How Hard Would It Be For A Billionaire To Develop/Launch Project Orion?

[Spacescifi]

 

 

Someone with funds like Elon. 

Could they develop it in secret before launch? Without government help? 

Like is it possible to mine your own uranium and develop your own 'thrust units' (sounds nicer than H-bombs) in a 'storage warehouse' (actually an undercover uranium enrichment facility)? Russia I hear has uranium ore, plus other places.

If covert development is not possible...

What countries would actually allow a launch on their soil if this cannot be done covertly?

 

Funny replies are okay, since I know there is not likely a single billionaire considering doing this. It's risky... even for someone almost untouchable like them.

Edited December 16, 2019 by Spacescifi

[benzman]

A billionaire secretly building a nuclear space ship?  Where is James Bond when you really need him?

 

[RealKerbal3x]

@Spacescifi The Partial Test Ban Treaty forbids nuclear weapons in space. It’s the reason why Project Orion was cancelled in the first place. Considering that Orion was originally a government study, it’s going to be even more difficult for even a billionaire.

[kerbiloid]

What can go wrong when the professionals are in game?

Spoiler

 

[Spacescifi]

36 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

@Spacescifi The Partial Test Ban Treaty forbids nuclear weapons in space. It’s the reason why Project Orion was cancelled in the first place. Considering that Orion was originally a government study, it’s going to be even more difficult for even a billionaire.

 

So the countries that might let you develop and launch Orion are...

 

North Korea?

 

Yea... nope. I have a feeling Russia would put a stop to it to prevent a USA thrashing of NK.

 

India launched Orions would cause Pakistan to either go to war or start mass nuke production.

 

In other words... project Orion is a great way to start WW3.

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

@Spacescifi The Partial Test Ban Treaty forbids nuclear weapons in space. It’s the reason why Project Orion was cancelled in the first place. Considering that Orion was originally a government study, it’s going to be even more difficult for even a billionaire.

No... it bans nuclear tests in space. An Orion flight wouldn’t necessarily be a test so you could potentially skirt around it.

That said, other treaties would likely prevent it.

It also wasn’t the reason Orion was cancelled, though that isn’t the right word. Orion was being studied past the signing of the treaty - what killed Orion was the complete lack of any need for it. The USAF was very interested but the DoD killed its interest, and without the USAF they thought maybe NASA could take it up, but NASA had already decided to not use nuclear power of any kind for their manned program, at least until after Apollo. So Orion was killed. 

Orion is so powerful that it can launch more payload in a single flight than the entirety of spaceflight history. We just don’t need that.

[cubinator]

I say let's do Project Orion in the asteroid belt, nothing close to Earth.

[kerbiloid]

I guess, the private owning of the materials is prohibited everywhere where the billionaire can get them.

[TheSaint]

Well, there are a couple of treaties that make Project Orion problematic that have been brought up or alluded to here. To clarify:

• The Outer Space Treaty prohibits signatories from basing weapons of mass destruction in outer space. Therefore an Orion drive spacecraft flying around with a hold full of "propulsion units" would be in violation, as that would certainly be construed as "basing".
• The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prohibits signatories from testing nuclear weapons anywhere except underground. If you were going to launch from the surface of the planet with the Orion drive itself, you would be detonating ("testing", at least as far as the treaty is concerned) nuclear weapons on the surface and in the atmosphere. Also a non-starter from a treaty-compliance standpoint.

However, assuming that someone was crazy enough to try, let's run down the obstacles they'll encounter:

1. They're going to have to assemble thousands of "propulsion units". You need a minimum of critical mass of uranium for each unit, which is 56kg of U235. So, for 2,000 units, for a round number, call it 112 metric tons of enriched U235. Since U235 is ~0.7% of naturally occurring uranium, that means your billionaire needs to get his hands on about 16,000 tons of uranium, or pretty close to 20,000 tons of yellowcake. Let's point out that if 1kg of highly-enriched nuclear material goes missing, people freak out. If 112 metric tons just walks off the books, I think someone might raise their hand.
2. Okay, let's assume that our billionaire manages to develop his own uranium mine(s) somewhere where nobody notices them. And nobody talks about them. And he manages to mine himself 20,000 tons of yellowcake and refine out 16,000 tons of uranium. Now he has to enrich it. There are many different technologies for enriching uranium, but the key principles to keep in mind is that they all take up huge amounts of money, resources, and space, and they are all distinctly recognizable as enrichment technologies. If your billionaire goes out and buys 10,000 gaseous diffusion centrifuges, somebody is going to throw their hand up and say, "HEY! Somebody is trying to enrich a lot of uranium!" Sure, he can buy the raw materials and build them himself, but then he has to hire skilled workers, and he has more and more people in on his secret.
3. Which leads to your billionaire's biggest problem. You know how you keep a secret, right? You tell one other person. And then you shoot them. The more people this billionaire pulls into his private nuclear weapons program, the greater the chances are that someone is going to blow the whistle on him. And the minute they do every TLA on Planet Earth is going to be busting through his front door. Because once his little program is finished, it will make him the third-largest nuclear power on Earth, despite whatever his stated intentions for those "propulsion units" may be.

So, in short, money can't buy you everything. It can't buy you happiness. It can't buy you love. And it probably can't buy you a private nuclear weapons program, or your own private Orion-drive spacecraft.

[Guest]

Yes, very difficult in practice and next to impossible on the Kardashian scale of difficulty, we will not be seeing this happening within the near future even if monetary duplication technology succeeds due to the immense technological requirements of such a thing

[Spacescifi]

4 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Well, there are a couple of treaties that make Project Orion problematic that have been brought up or alluded to here. To clarify:

• The Outer Space Treaty prohibits signatories from basing weapons of mass destruction in outer space. Therefore an Orion drive spacecraft flying around with a hold full of "propulsion units" would be in violation, as that would certainly be construed as "basing".
• The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prohibits signatories from testing nuclear weapons anywhere except underground. If you were going to launch from the surface of the planet with the Orion drive itself, you would be detonating ("testing", at least as far as the treaty is concerned) nuclear weapons on the surface and in the atmosphere. Also a non-starter from a treaty-compliance standpoint.

