especially in low G like the moon. If we can find a way to make a cement out of the melted ice and existing surface material (maybe with some composite thrown in) we could probably construct an entire pressurize dome. The other very sexy option, someone asked Elon if he ever intended to use the BFG to launch a Boring Company drill... Which would be fucking amazing.

But to reiterate, droneswarm using materials in situ and small amounts of transported composites.... or tunnels. Tunnels are probably a better idea. Some combination of the two I assume will be the final result.

The thing about the Orion and a cato event, is it's not really a 'rocket.' Rockets today have thin skins, are carefully tuned to distribute their loads on both structural and monocoque components.

Fuck all of that on an Orion. You can build it like an earth mover. The bomblets won't go off with serious force (only up to their weight in TNT) if not intended to (modern nuclear tampers are awesome like that.) The major concern is the magazine coming apart under shear forces and spraying fissile material during takeoff.
So you build the magazine like a tank, there's no reason not to. Give it three redundant launch-abort systems. Make sure it won't come apart, even slamming the earth at full force. This is an Orion. Mass means nothing.

If it's still a scary prospect, launch with the bare minimum load of bomblets and fly the rest up later on SSTOs or conventionals.

>Nothing stopping you from having a 5 km lever arm in the form of a kevlar teather
There is one huge thing: R&D. Don't underestimate it. It will take at least 50-75 years before we have cargo rated slingshots even around Terra.

This comment indicates you don't understand anything about the discussion to be had about this topic.

No one wants to put colonies on other planets. The moon is one thing; it's a big asteroid.

The only way to improve humanity is to heighten its collective sense of dignity. Space exploration is the highest pursuit available and promises species-altering technologies, realizations and accomplishments.

Kind of a waste to put everything on hold for another century while corporate tribalists duke it out when we've had the ability to kickstart a Dyson swarm since around 1960.

Attached: icon.jpg (600x916, 185K)

I think the issue is right there in what you said, you now for safety need to launch the ship and the fuel separately, and over build the magazine and only launch small amounts of bomblets at a time. The entire operation just lost its efficiency in the number of launches. I think Orion was a great idea at its time. The future is probably in technology we havent even discovered. Space will not be truly explorable until we can come up with some kind of torch ship. Some kinds of constant acceleration drives with HUUUUGE ISP.

what does that even mean user? It sounds like you're wrestling your own preconceptions down and are transiently interested. Maybe use the opportunity to read up on the subject and join in? Might learn something.

Attached: not-a-pick-up-line.jpg (1000x1094, 45K)

Not to get down in the mud here, but spacetravel will kinda naturally select only the brightest to go and the earth can be left with its dumpsterfire of greed and religion.

sorry some incel samefagging is not a good thread. sage

Its probably only me and the OP that are actually having a discussion. But feel free to contribute in between your fapping.

Also if you actually werent a newfag you would know there are 9 unique ip's replying to this thread.

>The entire operation just lost its efficiency in the number of launches
Not at all. 11,000 tons on the Orion, then 10-20 refueling missions of 5tons each on Protons. That's peanuts.

>The future is probably in technology we havent even discovered
This is inherently and obviously true.
However Orion is ready NOW and unlocks everything we need to both realize and start that future where we can exploit the asteroid belt, build shipyards at Terra-Luna L1 and put research ops on the Jovian moons.

Literally within a decade we can have permanent/rotating human presence around Jupiter with costs low enough for commercial travel. We can have orbital habitats with thousands of citizens in a decade. No dice rolls, no emergent tech. Ready to test fly designs are literally in USAF/NASA archives.

Attached: natl_treasure.jpg (736x947, 126K)

It's the "final frontier". Note what happened to the frontiers on earth. They were devoured. They were exploited. They were reduced to ash and plunder. There is nothing inherently dignified about attempting to do such on a grander scale; if anything, it is a denigration of the dignity of Earth itself and its biosphere, of which we are a part.

user, a majority of humans will always be living in the past century. That's not the concern of people who are looking out for the species.

Attached: wayne-barlowe.jpg (636x1024, 112K)

this. humankinds destiny is to get off this planet at all costs instead we're worshipping false idols like gods, politicians and money

Attached: sat3.jpg (396x353, 31K)

My friends parents worked on tgat. They also like to joke about their top secret clearance like they saw aliens bit its just bc they handled nuclear attack data or helped support it.
Nukes are way less cool than aliens

You're oversimplifying to a Warhammer degree.

How do you reduce any stellar object to "ash and plunder"? The resources are there for the taking; it's as far from your comparison as anything can possibly be.

If you allow corporations to justify and expand unrestricted in space, maybe you'd get something 'bad' for humans.

