OrionSagan Admin
Posts : 3 Join date : 2013-03-25 Age : 40 Location : San Diego, CA
| Subject: Project Orion D-He3 refit Mon Mar 25, 2013 6:47 pm | |
| This thread is about the very namesake topic of this forum, the possible rebirth of Project Orion via massive revamp and propulsion system change. Project Orion was first started in 1958 by General Atomic and was originally intended to be powered by a series of nuclear weapons explosion behind a pusher plate. Orion was kept top secret at the time because of it using nuclear bombs as propulsion and was under development at Point Loma in San Diego, CA until after the signing of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which prohibits nuclear weapons explosions in space. Orion was shut down in 1965 before ever producing an actual spacecraft from the project. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, researchers started to ban the bomb for studies of nuclear pulse propulsion. A 1970s study of an interstellar probe flyby mission to Barnard's Star by the British Interplanetary Society pioneered the concept of using deuterium and helium3 as propellant for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) pulse propulsion. And it is from Daedalus that I get the newer, safer, and more efficient propulsion system for Project Orion to be reborn. There was also talk of a Mini-Mag Orion which too is more efficient than the earlier model. I call my Orion Starship the D-He3 Orion or Orion II which is pictured on the top of this forum on every page. | |
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