Orion aka "Ol' Boom-boom"

[Nutter]

Something you really don't have to worry about and actually isn't nearly as scary when taken in the context of the well over a thousand nuclear tests in the last fifty years.

How many would one of these need to reach orbit, again?

[Railgunner2160]

Apparently you've forgotten a little thing called Chernobyl, IIRC It's fallout has reached all the way to our continent, not to mention the extremely high rates of cancer around the reactor site, even with Chernobyl being a ghost city the rates of cancer and other radiation related incidents for the closest areas is nearly twice the average IIRC....

Would YOU want that kind of radioactive nightmare on your doorstep?? Also you need to remember that there's been a ban on nuclear tests for awhile now, Heck even North Korea isn't stupid enough to do a above ground test these days, they'd give away the fact that they have indeed been building Nuclear weapons.....

[roady1990]

Man... I hate comparisons with Chernobyl. Once, they have a horrible accident using a poorly designed reactor, and decades later you still hear about it.

Besides, people always overestimate the lives lost/harmed from the radiation. some 216 cases of acute radiation poisoning and 31 deaths. As well as an estimated 4000 cancer deaths later on. maybe an order of magnitude more of cancer incidences related to the incident.

This is horrible, but comparatively tiny if you look at how much poohah people made of it.

[Neutrinovore]

Agreed, Roady1990.

Plus, as this is a video game, and there's no ACTUAL radiation being produced or anything, no one is really being hurt, you know?

For me, that's the whole point of video games. They're not real. So I can do things in the game that CANNOT, for whatever reason, be done in real life.

My $0.02.

[Guest]

Apparently you've forgotten a little thing called Chernobyl, IIRC It's fallout has reached all the way to our continent, not to mention the extremely high rates of cancer around the reactor site, even with Chernobyl being a ghost city the rates of cancer and other radiation related incidents for the closest areas is nearly twice the average IIRC....

Chernobyl is a ghost city? Well... it isn't. And what's left of the powerplant is actually still running. Prypiat, is the ghost city around there, and would've been perfectly inhabitable if it wasn't such an amazing example of a city completely abandoned by humans. You can book a trip in there if you want.

Oh, and Chernobyl disaster wasn't even a fault in the reactor. It was a result of a long, long string of downright criminal mistakes bordering on suicide attempts. The result was more like a boiler explosion accompanied by a radioactive spill, nothing like an actual nuclear detonation. Oh, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which experienced nuke detonations, are definitely inhabited and quite well off in fact.

A well designed Orion would be nothing like Chernobyl. Most detonations (well, except the first one, of course), would be of airburst kind, which creates next to no fallout (not much dust to irradiate up there). The first one could be avoided by lifting it from the ground with strap-on rockets or simply paving the ground with graphite so that no radioactive dust is created. Sure, your spaceport would be pretty radioactive, but as long as the spacecraft is operated unmanned (Orion, like all "pulse" drives isn't too good for crewed ships), you're good.

[Railgunner2160]

I was trying to make a point that there was good reason that NASA planned to get the ORION'S off the ground with Saturn-V's Strapped to it, seems people took it the wrong way. And I know that Chernobyl was caused by A: a somewhat badly designed reactor, and B: The fact they were running an experiment on the reactor with a crew of technicians who had NEVER worked on nuclear reactors before their jobs at Chernobyl, hell the closest thing they had was one guy trained on COAL power plants.....

[Guest]

There was a concept with using SSRBs to lift the Orion, but in general, it was always supposed to lift of from the ground under it's own power, from what I've gathered. Airburst detonations don't make much fallout, and ground ones on a hard surface are not too bad either. The real reason for Orion taking off under rocket power would be to appease anti-nuke treaties.

[Sakata]

Any chance this still works with .22?

[nyrath]

It seems to work in .22 (with a few annoying bugs), but I have not yet gotten it into the career mode tech tree yet (things are a bit hectic in my life right now).

Any suggestions on where it should go?

[Nutter]

Well, if you're willing to rework the thing after economy is implemented, I'd say the very end with very heavy or experimental rocketry.

Otherwise...Advanced Metalworks or thereabouts?

[John Nowak]

It seems to work in .22 (with a few annoying bugs), but I have not yet gotten it into the career mode tech tree yet (things are a bit hectic in my life right now).

Any suggestions on where it should go?

Very Heavy Rocketry, with the Orange Tank; or possibly in whatever node has the radiation trefoil.

[Boosterspice]

Should be it's own node or two, like one where you unlock the engine and the small charges, and one for the the big charges. Names could be, hmm...