However, assuming that someone was crazy enough to try, let's run down the obstacles they'll encounter:

1. They're going to have to assemble thousands of "propulsion units". You need a minimum of critical mass of uranium for each unit, which is 56kg of U235. So, for 2,000 units, for a round number, call it 112 metric tons of enriched U235. Since U235 is ~0.7% of naturally occurring uranium, that means your billionaire needs to get his hands on about 16,000 tons of uranium, or pretty close to 20,000 tons of yellowcake. Let's point out that if 1kg of highly-enriched nuclear material goes missing, people freak out. If 112 metric tons just walks off the books, I think someone might raise their hand.
2. Okay, let's assume that our billionaire manages to develop his own uranium mine(s) somewhere where nobody notices them. And nobody talks about them. And he manages to mine himself 20,000 tons of yellowcake and refine out 16,000 tons of uranium. Now he has to enrich it. There are many different technologies for enriching uranium, but the key principles to keep in mind is that they all take up huge amounts of money, resources, and space, and they are all distinctly recognizable as enrichment technologies. If your billionaire goes out and buys 10,000 gaseous diffusion centrifuges, somebody is going to throw their hand up and say, "HEY! Somebody is trying to enrich a lot of uranium!" Sure, he can buy the raw materials and build them himself, but then he has to hire skilled workers, and he has more and more people in on his secret.
3. Which leads to your billionaire's biggest problem. You know how you keep a secret, right? You tell one other person. And then you shoot them. The more people this billionaire pulls into his private nuclear weapons program, the greater the chances are that someone is going to blow the whistle on him. And the minute they do every TLA on Planet Earth is going to be busting through his front door. Because once his little program is finished, it will make him the third-largest nuclear power on Earth, despite whatever his stated intentions for those "propulsion units" may be.

So, in short, money can't buy you everything. It can't buy you happiness. It can't buy you love. And it probably can't buy you a private nuclear weapons program, or your own private Orion-drive spacecraft.

 

LOL thanks I got a good laugh out of, "Money cannot buy you everything... like your own private nuclear weapons program for example."

It would make a good movie though!

I think the billionaire's chances might be slightly better if he constructed the Orion in a friendly nation that no one really cares about.

Oh... can a billionaire buy a country off? That may help with keeping people quiet?

For example, what if they start building the nuclear facility in Canada?

Lots of land... less people than some states of the USA, and not a nation that the USA is immediately suspicious of?

Perhaps as a cover the billionaire can get the help of the canadian government to assist them to build new thorium nuclear power plants while also developing the Orion project at the same time?

All hinges on whether Canada allows it ot not, which they might if sufficiently miffed by the USA (not out of the realm of possibility nowadays).

The Canadian president can promote it as bringing jobs to Canada or something LOL.

Name of the movie?

Boom Boom

 

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, TheSaint said:

once his little program is finished, it will make him the third-largest nuclear power on Earth, despite whatever his stated intentions for those "propulsion units" may be.

He was just dreaming about the stars, and wanted to build his own Orion to bring them for people.

He was alone. He was hiding as far as he could.
He had to do things he was never proud of.
For any price he was trying to collect everything required to make the dream real.

He liked cats.

But the ungrateful people did not understand and blamed him...

Spoiler

 

[razark]

9 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Considering that Orion was originally a government study, it’s going to be even more difficult for even a billionaire.

Well, spaceflight itself was originally a government thing, but that doesn't seem to have stopped individuals with sufficient funds¹ from joining the game.  Granted, it is a barrier, but experience shows that barriers can be overcome.

 

5 hours ago, TheSaint said:

• The Outer Space Treaty prohibits signatories from...
• The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prohibits signatories from...

While this is true, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that no one actually bothered to get Elon Musk to sign those treaties.

 

 

 

 

¹Where sufficient funds is an extremely high bar to pass. As long as you're not violating the laws of physics, anything is possible, given sufficient funding.

[KSK]

That billionaire would probably be better off developing antimatter based propulsion units - as per another Spacescifi thread. Easier to hide your manufacturing facility in plain sight. "Hey, I just love particle physics alright. Why don't you all come and use my accelerator for science? Don't worry about the second storage ring over there, that's just a spare."

[kerbiloid]

He'd found a fitness club. And place the centrifuges in the exercise bikes like wheels. Both secrecy and punlicity.

Spoiler

Yes, I know that the centrifuge doesn't look like a wheel.
But it's just now.

 

Edited December 17, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Treveli]

On Earth, no, too many problems and roadblocks.

Another planet in-system? Sure, no treaties or law enforcement to worry about.

But the billionaire in question would need their own fleet of heavy-lift and interplanetary-capable spacecraft to get the resources and personnel there.

Wait a second...

Edited December 17, 2019 by Treveli

[TheSaint]

11 hours ago, razark said:

While this is true, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that no one actually bothered to get Elon Musk to sign those treaties.

True, but governments generally go to great lengths to ensure that their citizens abide by the treaties they are party to. But, yes, you are correct, technically Elon Musk is not party to such agreements. He could take his billions of dollars, foment a hostile financial takeover of some small equatorial nation and begin creating his own nuclear space program there. But I guarantee you that national security advisors across the globe are not going to see him as a visionary space explorer. They're going to see him as a petty dictator setting himself up with a nuclear arsenal. They are going to intervene with extreme prejudice and write the paperwork up to justify it all later.