Most ridiculous government funded space ideas.

[crazyewok]

Your link about an NTR. Nothing to do with Orion.

But neither NERVA or the RD-0410 involved atmospheric explosions or 50-mile exclusion zones. That's just stupid.

{{Mod cut}}

My point was that reserach is at least being done in a alternative !

Yeah maybe Orion would have worked? Maybe it would not have? Maybe it could have been made safer? Maybe not? Fact is research was canned before we found out. And most people seen to be OMG!!! Nuclear! Its all bad! Rember the fuss over the cassini probe? Fact is Nuclear engines in any form seem to get axed, as you NASA HAD plans to develop one, empthisis on HAD. No the NTR is not Orion BUT it does stem from the idea that Nuclear power can be used for Space travel. Its a start, its a step in the right direction. If its works and is effecetive maybe we can try something else? Its getting over the Nuclear taboo and ignorance. It beats playing with silly chem rockets. Thats the point, no its not Orion but its a step in the right direction.

As for A Orion launch area needed to be a restricted area? So what? Would it affect you? No cause they arent going to launch it next to your house the plan would be out at sea or the middle of a desert somewere (And there are plenty of Goverment owned sites in Nevada and New Mexico that are restricted zones) so unless you like standing next to a launching spaceship it wont hurt you will it? Hell even Chem rockets have restricted areas round them.

Edited December 23, 2013 by sjwt

[peadar1987]

IIRC, they now make a device that mechanically safes nuclear weapons. Maybe that could be used on each warhead.

It's not really the completed warheads that are the problem, it's the weapons-grade material from the warheads that is. Even if you don't have the firing codes for the devices themselves, any moron with a little engineering knowhow* can throw together an inefficient gun-type fission design.

*Okay, maybe not anyone, but 95% of the complexity of building a nuclear weapon is in amassing enough fissile material for the warhead. If some landed in the lap of some unscrupulous government, they'd be capable of putting together a crude nuclear weapon within weeks.

[Jacob01]

Not sure if it was government funded, but the USA's idea to blow up the moon in 1959 was pretty crazy!

[crazyewok]

Not sure if it was government funded, but the USA's idea to blow up the moon in 1959 was pretty crazy!

Yup now that WAS a crazy idea!

[WestAir]

Peadar1987,

I'm actually surprised the only Nuclear Attack was in WWII. There have been 10 events in recent memory where either NORAD or the Russians have been in a position to launch. In fact, in '83 some of the Soviet early warning systems showed five US Nukes inbound to a Soviet Bunker. Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov actually waited it out to see if any nuclear blasts were reported before ordering a retaliatory launch. Nothing happened, and a computer system malfunction was later found to be the culprit. [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident ]

Another incident was is 1995 when a Norwegian scientific rocket launch was mistaken for a US Nuclear Trident Missile. Russian President Boris Yeltsin was brought the Nuclear Doomsday Briefcase and asked if he would retaliate with Full-Scale Nuclear War. This was the first (and only) time the Russian president ever opened the Nuclear Doomsday Briefcase. Instead of launching though, President Yeltsin waited until they could identify the missile. Had the President simply said "launch", the world as we know it would have ended in '95. [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident ]

An even MORE frightening event was on June 3rd, 1980 when a NORAD staffer received an imminent alert of over 220 incoming nuclear missiles on his computer screen. Alarms sounded everywhere as the Air Force collectively freaked out all across America. Bombers carrying nuclear bombs began taking off throughout the country. Someone woke up the National Security Adviser and told him that we were all going to die. Fortunately someone asked around and figured out that the 220 nuclear missiles weren't showing up on any other radars but one, and they figured out the computer chip in the staffers computer had malfunctioned and was showing 2's where it should be showing 0's. The computer chip that almost started WWIII cost only $0.46 cents. [source: http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/chapters/borning.html ]

Just saying, it's surprising we haven't all been vaporized by now. The Government can barely handle a nuclear arsenal ; how can it handle a Space Administration?

[Themohawkninja]

Peadar1987,

The Government can barely handle a nuclear arsenal...

65k+ nukes and we're still here. I'd say that it speaks volumes for the governments ability to handle a nuclear arsenal.

[Kryten]

Peadar1987,]Just saying, it's surprising we haven't all been vaporized by now. The Government can barely handle a nuclear arsenal ; how can it handle a Space Administration?