Experimental Nuclear Rocketry and Advanced Nuclear Rocketry

In the first one, you unlock the engine with the mounts, and the small single charges, and in number two you unlock the bare engine, the two big stacks and the heavy single charges

Edited December 14, 2013 by Boosterspice
*Lightbulb over head*

[Canopus]

Is it possible to create your own branch on the Tech tree? If yes, this would be my proposed placement for the Nuclear pulse propulsion parts:

(please excuse this horrible representation though)

It definetly should require "Very Heavy Rocketry" and "Nuclear Propulsion". I think "Advanced Metalworks" could be a prerequisite too though.

Just ignore this if you can't create your own Tech tree branches though.

[Boosterspice]

I like that, Canopus. We could combine our ideas, placing my node ideas where you suggested. Just an idea

[Domfluff]

Just thinking out loud, really, but considering the long-term future of this fantastic mod:

I've been playing around with the Interstellar mod, and thinking about how this fits in well with the technologies there (since they're both trying to replicate or Kerbalise the real science and engineering involved).

The problem, as ever, is the power level - Orion just blows NTR (especially the early NTR) technologies out of the water, and even gives the Albecurrie drive a run for it's money. (As a complete aside, I'm still not entirely happy about having an Albecurrie drive in the game, but as something that is the top of a very tall tech-tree, it's probably okay in the game. The part can always be deleted, after all.)

It just occurred to me that the primary problem with building Orion isn't the infrastructure - collecting antimatter in Interstellar is a good way to limit the top-end tech, since it requires development and infrastructure, which gives you a set of late game goals - but instead the exorbitant cost involved in actually putting it together. Since we're not concerned with the logistics of how these get onto the pad, this is primarily swept into the part cost.

So, I suppose the question is: what could the costs be? Obviously at the moment you're limited to Kerbal Economy or Mission Controller to actually enforce this kind of limitation, but this won't be the case forever. I suspect that this would go a long way towards "balancing" the engine, since you would require a massive investment to put this into orbit, and wouldn't be able to just throw it away. Even launching resupply missions would get pricey quickly, I'd imagine more in terms of raw tonnage-to-LKO than the cost of the bombs.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

I find an element of role-play is needed when using the mod; I limit myself to using orion in the late game, and never launch an orion-powered vessel with its crew on board, and payloads have to be constructed in orbit. This introduces the challenge of docking to a 1000 ton ship (things get even crazier when refueling, what with switching out one 3600-bomb magazine for another).

[LaydeeDem]

Is this mod still going? I just realized that this would go perfectly with the realism mods I'm using.

I can recreate this mission in full:

[nyrath]

Is this mod still going? I just realized that this would go perfectly with the realism mods I'm using.

I'm sorry that I haven't had a chance to work on the mod in some months, due to the total chaos in my life right now. I'm not sure if it works in the latest version of KSP or not.

[Top8]

I'm sorry that I haven't had a chance to work on the mod in some months, due to the total chaos in my life right now. I'm not sure if it works in the latest version of KSP or not.

I will test it out today and let you know if it works in .23

[darkshockwave78]

I can't open the folder, it says that "it is invalid and there is nothing in it".

[nyrath]

I can't open the folder, it says that "it is invalid and there is nothing in it".

hmmm, that's odd.

You downloaded the zip file from here?

http://ubuntuone.com/3NRDLNXaX1HmoiXIRlKNzt

I just downloaded it and unpacked it, everything seemed to be there. The size of USAFOrionMod_v18.zip was about 9.26 megs.

[another_mutant]

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'd like to see this one added into the tech tree for Interstellar.

[Pondafarr]

Insert obligatory fan-boy commentary here...i've followed the Rho Project and Atomic Rockets since about 2005 I think. Just now have I connected the orion Project with my primary source of all things Spacecraft, Nyrath the Nearly Wise! Now I need to use this mod!

[nyrath]

Insert obligatory fan-boy commentary here...i've followed the Rho Project and Atomic Rockets since about 2005 I think. Just now have I connected the orion Project with my primary source of all things Spacecraft, Nyrath the Nearly Wise! Now I need to use this mod!

Thank you for your kind words!

When I started playing KSP, I decided it wasn't atomic rockety enough. So I wrote a mod with one of the most atomic of all rockets.

[SSSPutnik]

Nyrath can you look at the Oberth thread in Gameplay Questions and comment?

Be appreciated.

PS, anyone here read Footfall? Good Orion craft in that one.

Edited February 27, 2014 by SSSPutnik