Most ridiculous government funded space ideas.

[Themohawkninja]

I want to see what people think is the most ridiculous concept for a space ship/space station/space-based propulsion system that has ever gotten government backing (or large private firms like SpaceX). I'm not just talking about NASA, or the ESA, but every space program in the world!

I put my vote on Project Orion.

[MBobrik]

don't get the point. what is ridiculous about it ? it got both five digit ISP grotesquely high thrust, and can be built with 1950's technology... what's your problem with it ?

[NASAFanboy]

I want to see what people think is the most ridiculous concept for a space ship/space station/space-based propulsion system that has ever gotten government backing (or large private firms like SpaceX). I'm not just talking about NASA, or the ESA, but every space program in the world!

I put my vote on Project Orion.

This is not ridiculous. This is our best bet for interstellar travel with current technology (If we are willing to endure a two-trillion dollar price tag, but still...), and is extremely effective and getting things in space around the solar system fast (In 2100, we will use this to transport livers in cryostorage to Mars, courtesy of hundreds of organ donors on Earth).

[Faark]

I put my vote on Saturn V, since no other rocket yet could transport that much & large stuff into space.

[czokletmuss]

I guess you never heard about Project Horizon then.

Military base on Moon? Checked.

Tactical nukes on Moon? Checked.

Claymore mines to puncture the spacesuit of attacking Soviet (?) troops? Checked.

Really, USA have the weirdest/worst ideas ever from time to time.

[Skyler4856]

I read an article a few months ago about a guy trying to build a space cannon

[Themohawkninja]

don't get the point. what is ridiculous about it ? it got both five digit ISP grotesquely high thrust, and can be built with 1950's technology... what's your problem with it ?

For one thing, it would need hundreds, if not over a thousand nukes. For another thing, unless you want to vaporize part of your country, you can't launch it into space with the nukes, and lastly they wanted to use the nuclear bombs to safely land men on Mars.

[Themohawkninja]

I guess you never heard about Project Horizon then.

Military base on Moon? Checked.

Tactical nukes on Moon? Checked.

Claymore mines to puncture the spacesuit of attacking Soviet (?) troops? Checked.

Really, USA have the weirdest/worst ideas ever from time to time.

We actually gave serious thought to a Moon base back then? Cool!

[Extemporary]

I guess you never heard about Project Horizon then.

Plans called for 147 early Saturn A-class rocket launches

I suppose you might be able to call that ridiculous.

[NASAFanboy]

For one thing, it would need hundreds, if not over a thousand nukes. For another thing, unless you want to vaporize part of your country, you can't launch it into space with the nukes, and lastly they wanted to use the nuclear bombs to safely land men on Mars.

Unlike public opinions, dropping nuke's don't blow them up. You have to undergo a chain-reaction system of events that have failsafes built in, and if the public was REALLY that worried, we could've launched the nuke casings into space, then launched the cores on another rocket. Then to the astronauts up there, it's open casing,throw in core, secure casing, repeat for a couple hundred times. To get to Mars would probably need 250 nukes. For around a six-month long round-trip. Seems like a good deal to me.

As for me?

Project Longshot.

Gigantic interstellar probe that was supposed to be assembled at the hangar onboard Space Station Freedom (That later became Space Station Fred, and later on, the ISS. So, yes, the plan does somewhat exist today, minus the other 90% of it.).

Just some details...

✆Giant communications laser

✆Onboard independent fission reactor

✆Orion Drive with fusion bombs this time (Woah, woah)

✆100 year long journey

[DerekL1963]

don't get the point. what is ridiculous about it ? it got both five digit ISP grotesquely high thrust, and can be built with 1950's technology... what's your problem with it ?

There's two problems with it. The first is is that it's main propulsion system was vaporware - it depended on 'clean' high yield fusion devices, which never materialized. The second is that precisely none of it's hardware was ever tested beyond the crudest laboratory proof-of-concept level. There are no *obvious* showstoppers in the engineering, but there's no evidence it could actually be built with 1950's technology either. They simply never got far enough along to find out.

[Simon Ross]

I want to see what people think is the most ridiculous concept for a space ship/space station/space-based propulsion system that has ever gotten government backing (or large private firms like SpaceX). I'm not just talking about NASA, or the ESA, but every space program in the world!

I put my vote on Project Orion.