Two of your examples are from people with no actual power to do anything except notify higher ups that they see something on the screen (doctrine for both USSR and US at the time was not to launch until they'd had confirmed detonations of nuclear devices), and as the third, well, to quote the article itself 'citation needed'.

[peadar1987]

Peadar1987,

I'm actually surprised the only Nuclear Attack was in WWII. There have been 10 events in recent memory where either NORAD or the Russians have been in a position to launch. In fact, in '83 some of the Soviet early warning systems showed five US Nukes inbound to a Soviet Bunker. Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov actually waited it out to see if any nuclear blasts were reported before ordering a retaliatory launch. Nothing happened, and a computer system malfunction was later found to be the culprit. [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident ]

Another incident was is 1995 when a Norwegian scientific rocket launch was mistaken for a US Nuclear Trident Missile. Russian President Boris Yeltsin was brought the Nuclear Doomsday Briefcase and asked if he would retaliate with Full-Scale Nuclear War. This was the first (and only) time the Russian president ever opened the Nuclear Doomsday Briefcase. Instead of launching though, President Yeltsin waited until they could identify the missile. Had the President simply said "launch", the world as we know it would have ended in '95. [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident ]

An even MORE frightening event was on June 3rd, 1980 when a NORAD staffer received an imminent alert of over 220 incoming nuclear missiles on his computer screen. Alarms sounded everywhere as the Air Force collectively freaked out all across America. Bombers carrying nuclear bombs began taking off throughout the country. Someone woke up the National Security Adviser and told him that we were all going to die. Fortunately someone asked around and figured out that the 220 nuclear missiles weren't showing up on any other radars but one, and they figured out the computer chip in the staffers computer had malfunctioned and was showing 2's where it should be showing 0's. The computer chip that almost started WWIII cost only $0.46 cents. [source: http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/chapters/borning.html ]

Just saying, it's surprising we haven't all been vaporized by now. The Government can barely handle a nuclear arsenal ; how can it handle a Space Administration?

I'd heard about them before. I was very surprised about the Norwegian one, strange to think that the only time the nuclear football has been opened wasn't during Cuba, or Korea, or Vietnam, but in 1995.

[Kryten]

I was very surprised about the Norwegian one, strange to think that the only time the nuclear football has been opened wasn't during Cuba, or Korea, or Vietnam, but in 1995.

...according to a wikipedia article entirely sourced from a single item in a Norwegian tabloid. Don't believe everything you come across on the internet.

[The Jedi Master]

Not sure if it was government funded, but the USA's idea to blow up the moon in 1959 was pretty crazy!

Source and clarification as to WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY DO THAT?

Anyway, I think the award goes to Orion. The nuke rocket. I think that's already been mentioned, though.

[Tiberion]

Source and clarification as to WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY DO THAT?

We've had this discussion in the last couple of days (not sure which thread)

It was a study by the Air Force and some consultants about performing ONE detonation on the Moon. Not "blowing it up"

It was a response to Sputnik, which really scared "the west" and they wanted something equally as flashy to scare the Soviets in return. Keep in mind this was before manned spaceflight and we weren't really capable of doing it if it had been greenlit.

Thankfully the smart people involved (like Carl Sagan) convinced them it was dumb and we instead went down the path of exploring it for science.

But yeah, pretty crazy and at least a little funded as a study, so it counts.

[crazyewok]

Anyway, I think the award goes to Orion. The nuke rocket. I think that's already been mentioned, though.

Still waiting for someone to tell me why it would not work? Far as Im aware it was viable right up until the test ban treaty cancelled it. It just had some saftey issue with the fallout (which would be a minor dent compared to what has been done) which very possibly could have been ironed out. Plus its hardly unanimous.

[WestAir]

Two of your examples are from people with no actual power to do anything except notify higher ups that they see something on the screen (doctrine for both USSR and US at the time was not to launch until they'd had confirmed detonations of nuclear devices), and as the third, well, to quote the article itself 'citation needed'.

The 3rd one I had a very difficult time finding a citation for.

That said, the lack of empirical evidence doesn't necessarily affect my overall statement, due to the vast amount of unmentioned empirical evidence supporting it. Most people have heard about the B2 Bomber that crashed in Europe with nukes aboard, or the accidental dropping of the atom bomb in South Carolina that almost annihilated a small town, or the bomb that's still at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay. I could go on all day about accidental bomb handling but the three I picked were just the most interesting from a strategic standpoint, and I'm sure you've heard about many more incidents I haven't.

