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Orion aka "Ol' Boom-boom"

nyrath

By nyrath
in KSP1 Mod Development

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Mihara

Mihara

Posted
Posted
I'm going to have to figure out how to insert the Orion mod into the tech tree. Somewhere after "atomic engine" I think.

Next to the orange tank, obviously, because if this isn't very large rocketry, nothing is. :)

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Tommygun

Tommygun

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I'm going to have to figure out how to insert the Orion mod into the tech tree. Somewhere after "atomic engine" I think.

I think you need your own special button for this.

"Ginormous Projectiles with a half life" button.

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Canopus

Canopus

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This is awesome and I love it! :D

Wasn't the Orion supposed to be launched with five Saturn V rockets or something like that? Now that's a launch. XD

Five Saturn V's? I never seen that proposal, but there was a smaller version that would have been launched on a suborbital trajectory on top of the S-IC (first stage of the Saturn V).
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JebIsMyHero

JebIsMyHero

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Posted (edited)

Ok, maybe I was a bit off, I found a design that had 3 Saturn V's as boosters:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20000096503_2000138021.pdf

(See pg. 6, 2nd paragraph on the right).

Even after all that, it would still have required some in-orbit assembly! XD

I'm going to say that again, purely for emphasis by the way: The three Saturn V's... were boosters... :D

Edited by JebIsMyHero
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p1t1o

p1t1o

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Are the explosive yields accurate or comparable to the yields of modern day nuclear detonations? I don't think a 400 meganewton explosion is realistic...

The science on that site is pretty sound, and the yields are pretty low - 0.35kt to 29kt. THe hardest part is probably making one that small.

Looks like the impressive thrust comes from the number of charges burst - roughly 1 per second it says. That and the charges are specifically designed to "focus" as much of the energy released as possible towards the pusher plate.

The maths does appear to work out, whether it could be made to work in practical reality, personally I have my doubts - not that I can base them on anything.

Edited by p1t1o
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nyrath

nyrath

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Are the explosive yields accurate or comparable to the yields of modern day nuclear detonations? I don't think a 400 meganewton explosion is realistic...

Yes, they are accurate. I did quite a lot of research.

A 400 meganewton explosion only needs a nuclear device with a yield of 15 kilotons, or about the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. The Nagasaki bomb was about 20 kt. The warheads on ICBMs are from 100 to 500 kt. The most powerful warhead still in active service has a yield of about 1,200 kt.

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Guest

Guest

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Posted
The science on that site is pretty sound, and the yields are pretty low - 0.35kt to 29kt. THe hardest part is probably making one that small.

It's not a problem, even smalled weapons were developed and issued. Davy Crockett was about 0.02kT, or 20T.

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Mecha Pants

Mecha Pants

Posted
Posted (edited)

I haven't seen any spontaneous explosions on my end while building up my current Jool mission, though I have noticed that launch clamps can't seem to hold onto the pushplate assembly no matter how many are used.

Edit: I can add that in my experience the engine itself and the magazine arrays are VERY sensitive about parts being clipped inside them.

I've had to be very careful designing my mission modules with that in mind to avoid catastrophic unplanned disassembly. I don't really think

that's new information though.

Edited by Mecha Pants
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Pigbear

Pigbear

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It's not a problem, even smalled weapons were developed and issued. Davy Crockett was about 0.02kT, or 20T.

I just want to see someone make a 1 ton bomb, NUCLEAR GRENADES! Then we could make mini Orion engines just for them. Orion probes actually sound kind of cool. I think that it wouldn't even be that hard on Nyrath's end, just a few resizings of explosions and engine+magazine and then you got one. (still possibly able to be used on a ship nowhere near that size wow) But he would also want to make sure it doesn't use the larger magazines, that would be bad.

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nyrath

nyrath

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Alright here is a theoretical question: How much mass could an Orion ship carry if its fuel is 50 megaton Tsar Bomba?

Hard to say, so much of this is still classified.