I think you have to view Orion in terms of the political climate during which it was proposed. Remember, this was an era when a LOT of nuclear tests were done above ground under what we would consider these days, very poorly controlled conditions. In reality, Orion used very small nuclear devices that were calculated to add about as much radiation to the environment each launch as a single full scale above ground test would.

While we are never going to see Orion used for a surface launch, it still remains the only practical interstellar drive our technology is actually capable of building. Does make you think, if we had developed Orion rather then blowing up atolls, we could already be heading for the stars with unmanned probes with no more background radiation then we have now !

Edited December 17, 2013 by Simon Ross

[rdfox]

There's two problems with it. The first is is that it's main propulsion system was vaporware - it depended on 'clean' high yield fusion devices, which never materialized. The second is that precisely none of it's hardware was ever tested beyond the crudest laboratory proof-of-concept level. There are no *obvious* showstoppers in the engineering, but there's no evidence it could actually be built with 1950's technology either. They simply never got far enough along to find out.

Actually, technically, the "clean" high-yield fusion device *did* materialize for a test. The infamous 57-megaton "Tsar Bomba" was actually the cleanest nuclear weapon ever built (in its tested configuration), with a fusion fraction of about 98%, meaning that "only" about one megaton of the total yield was due to fission and generated fallout. (It was tested with an inert lead tamper/neutron reflector to reduce the yield by 50% from the originally designed ~100MT yield--because it was realized that at full yield, it would be impossible for the bomber crew that delivered it to escape the fireball, much less the blast radius, before initiation. Had it been tested with the depleted uranium tamper, it would have undergone the "fast fission" tertiary stage that would have doubled the yield, but generated immense amounts of fallout.) Granted, this wasn't a practical design for this sort of application, due to the need for a fission trigger, but had Orion been approved, research into laser-ignition fusion devices would have been put on the front burner and, most likely, would have borne fruit within ten years. (Laser-ignition fusion has LONG been deliberately underfunded by all the nuclear states simply because successful development of it for any application would let a nasty genie out of the bottle--it'd make it possible for rogue states to develop thermonuclear fusion "hydrogen" weapons without having to go through the difficult, expensive, and relatively easily-blocked process of developing fission "atomic" weapons to act as the trigger to initiate fusion. Now that rogue states are starting to get fission weapons, we've finally gotten serious about developing laser-ignition fusion for non-weapons applications.)

Given that early-1950s technology was able to engineer materials and structures that were capable, in actual nuclear tests, of surviving direct contact exposure to a fusion device's fireball (IIRC, they were graphite-coated steel spheres), I'm certain that with a Manhattan Project/Apollo-level national effort, the technological stumbling blocks to Orion could have been overcome--remember, there was a huge amount of technology *and materials* required for Apollo that didn't exist when Kennedy proposed it in 1962, yet we made it to the Moon in just seven years.

The big reason for Orion never being pursued is the 1963 Limited Test-Ban Treaty between the US and the Soviet Union, which prohibited nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in space. This meant that Orion was now a non-starter, because it could never be test-flown without abrogating the treaty, and the whole plan was dropped. If not for that, combined with the cost of the Apollo program (which was going to be competing for funds with it), Orion might well have been reality by the mid-70s. After all, it's one of the few spacecraft designs where one of the hardest problems in the design (control of total vehicle mass) isn't an issue; Orion was one where things actually got *easier* as the vehicle got heavier. Compare that to the space program we have, where many millions of dollars are spent to shave every gram they can off of every part of the vehicle, due to the limitations of chemical rocketry...

[jwenting]

We actually gave serious thought to a Moon base back then? Cool!

yes, and that gave rise eventually to the Space Shuttle. Idea was to have a series of stations around the earth serviced by those in a passenger configuration, then a small fleet of vessels to bring people from there to the moon base and back, all reusable.

Stuff of SciFi? Sure. But people believed in something at the time, and were not so risk averse that they're afraid to leave their padded cells for fear of stubbing a toe on the treshold.

And the weapons were deemed necessary as the Soviets had similar plans, and a moonbase would be the ultimate high ground from which to launch a nuclear attack, so it was thought to be a prime target that would need defending and defending seriously.

[TheSaint]

Project Orion was a classic example of a scheme that was technically brilliant, but politically untenable. If the political winds shift, it may yet be revisited.

However, for craziest government program, I have to nominate MOOSE. I guess it would be better than dying of asphyxiation in orbit, but you would still have to be highly motivated to use it. But, on the other hand, it would be an adrenaline junkie's dream ticket.

