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You got your nuclear weapon. You stick that down in a hole. Has to be a real good hole. Maybe, say, lined with stuff. Lead. Sapphire-coated zinc oxide 'n' steel. Whatever. Really sturdy absorby stuff. You put your pusher plate on the top of the bomb. Plate fits right in the shaft, kinda. You put
your stuff that you want to go up the gravity well on top of the plate, probly slather some of that absorbentonium underneath it on top of the plate as well as your shock absorbers on the nonbusiness (i.e. nonboom) side. You set the bomb off. Whomp, there goes your cargo. Hopefully she flies into orbit or whatever. The shaft, natch, is designed to seal itself off after "ignition," solving the problem of atmospheric debris, test ban treaties, etc. Do not hold in hand. Light fuse and get away. Put enough water or ice or whathaveyougel in your salt dome launchpad, use a low yield, might even be reusable... Come to think of it, the EMP from a nuclear blast could be used to trigger a big one-shot railgun, kind of, sorta. It's not better than Orion, just legal, international-treaty-wise...
A review of "Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship "
http://www.discover...02/featreviews.html
Some background [phoenix, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
The Spaceship that Almost Was
http://unmuseum.mus...us/orionproject.htm
More information about Orion. [phoenix, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
[link]
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The problem is one bang won't do it. You fly up a bit, then you need to knock another one off, then repeat. |
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My question is, if you know about Orion, why do you think this is better? |
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Well this would save mass. That's always good. Actually what I'll bet inspired him is the maybe-true story of Earth's _actual_ first satellite. During one of the underground tests, somebody stuck a chunk of sheet metal over the hole dug for the blast to escape. (Probably a "Hey Beavis check out this cool thing" kind of inspiration but this is irrelevant.) A photo of the test shot showed this nice streak in the top of the frame. Based on this data, the physicists did some back-of-an-envelope calculations for the fun of it and found that the sheet metal probably entered orbit. |
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Relying on one single blast would make you go BOOM!
You, actually what's left of your dust would then, one far
off day, float back to earth never having left the
earth's atmosphere. Ironic, eh? |
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In other words, neither you nor your captains chair would
survive the blast's overpressure. And if you were counting
on the blast wind to put you in orbit, well, don't. Nuclear
blast winds reach a puny few-hundred-kilometers per
hour. "You would have been being" in need of this velocity
by the magnitude of a hundred, and them some. |
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