There was a design for a 4,000 ton GLOW Orion using 5 kiloton bombs (included in my mod as 80 megaNewton charges), they figured it would deltaV 1,600 tons of payload to 10 km/sec or 200 tons of payload to 30 km/sec.

The "advanced interplanetary ship" had 10,000 tons GLOW (and a pusher plate diameter of 40 meters!) using 15 kiloton bombs (400 megaNewtons). They figure it would deltaV 6,100 tons of payload to 10 km/sec or 1,300 tons of payload to 100 km/sec.

A 20,000 tons GLOW Orion would use 29 kiloton bombs, no details on the rest.

The "Super Orion" had a GLOW of 8,000,000 tons (and a pusher plate diameter of 400 meters!!). It doesn't say what the yield of the bombs were, but probably a couple of megatons. All it said was that each bomb had a mass of 3,000 tons. By way of comparison, the 5 kiloton bombs had a mass of about 1.2 tons.

The Tsar Bomba was only 27 metric tons, but it did not have any Orion propellant mass included.

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Durabys

Durabys

Posted
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Hard to say, so much of this is still classified.

There was a design for a 4,000 ton GLOW Orion using 5 kiloton bombs (included in my mod as 80 megaNewton charges), they figured it would deltaV 1,600 tons of payload to 10 km/sec or 200 tons of payload to 30 km/sec.

The "advanced interplanetary ship" had 10,000 tons GLOW (and a pusher plate diameter of 40 meters!) using 15 kiloton bombs (400 megaNewtons). They figure it would deltaV 6,100 tons of payload to 10 km/sec or 1,300 tons of payload to 100 km/sec.

A 20,000 tons GLOW Orion would use 29 kiloton bombs, no details on the rest.

The "Super Orion" had a GLOW of 8,000,000 tons (and a pusher plate diameter of 400 meters!!). It doesn't say what the yield of the bombs were, but probably a couple of megatons. All it said was that each bomb had a mass of 3,000 tons. By way of comparison, the 5 kiloton bombs had a mass of about 1.2 tons.

The Tsar Bomba was only 27 metric tons, but it did not have any Orion propellant mass included.

My GOD! :confused:

That's nearly "sufficient velocity" level of propulsion.

PS: Yes. Me and my dad are still working on that relativistic engine translation work.

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Wahgineer

Wahgineer

Posted
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Hard to say, so much of this is still classified.

There was a design for a 4,000 ton GLOW Orion using 5 kiloton bombs (included in my mod as 80 megaNewton charges), they figured it would deltaV 1,600 tons of payload to 10 km/sec or 200 tons of payload to 30 km/sec.

The "advanced interplanetary ship" had 10,000 tons GLOW (and a pusher plate diameter of 40 meters!) using 15 kiloton bombs (400 megaNewtons). They figure it would deltaV 6,100 tons of payload to 10 km/sec or 1,300 tons of payload to 100 km/sec.

A 20,000 tons GLOW Orion would use 29 kiloton bombs, no details on the rest.

The "Super Orion" had a GLOW of 8,000,000 tons (and a pusher plate diameter of 400 meters!!). It doesn't say what the yield of the bombs were, but probably a couple of megatons. All it said was that each bomb had a mass of 3,000 tons. By way of comparison, the 5 kiloton bombs had a mass of about 1.2 tons.

The Tsar Bomba was only 27 metric tons, but it did not have any Orion propellant mass included.

Something tells me that Jeb would still say: "it needs more boosters"

Those statistics are INSANE

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Wahgineer

Wahgineer

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Their isn't any need for a 2.5m Orion drive. In fact, there is no point in launching it with rockets: it's designed to be launched from the ground as one piece. If you're trying to launch the full sized Orion drive with rockets, you're doing it completely wrong.

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metalmouth7

metalmouth7

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Posted
Their isn't any need for a 2.5m Orion drive. In fact, there is no point in launching it with rockets: it's designed to be launched from the ground as one piece. If you're trying to launch the full sized Orion drive with rockets, you're doing it completely wrong.

.... except that's what NASA was going to do, to prevent atmospheric contamination.

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