[MBobrik]

There's two problems with it. The first is is that it's main propulsion system was vaporware - it depended on 'clean' high yield fusion devices, which never materialized.

First it does not depend on clean fusion nukes, it will fly exactly as well with plain old dirty nukes. Second, any nuke can be made cleaner. just remove the last fission stage from the conventional fission-fusion-fission design and make up by making the fusion stage bigger. you won't get the most yield per $ spent from it, but it will be a lot cleaner. and, as mentioned above, it was already tested in a quite spectacular manner.

.

The second is that precisely none of it's hardware was ever tested beyond the crudest laboratory proof-of-concept level.

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this is not very surprising given testing it has been made illegal. But each part of the design has either been tested separately (the nukes), or is rather unremarkable from technological point of view( pusher plate, shock absorbers, etc )

[DerekL1963]

First it does not depend on clean fusion nukes, it will fly exactly as well with plain old dirty nukes. Second, any nuke can be made cleaner. just remove the last fission stage from the conventional fission-fusion-fission design and make up by making the fusion stage bigger. you won't get the most yield per $ spent from it, but it will be a lot cleaner. and, as mentioned above, it was already tested in a quite spectacular manner.

For all intents and purposes, yes it did depend on clean fusion nukes - because they provide the best bang and best radiation spectrum and least crew exposure for the weight and buck. There's a reason why they were specified by the original designers. (And no, you can't "just make the fusion stage bigger" - enlarge the fusion stage without enlarging the primary and you can actually *reduce* the yield as the primary now cannot efficiently compress the fusion secondary. Nuclear weapons are very tightly coupled designs, you can't just change one term of the equation.

And yes, Tsar Bomba was tested - but never weaponized or deployed. Nor did the US ever test a weapon with a sufficiently high fusion fraction.

But each part of the design has either been tested separately (the nukes), or is rather unremarkable from technological point of view( pusher plate, shock absorbers, etc )

The problem is, those things you call "unremarkable" are anything but - they're quite remarkable due to their size and the stresses they'd undergo in flight.

remember, there was a huge amount of technology *and materials* required for Apollo that didn't exist when Kennedy proposed it in 1962, yet we made it to the Moon in just seven years.

That's propaganda version of history. But it's almost completely wrong. There was a huge amount of precursor work already accomplished, which is why Kennedy chose Apollo in the first place.

[KvickFlygarn87]

I read an article a few months ago about a guy trying to build a space cannon

That wasn't an article nor government funded; it was a Jules Verne book...

Edited December 18, 2013 by KvickFlygarn87

[jwenting]

That wasn't an article nor government funded; it was a Jules Verne book...

much better read than any government paper... And more realistic than most of them...

[SargeRho]

He's probably referring to project HARP, and subsequently, Super-HARP. Such a cannon was built and tested, and there were plans to extend it to a point where it could actually fire into orbit.

[rdfox]

For all intents and purposes, yes it did depend on clean fusion nukes - because they provide the best bang and best radiation spectrum and least crew exposure for the weight and buck. There's a reason why they were specified by the original designers. (And no, you can't "just make the fusion stage bigger" - enlarge the fusion stage without enlarging the primary and you can actually *reduce* the yield as the primary now cannot efficiently compress the fusion secondary. Nuclear weapons are very tightly coupled designs, you can't just change one term of the equation.

You CAN, however, do what Sakharov did with the Tsar Bomba and add additional secondary stages (that effectively become tertiary, quaternary, etc., stages) to boost the yield, using the same radiation implosion technique to actually use the *secondary* to compress the fusion tertiary, the tertiary to compress the quaternary, and so on. Apparently, this is actually *easier* than using the fission primary to compress the secondary, but anything more detailed than what I've mentioned isn't mentioned in any open-source material I know of (and no, I have no access to anything that's not publicly available).

And yes, Tsar Bomba was tested - but never weaponized or deployed. Nor did the US ever test a weapon with a sufficiently high fusion fraction.