I only mentioned a correlation between missiles and bombs and space agency rockets to make Peadar1987's statements relevant to the topic at hand. Maybe that wasn't a good idea.

[rdfox]

For the record, I could *probably* build a gun-type device that'd fizzle with appreciable nuclear yield, given enough fissile material, but apparently, the design of the pit for a gun-type weapon is a lot more difficult than most people believe.

In any event, there are two methods of mechanically "safing" a nuke via the Permissive Action Link system. The first is to have the PAL send out a pulse of electricity that burns out the firing circuitry, disabling the weapon without disassembly and replacement of the firing circuits. (That said, just about any competent electrical engineer could build a replacement for the firing circuits with parts only slightly harder to get than going down to Radio Shack.) The second is actually the older method, and probably the more effective at making sure that the weapon can't be used in any form without permission, but has been abandoned due to certain... issues that come with it.

That's to set off the high explosive trigger in "one-point safe" mode, where instead of all the explosive lenses firing at once to create an implosion, you have one of them fire, which then sets off the others in a cascade reaction that generates unbalanced forces on the core as it propagates, instead pulverizing the nuclear material and spreading it quite nicely (500 pounds of C4 will spread dust a *long* way). You really can't collect the resultant plutonium dust to reassemble into a physics package, but there's the little issue of contaminating the area rather thoroughly. (This is why USAF standard policy for bombers with live nukes on board was, in an emergency, to let the bomber crash with the weapons still on board--it was felt that if the shock or post-crash fire set off the triggers, it'd be in one-point-safe mode, and in that case, the aircraft structure would help reduce contamination by absorbing a significant percentage of the blast energy so the core wouldn't be spread as widely.)

That said... it was generally agreed by 1960 that if Orion ever flew, it would be in the form of a launched-from-orbit spacecraft rather than launching from the surface, specifically to make sure that A) fallout on Earth would be all but nonexistent, and 2) if it failed, you wouldn't have the ship crash someplace where someone might salvage nukes from it.

[Mulkari]

Still waiting for someone to tell me why it would not work? Far as Im aware it was viable right up until the test ban treaty cancelled it. It just had some saftey issue with the fallout (which would be a minor dent compared to what has been done) which very possibly could have been ironed out. Plus its hardly unanimous.

I'm not sure if it was mentioned somewhere, but how the Orion rocket would be steered during powered flight especially in case of ground launch where atmospheric turbulence would try to push it off course? Chemical rockets are steered by moving an engine nozzle. I doubt it would be possible to do the same to a Orion blast shield. Maybe some small chemical rocket engines also would be included to provide attitude and roll control.

[jwenting]

Orion would not need steering, gravity turns are for wuzzies, not for nuclear powered giants that can just go straight up to where ever they want to go

[Camacha]

65k+ nukes and we're still here. I'd say that it speaks volumes for the governments ability to handle a nuclear arsenal.

By that reasoning, a drunkard that walks out into traffic and manages to just get missed by three trucks is sensible and able to handle the situation. We have been lucky.

I'm not sure if it was mentioned somewhere, but how the Orion rocket would be steered during powered flight especially in case of ground launch where atmospheric turbulence would try to push it off course? Chemical rockets are steered by moving an engine nozzle. I doubt it would be possible to do the same to a Orion blast shield. Maybe some small chemical rocket engines also would be included to provide attitude and roll control.

I think it would, as the mere psysics of turning the shield would mean the thrust vector gets broken up into a forwards and sideways vector. That is pretty fundamental.

[jwenting]

the more nukes the better. If you have only a few, and your opponent has only a few, someone's going to think "the risk is small enough, let's set them off".

If there's so many you'll end up obliterated if you set one off, you're going to think twice about it.

That's what kept the peace, more or less, despite human nature being all about killing each other, for the last 70 years almost.

[Tiberion]

Orion would not need steering, gravity turns are for wuzzies, not for nuclear powered giants that can just go straight up to where ever they want to go

I wish I could get people in this thread to draw a picture of how they think Orion works without looking on the Internet for references.

[Camacha]

the more nukes the better. If you have only a few, and your opponent has only a few, someone's going to think "the risk is small enough, let's set them off".

If there's so many you'll end up obliterated if you set one off, you're going to think twice about it.