However space is literally the only place where you can conceivably get rid of the socioeconomic funnel. The moment you place a permanent colony in space, the economic cost of sustaining that life has already exceeded their own labor value. That severely upsets the justification for economic assignations to private life.
I'm not saying most things would be free but it will require a major overhaul of current economic systems in favor of individuals

To that end;
Large numbers of people living in space requires a tremendous amount of resources to keep them there and viable as workers, in investment and maintenance.
It is conducive to higher societal function and extreme individual independence from traditional political mechanisms.

This is all about large habitats housing up to a million (at the absolute upper end,) not resorts for elites. Once you have that many people, they become self-determinant in a which is very hard to undermine.

There are many good books discussing these effects. I suggest you look into our pal Dyson's own work on the topic.

Attached: nemos-garden.jpg (1920x960, 168K)

Would it be possible to launch some of our current nuclear arsenal into orbit with ICBMs and whatnot? I'm just thinking...if the nukes we currently have sitting around are able to reach orbit, we can just launch them en mass and scoop them up in orbit.

I always loved the idea of nuclear propulsion but really hate the idea of using it here on Earth. More people would get on board if the detonations were limited strictly to space.

What you're describing is more like a last ditch "planet destroyer asteroid is 15 hours away" situation.
The US could probably build a franken-Orion in like 9 hours then have it grab weapons grade nukes that are already in an orbit and trajectory for it to use but that's major desperation.

However your assertion brings up one of the big talking points of using an Orion today. It's the best use of our nuclear stockpiles since you can re-purpose weapons grade material towards peaceful ends. A win-win.

Attached: how-to-land-on-venus.jpg (1280x854, 263K)

you must be tone deaf or supremely confident in OP's acting ability to think I'm samefagging. not everyone is so eager to waste their time as you are user.

This is so stupid
Nothing is ash and plunder like you said. All still very liveable, you act like we live in a mad max post-apocalyptic waste land.

Nukes are the most important thing to happen to humans, ever.

Attached: mass_2016_footfall.jpg (1138x1299, 484K)

Attached: fluid-dynamics.jpg (1280x854, 250K)

They really couldnt build a frankensteined orion in 9 hours.

And no ICBMs can not reach orbit. The doomsday scenario is where everyone launches their missiles so the apoapsis of the trajectories intersects the meteor. If they dont detonate they fall back to earth. It would really turn a catastrophic event into a catastrophic even in many lesser chunks in many more locations. That is all hollywood shit. If we detected a planet destroyer today we would probably use a single nuke on a falcon heavy to bump it just a little bit early on enough that it misses the planet.

It would be very hard but not impossible with modern manufacturing. The most difficult aspect would be the drive plate's pneumatics but i feel even that could be pulled off with conscription of Krupp's factories. The most difficult part would be preparation of the bomblets but the prompt was to use unmodified nukes in their place so there you go.

>And no ICBMs can not reach orbit
user's question does not necessitate reaching orbital velocity. The Orion lofts to upper atmo on a wafer of prepared charges, then meets nukes ascending simultaneously and aligns with them to receive their impulse. It continues to meet with timed ICBMs until it has left the atmosphere and has corrected its course. At the moment velocities between the ascending ICBMs and Orion intersect, you would have a window of time where you could conceivably catch a few more warheads and then split their penetrators apart for later use.

This procedure would indeed make for good fiction, but hollywood could not achieve it without fucking up the science. It's not impossible.

Attached: TrigaReactorCore.jpg (550x405, 28K)

You under estimate the number of wrench hours by like 100x. I dont care if you can source parts that sorta do the job, not you need to machine them to work and fit together and you need 1000's of hours of a dedicated crew working to a single schematic to ensure it doesnt just blow up on the pad or fall apart.

Honestly - 9 hours should more be like 9 days at full steam ahead. Its not like you are trying to refurbish a falcon in 9 days (let alone 9 hours. Its a ridiculous timeframe.

And to design and manufacture even with existing parts you are probably looking at 9 months for a one off rocket.

That is what I was thinking. The hardest part, I imagine, would be trying to catch a warhead traveling at a different velocity than your ship.

To me, it seems like building the ship in orbit is the way to go. Once completed, you could launch ICBMs and catch them at apoapsis. LEO takes about 90 minutes for a full orbit, so you could theoretically be grabbing a nuke every orbit if you plan things right. While it might be possible to capture more, I'd imagine one per orbit would give plenty of time to prepare for the next one.

Also, in reality, you'd be lucky to build a fully functioning Orion in 9 months, let alone 9 days.

It's a ridiculous timeframe. That's the whole point of the mental exercise. I picked the number arbitrarily as a low end representation of the extinction even premise.

