Early Notes in Favour of Orbit Construction

I don't think the issue of fallout is the only reason to avoid the ground launch option. Atmospheric pressure, atmospheric gases and gravity itself would all distort the output of an explosion. Plus I think the frequency of explosions is too great. Indeed I tend to think that "one a day" would propel a starship and not the thousands an hour that is commonly thought of. I know it as a concept bears the resemblance to a petrol engine with thousands of mini petrol explosions per hour in the engine, but that does not mean we should envision such a high number to create a "smoothness". Indeed until a test is done in space the actual nature of acceleration is an unknown. When I say "one a day" I believe that the acceleration may initially rise to say 2G and then steadily decrease to 0.5G over 24 hours. Of course without there being any resistance in the space vacuum the G should not fall at all, but then I would say that is where relativity may have an effect. One strange concept of the perfect non-gravity vacuum is that no energy is lost when you accelerate an object until you decelerate it (stop it). If you kick a tin can in such a perfect vacuum it will get faster and faster until the end of the universe is met. There is no energy lost at any point is the travel until "bam" the moment you have to expend energy to stop that tin can.

My concept of achievability is based strongly upon the idea of social and economic development paths. That is to say Marxist (left) or Weber (right). Since the invention of gunpowder in the 10th century thereabouts we have spent a millennium trying to contain it. Success in space at physical containment of this new type of explosion would thus only be an incremental step forward upon this long established path and not a radical departure. A pusher plate is a radical departure and turns the common sense of 1000 years on its head. Indeed over this millennium of development from musket to rapid fire armaments we have learnt a great deal. I kind of wince when I see these dedicated Orion Project scientists go to the coca-cola company for advice on their vending machines. Far more realistic would be using the knowledge base of the artillery gun manufacturers. It could quite possibly be that each explosion would need to be housed within a cartridge as with a modern rifle and ejected from the breech after the explosion. Whatever would be best, it is those engineers that over 1000 years have developed the rifles and artillery guns that would know best how to manage the repeat explosions of such a magnitude without damaging (ablating) the interior surface of the cannon.

Indeed cannon are not a word I like because of the military connotations and I spent many weeks contemplating alternative names for the test tube to physically contain the explosion. I thought of "hollow tube with an end on it" but that sounded a bit daft and non-descriptive. It was then with some amusement when I came across Orion's specification of "pusher plate". That immediately gave me the alternative description to a cannon I had been looking for: "hollow tube with a pusher plate". Now that is what a cannon is!

I can fully understand why you say you are not in favour of talking about a starship. I believe the general public and politicians could only ever handle the talk of reaching a solar system planet. Certainly any talk of going faster than light has strong religious and hence theological undertones which for reasons my writing explains is as powerful as the sentiments of the flat earth conviction before 1492. Without wishing to repeat my various theories on why this common sense "Aztec" belief in the speed of a sunbeam being akin to God is wrong, I would say that a project could be funded with the provision that pilots would be free to conduct speed trials. Once they had the ships they could set about to provide empirical evidence on theoretical energy losses when approaching light speed. The public would never accept any such positive affirmation the light speed barrier could be broken until it eventually actually was. Unfortunately the vast funds required to build such ships might be very slow forthcoming without business being offered the opportunity to gamble their money on reaching the stars. A sort of catch22 that is backed solidly by the genius Einstein. However if one day we are all sitting around in the rubble after a nuclear Armageddon thinking now who exactly put us into this situation, the answer might reasonably be Einstein. Of course Einstein's pivotal role in developing the nuclear weapon is rather cynically ignored by the main source of information on all things atomic: the USA. Fundamentally I do not think an inventor should hold a stranglehold copyright on how his invention is used and I think it is wise to remember Einstein died even before NASA was founded so perhaps he can be forgiven a certain lack of vision.

Early Notes in Favour of Orbit Construction continued

I am quite happy if you know any channels to debate my concepts based around the proposed theoretical adjustments to the Orion Project. I have added the ground launch option as a possibility to be considered if initial testing in space could not contain the explosion. This would get round the problem of having to construct the cannon in several pieces in space because of the limits of chemical payload rockets. Construction in pieces like the early Chinese experiments in the 10th to 14th centuries was fraught with danger of the device splitting apart at the seams. However as to your rapidity of space port construction to support starships, I think you have to remember that the incredible amount of energy being released would once successfully contained as a propulsion unit, herald a new era of "enormous payload pull". That is to say the very engines we are seeking to build would be able to pull into space around 10,000 tonnes a go at minimum. If your objection is the length of the cables needed to reach earth from space I would only say that British advances in high altitude ballooning promises to provide temporary platforms that could take up the slack of the cables while the cannon in space prepares to fire and drag into space the specified payloads. Anyway debating "how long is a piece of string" is not helpful when the whole concept of using this energy source is that it is ideal in space and non-contaminating. Dragging stuff into space in large quantities through the use of realistically massive energy releases in space are the obvious long term way of space development and not the fossil fuel burning rockets we are currently restricted to when putting anything in space.

All in all I am not attached to the Orion Project since I set out in 1997 to develop a way to the stars using my existing knowledge base of economics, social and economic history and physics. Reaching the stars as an "economist" is the right and proper thing to do as it expands limited resources available to us. That goes to the heart of what economics is about. I did not attempt to glean anybody else's concepts, partially because I was reluctant to use nuclear related keywords on the Internet in case of security issues. I was only once I had concluded my own project concept successfully in 2000 that I began to look around for someone to present it to. I then found Orion and was delighted that my own idea was not mad and the basic principle of powering a space-craft off the ricochet of an atomic explosion had been seriously contemplated by atomic scientists. However I am compelled to make my contribution to the debate only by sticking to my original design plans. The whole tragedy of Orion is that without proper training and education in the schools, even top scientists are told fibs and untruths about core facts and issues in nuclear physics. Of course this is done with the good intentions of reducing the risks of the proliferation of atomic secrets, but it also greatly limits the number of people who can argue and debate the facts objectively. The tendency is thus for those who feel strongly in favour of the atomic energy potential to become nostalgic and defensive of the Orion project. I hope my own theoretical writing can contribute to revisions and advances.