Except that as with any high force equilibrium, things go bad quickly when they go bad. It is just a massively bad idea. The fact that we nearly evaporated most of humanity a couple of times proves that. That it did not happen has more to do with luck and individual reasoning than with common sense and good policies.

Edited December 25, 2013 by Camacha

[jwenting]

I wish I could get people in this thread to draw a picture of how they think Orion works without looking on the Internet for references.

I know the idea behind Orion quite well, thank you very much. Maybe you should draw some pictures of how you think a 10.000 ton spacecraft blasted straight up by nuclear weapons ejected from its base is going to be steered...

[ProjectXMark1]

I know the idea behind Orion quite well, thank you very much. Maybe you should draw some pictures of how you think a 10.000 ton spacecraft blasted straight up by nuclear weapons ejected from its base is going to be steered...

Is there a problem? All you need is an RCS thruster block far off from the centre of mass, it's what Mir used to steer and control it's orbit.

[Mulkari]

I think it would, as the mere psysics of turning the shield would mean the thrust vector gets broken up into a forwards and sideways vector. That is pretty fundamental.

Well, it could work that way if it is possible to engineer the shield that way without compromising durability. Although you would still need chemical engines for roll control. However since the ship would need RCS thrusters anyway it is not a big deal to add some a bit more powerful RCS for roll control.

Since full scale testing of propulsion system on the ground would not be possible assembly and testing of a prototype in space would be a must if a ground launch is seriously proposed. What happens if there is a dud nuke, what if for some reason blast vector is not properly in line with center of mass, how quickly it is possible to recover from spin and continue on course. How well the shock absorbers and blast shield stand up to hundreds of explosions.

All of that and a lot more would have to be known before a successful ground launch could be attempted. Launching without full knowledge of how the whole system behaves and possible failure modes almost certainly would mean N1 on steroids.

[Themohawkninja]

By that reasoning, a drunkard that walks out into traffic and manages to just get missed by three trucks is sensible and able to handle the situation. We have been lucky.

Bad analogy. The three trucks were independent of the drunk. America has control over much of the worlds' nukes, and is allied with the countries that own 99.9% of them.

It would be more like saying a person has control over 65k+ trucks and has yet to crash any of them into innocent civilians (except for two which were justified... however you justify crashing a truck into two people).

[Tiberion]

I know the idea behind Orion quite well, thank you very much. Maybe you should draw some pictures of how you think a 10.000 ton spacecraft blasted straight up by nuclear weapons ejected from its base is going to be steered...

Well if you know it so well, then you know it didn't just point at something and blast to it. This isn't Star Trek.

The thing was envisioned as a Mars lander. It HAD to turn around in order to slow down and enter Martian orbit and then steer itself as it comes in for a landing. (Yes, they wanted to land using the bombs too. And then set up a base and get people out and explore the site they just irradiated as they landed) So it would have had an RCS system of some sort/ That wouldn't be an issue for ships assembled in orbit, which is the only way a nuclear pulse would ever be used now anyway. A surface launch would rely on aerodynamics for stability, and given the mass of the ship it really would be limited to direct ascent from the surface - no gravity turns, and it would likely end up in a highly eccentric orbit if it used its RCS to orient itself for circularization 'pulses'

Its really unclear how many of these issues were tackled by the Orion team - it seems that most of the research and testing was entirely related to the propulsion system and the design of a ship that could withstand the nukes. This was before a lot of the 'problems' of space travel had been tackled by NASA and the Russians during the space race. So really, Orion as it existed in the 50s and 60s was a theory (with a lot of math and some small scale demonstrators) on how the nuclear propulsion could be used rather than a fully-designed spacecraft. That particular aspect of Orion could be (and has been) used in further studies and designs. But there is still going to be the issue of nuclear proliferation.

Anyway, I found this BBC documentary on Youtube earlier, its pretty cool if you want to learn a little more behind the thinking of the guys behind the project. The George Dyson who wrote the book we were discussing earlier is actually the son of of the Freeman Dyson, who was one of the leaders of the project along with Ted Everett. Both were physicists, and Everett was a bomb designer at Los Alamos. I think the thing that surprised me the most is that Freeman actually served on the board that wrote the nuclear test ban treaty, and that he knew it would end his project. But he did it anyway. Everett also became a nuclear disarmament supporter as well.

If you have an hour, give it a watch, its pretty cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCszu4zaqr0