Labor is not a limitation in an extinction event.
Comparing it to refurbishing a rocket makes no sense because; 1. you have unlimited funds, manpower and logistics and; 2. you can build the thing like a shipping container with 3" cold roll welded and banded for reinforcement. An Orion doesn't take much structural load anyway.

It's a thought experiment in the first place and you're making preclusions that are ignoring the premise of failure not being an option.

Attached: gyrocopter2.jpg (1000x635, 108K)

Again dude I'm not christening the idea. It's a fucking thought experiment.

Keep going OP, this is the least degenerate thread I've seen on b in a long time

In 9 hours I think we could feasibly dig 20 or 30 tubes vertically, put nukes in the bottom of each one, and then a shit ton of iron garbage on top and blow the nukes when the tube is roughly pointed in the right direction. Exit velocity speed shotgun. That is a 9 hour idea.

FYI the whole reason I brought up the doomsday scenario is a hearkening to Pournelle's Footfall. In that story the Earth is invaded by an alien generation ship and they fend it off using Michael, a hastily assembled Orion armed with the Iowa Battleship's main guns and space shuttles for fighters. They build that in the book in about 9 months.

>Also, in reality, you'd be lucky to build a fully functioning Orion in 9 months, let alone 9 days

A functioning Orion yes. For your premise though you just need a barebones service compartment separated from a pusher plate with hydraulics in between. It could barely do anything other than accelerate fast enough to deliver a payload to an approaching object like a giant missile.
A legitimate Orion though needs utmost care.

Attached: Michael.jpg (1163x1600, 333K)

Sure.
With the entire human race at your disposal, I'm pretty sure you could 'feasibly' weld together a 30m x 200m tube and install a navigation system and slap a 30m disk of steel on it. Nothing has to be space worthy it's just a big bullet with a hydraulic base.

Fictional precedents for large scale manufacturing are a bit tough to determine with granularity maybe we'll just be satisfied that I was trying to entertain the remote idea of using lofting nukes as a propellant, a situation you'd only arrive at if literally every second counted.

Attached: gyrocopter1.jpg (472x515, 44K)

*New Jersey, not Iowa

God hates satanists. Cursed be the snakes in hell who poision and rot the sewers for them all but one.

nice trips btw

Attached: gyrocopter3.jpg (500x670, 96K)

who's going to ride on a ship where the means of propulsion is detonating a nuke and riding the shock wave?

you first user

Attached: gppaQVt.jpg (1365x2048, 290K)

You don't ride the shockwave. The force of expanding superheated filler is directed into a divergent wavefront and then turned into mechanical energy by the plate. The force on the payload and crew is a purely mechanical force which can be altered and directed for thrust optimization, course correction or comfort.

By the way, your attitude doesn't matter to people who are serious about their lives like Luftwaffe pilots who flew rocket fighters in 1944 or men and women much greater than you who have flown on human scale fireworks.

We don't need shit this crazy to launch heavy payloads into space.

What we need is a heavy lift space elevator. It could be a temporary structure that moves like a 1,000 tons of shit to space taking like a week to do then it could be taken down until needed again.

That way you could get massive cargo into space but not need crazy huge rockets

Attached: 1664008-7058-thefappening.pm.jpg (1500x2000, 180K)

What if instead of using bomblettes they used enriched uranium wire. Like a guitar string and just snipped off an millimeter or so 60-100 times a second, putting it into a neutron reflecting container. Then we could use nozzles.

Also your comment suggest you don't realize there's no gas to generate a shockwave in space besides the material generated by a fabricated filler. In atmosphere, you're using .3-2kt nukes. You're really scared of a kiloton or sub-kiloton device?

Attached: long_road.jpg (760x1244, 245K)

How do you launch it in the first place, and in either scenario where the tether is lowers or the structure is built up from the ground how do you over come Coriolis effect.

"My attitude" is that of a normal person who will take normal risk. If humanity is going to space in mass it will be normal people who go not wild risk takers.

A ship powered by bombs that is also full of bombs doesn't sound good to anyone.

Attached: 23-Jennifer-Lawrence-Nude-Leaked.jpg (1224x1632, 357K)

>do you over come Coriolis effect

fire rockets in the opposite direction my man

Attached: 399_1000.jpg (1000x1333, 154K)

This concept is basically Daedalus, which uses a stream of fissile material and lasers to achieve criticality. It is essentially nozzle bound.

Theoretically it's a more efficient rocket but the big issue is its minimum size and that it's purely theoretical... Orion on the other hand has been built and tested in atmo.

Attached: Daedalus.jpg (750x481, 97K)

Define 'crazy' using objectivity. Being a naysayer does not make you right, read the history of man made vehicles.

>suggests a space elevator
I digress.

Attached: dorothy.gif (340x223, 1.99M)

That would be interesting if only under the lasers could it hit criticality and it wouldnt transfer up stream. I vote we turn Mt Everest into a slingshot. That is my wet dream.