Actually, it WAS weaponized--Khruschev's requirements to Sakharov specifically stated that the weapon had to be delivered by a bomber rather than being an Ivy Mike-style immobile physics experiment. It just was never deployed operationally. And there was a simple reason for this--there was never any application for it. Tsar Bomba was too big, both physically and in terms of yield, to have any practical application. Even at the reduced yield "clean" design, there were only three targets in the US that were large and sprawling enough to warrant it--New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. It might have also been useful for digging the Cheyenne Mountain Complex and Mount Weather out, but by the time those were operational and known to Soviet targeteers, ICBM accuracy had improved to the point where they could collapse them with a 20MT "city-destroyer" warhead like was on some mods of the SS-18. Nothing else was big enough or hardened enough to warrant the Tsar Bomba's yield, either "clean" or "dirty". On top of that, the weapon--which, remember, was deliberately designed to be as physically small as possible, due to the weaponization requirement--was so physically large that even the Soviets' largest bomber, the Tu-95, required modification to carry it: the bomb bay doors had to be removed, and part of the fuselage had to be cut away to clear the bomb, and even then, it could only carry the bomb semi-submerged, with part of the bottom of it sticking out of the belly of the aircraft. The added drag and weight meant that a mission carrying a Tsar Bomba to the US would have been a one-way mission ending in either a bailout, a ditching, or MAYBE a landing in Cuba; they also would have rendered the aircraft exceedingly vulnerable to interception by USAF and RCAF interceptors, since it slowed it down and reduced the maneuverability. (Not to mention that a "dirty" version would have literally been a suicide mission for the bomber crew, since they'd have been caught in the fireball.)

Tsar Bomba *could* have been deployed, if there had been any mission for it. However, like most of the Russian "tsar" projects, it was a purely politically-motivated thing that had no actual use beyond overcompensating for perceptions of having a small *****. It still worked, though, and had an amazing fusion fraction.

BTW, the biggest reason that the US never tested a weapon with a sufficiently high fusion fraction is that we were *also* dick-waving at the time, and big yield was considered more impressive than high fusion fraction. Therefore, when we were doing fusion weapon tests, we always used the "dirty" version that had the bigger yield. Ironically, most of our tests related to fusion weapons were done after Ivy Mike and Castle Bravo proved the basic design; the ones that weren't just saber-rattling were mostly tests of *only* the boosted-fission primaries for new fusion weapons, since we knew that the secondary would operate correctly if the primary had sufficient yield to get the radiation implosion going. (There was also the issue that the primary to a fusion weapon is a rather effective weapon in and of itself for smaller targets and/or with more accurate placement...)

The problem is, those things you call "unremarkable" are anything but - they're quite remarkable due to their size and the stresses they'd undergo in flight.

This is true, but scale is something relatively unremarkable to engineers--once you get it working small-scale, you can always scale it up and work out the bugs. It'd take a lot of work, but it's relatively simple work compared to, say, figuring out how to get the F-1 rocket engine to not explode seconds after it was ignited. (And even THAT was relatively simple compared to figuring out how to feed the damned thing...)

That's propaganda version of history. But it's almost completely wrong. There was a huge amount of precursor work already accomplished, which is why Kennedy chose Apollo in the first place.

Yes, there was a lot of precursor work done. There was still a huge amount of technology and materials involved that were pure unobtanium in 1962. However, the massive infusion of cubic dollars that the program put into R&D towards those meant that all of them were (relatively) common within five years--at least unremarkable enough that nobody had a problem specifying them, even if they were still so expensive that they were sold by the carat...

[jwenting]

yes, and the highest fusion ratio US test was a technical failure. It had a yield far higher than predicted. While pleased, it was a failure in that it did not confirm the expectations of what it should have done...

[Lohan2008]

OMG ! Super HARP, the USA were developing a laaaarrrrrggge gun to lunch projectiles to space ?? WTF ?

Hell, that is scary reading about firing solution for the S-HARP using 2 gas champers to get necessary pressure for launch.

Edited December 19, 2013 by Lohan2008

[KvickFlygarn87]

much better read than any government paper... And more realistic than most of them...

LOL! You just made my day ^^

[crazyewok]

For one thing, it would need hundreds, if not over a thousand nukes. For another thing, unless you want to vaporize part of your country, you can't launch it into space with the nukes, and lastly they wanted to use the nuclear bombs to safely land men on Mars.

You havent read much on it have you?

You do realise they came up with some pretty good and sound ideas to eliminate the saftey problems? Even the fallout by end they reduced to near nothing hense why most the material still classified asthere research could be used to make small and clean nukes.

Dont take the ignorant OMGZ s nukes!1!!1 stance, actually do some research and it was a pretty sound and safe idea. No more crazy than strap yourself to 100+ of unstabe and explosive chemicals and hopeing for the best.