>it will be normal people who go not wild risk takers
So the USAF and NASA and 3 entire multi-billion dollar research teams who proofed Orion to the production phase but had to stop due to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 were all "wild risk takers"?

Stop talking out your ass and read about this before you give a nonsense non-opinion.

Attached: 0_vROtkefp1JMRj95-.jpg (304x400, 29K)

look up 'NPE'

please go back to your respective thread to continue shitposting. you're embarrassing yourself.

Either bait or your a mong. Prolly a mong

The Earth and moon rotate constantly desu

I'm not a naysayer. Quite the opposite I think all of humanity should focus all available resources to build a large moon base as practice for building a permanent Mars colony.

*we need the practice on the moon because help can be sent in 3 days if a emergency happens,no help is coming if your shit gets fucked on mars. Well at least not for 9 months to two years.

Anyway I think I've got the space elevator problem licked. Here goes.

We've got 62 miles of air. So you build 62 large square scaffoldings with a combination of blimps and directed fans to hold them steady. Have a mile long cable between each one. When you run out of air for blimps just switch to rockets in leo and space. So the rockets can fire contentiously for like a week pump the fuel from the ground.


Boom where's my noble prize space bitches and billions of dollars?????

Attached: 1508182483594.jpg (765x1024, 388K)

Slingshots are definitely a necessary step but only when there's industry to accept what they're pushing. Using them for exploratory craft will be unrealistic. Lighter than air as a gateway to LEO is a pretty crucial and underrated aspect.

Attached: frank-herbert.jpg (1000x703, 222K)

>the engineers
>are also the test pilots

Ignoring temporarily the fact you're probably a troll but definitely a pedant and phone poster, any space elevator is 75-100 years out. The science is not ready, the engineering is not ready.

You also seem to not be aware that a space elevator is not a path to orbit but a path to space. Until cheap solutions for upper atmo to space exist even contemplating an elevator is a waste of time.

Attached: 2001Space.jpg (3014x2263, 694K)

SSTO will probably never be realized, because of the new trend for re-usability and landing boosters.

However I would definitely agree that there is room for air breathing first stages. Or an aircraft launch like Vigin is using for their suborbital tourism.

see "popular assumption" #1

Pioneering anything is about risk. Orion is possibly the lowest risk on investment option available for heavy freight to anywhere in the solar system and you haven't convinced me or anyone else otherwise.

Attached: ladri-di-biciclette.jpg (768x433, 74K)

Yeah the engineering and materials science is beyond our children's lifetime. Especially for a geostationary (ballast being past that point) elevator.

>engineering is not ready

I just told you how,why wouldn't that work? All the arguments I've heard for why a space elevator can't be built is because we don't have any material strong enough to go from the ground to space without breaking,well I've solved that problem by breaking it up into individual platforms all of which hold their own weight.

>space elevator is not a path to orbit but a path to space

it can be used for both

Attached: 411_1000.jpg (480x640, 59K)

Yeah until we get a lot of commerce across Earth atmo SSTO has had its run as a research platform. There's not much to learn from the concept now. Even the shuttle signaled the SSTO concept isn't really optimal for us yet.

Virgin has the right idea. That vehicle foundation paired with a lighter than air ascent section could do some real work.

Attached: orion_2.png (1003x1079, 623K)

Our space program still relies on booster rockets and splashdowns. Get real, morons. Our technology is shit.

>Orion is still the ONLY way forward for humans.
Nuclear thermal or nuclear electrical would do the job just as well.

The problem with xbox huge rockets is that they will blow up in spectacular fashion. This is what killed the american space program. when the space shuttle blew up killing everyone on board
the public lost all it's taste for sending americans to space.

How's it going to look when your 50 trillion dollar rockets detonates killing 1,000 crew?

If a space elevator fails on the other hand no one necessarily has to die.

Attached: 1508183331788.jpg (1009x1350, 212K)

>still relies on capitalism
Cost is key for space programs.
The technology is far beyond block boosters and splashdowns.
Do I really need to say it again? Test Orions flew.

At least you aren't trying to feign ignorance like some anons here though, this is obviously genuine.

Attached: red_probe.jpg (474x769, 50K)

plz respond

Attached: 1510864336945.jpg (2448x3264, 811K)

>troll has switched to desperation mode

lol what a mong

>I'm a troll and a retard because you can't explain why my space elevator proposal won't work

ok

Attached: 07-Jennifer-Lawrence-Nude-Leaked.jpg (960x1280, 124K)

Shuttle had no launch escape system. Its moot.

On the subject of reentry I am disappointed that SpaceX again went with tiles like the shuttle did instead of using an ablative.