Your History Lesson
The fundamental problem, during this time following the end of the cold war, is that we do not relate the atomic age with the trans-stellar age. The age of flight to neighbouring solar systems is regarded as ridiculous, yet the capability to destroy the earth more than once is taken as, and I assume is, a fact. This is a ridiculous position for human history to be in, as technological evolution must be understood as having a positive good. The good must outweigh the bad in the long term; for at least evolution not to be regressive. Having abandoned the logic of MAD, we are being left in the near catch22 of trying to plan military conflicts to avoid partial, however small, nuclear escalation.
Yet there is very little in the history of mankind, except during the era of MAD, that says in the long term "all serious military conflicts can be avoided indefinitely". Hence the legacy of the arms race of the cold war is now gradually undermining the first world because the unthinkable may more likely to occur on a limited basis without MAD. Whether Iraq will open this door is guesswork, the consequence of alliances never an absolute variable. However what is evolving is a skewering of first world foreign policy around the very reasonable desire to escape a post-MAD nuclear conflict, by definition limited. Of course history does indicate very strongly that technological innovation is the key to revealing the preferred future out of a number of choices. Why then do we continue to adopt as a water-tight principle that a trans-stellar escape, spilling into the virgin resources of neighbouring solar systems, is impossible because of a light barrier?
The answer is the conflict between Einstein's law and his theory, still firmly rooted in the developments of world war 2. Even if for a moment you did accept that the unique and only method to break the light barrier is via nuclear fission, unfortunately Einstein, in pioneering the reaction, is very well known as saying the light barrier cannot be broken. Hence maybe the only peaceful and productive use of the atomic explosion, trans-stellar travel, is on hold indefinitely. Einstein in guiding the development of the reaction is also apparently theorizing rigidly it wouldn't serve the purpose of such travel. Under normal conditions of optimism we would regard travelling faster than light as a desirable process on the path to the economic exploitation of our universe. However since this path is only achievable through application of the reaction, the reaction's inventor is now famous for a theory on light speed that effectively makes null and void this development path. Hence we are still standing potentially to reap the catastrophic consequences of a conflict with such weapons without ever have seriously considered the possible technological evolution in our historical position.
We probably may never leave MAD behind until we begin to understand and accept such stocks as giving us a trans-stellar capability. Were this understood, squandering any of this capability on conflict would be unacceptable. Successful application and development will probably remain purely within reach of the American economy for the vast foreseeable future as it would certainly run into thousands of billions of dollars and require enormous expansion of existing space facilities. The theoretical outline of this trans-stellar capability is given on www.s-c-i-f-i.co.uk Since grounds to speculate on the sensitive subject of such travel is is fundamentally a discredit, it is "domained" purely as science fiction. The topic is however posted as relevant to evolving an argument beyond the fears being voiced over a nuclear conflict, however small, arising from Iraq. I can only ask someone to share what I can see, since as my opening remarks make clear, I do not believe any amount of politics can avoid every consequence of the risky global development issue "How to live safely with the legacy of MAD?"
General Theory of Development: the revolution of resistance around faster than light and physical containment of fission
The path into an interstellar society, the next step after an intercontinental society depends on those shapes of the continent as much as it does on many other factors. At some time such a society must have discovered gunpowder and made the application to cannon and bullet. Here we observe a significant time lag in the applications. Physical containment of fission in space will suffer the same time lag in applications taking time to move from the basic unreliable and dangerous primitive cannon to the ultra modern automatic gun. However the time lag also involved a block or leap between the Chinese "alchemy" of gunpowder and fireworks to the European "siege ender" cannon. Somehow this development was not foreseen by the Chinese but required European explorer's to bring the alchemist's gunpowder into the European armoury. It should not seem thus of much surprise that the physicist's uranium is not yet connected with physical containment in space. No oxygen is need for the chain reaction to occur and so the lack of oxygen in space is no hindrance. However critical mass is exactly that, a specific minimum mass for the almost "spontaneous combustion" to work. Hence most clever men in physics would regard the very size of critical mass to be too big to work with in space. No doubt the Chinese alchemists had some similar logic that blocked the leap to the cannon. However physical containment in fission is a long development, as impossible to see as for the early European cannon engineer tinkering with gunpowder and exploding breaches, the modern machine gun would be impossible to "see".
The path to development of the interstellar cannon apart from the viewer's determination to see technology as utilising limited resources for the benefit of the whole (as is the essential drive for economists or politicians promising higher standards of living) the issue will revolve around two impossibles. The first that physical containment of fission in space is impossible and secondly that Einstein's Law of Relativity makes faster than light theories stupid. If you insist on either of these two impossibilities then nothing will happen. Man needs to travel faster than light to make trade profitable and man needs to use Einstein or Oppehneimer's invention of the bomb in order to make that speed possible. Those trying to help but maintaining a belief in either of these two arguments are the "baked bean" group. As a basic food is the baked bean, how much would it cost to put into space and build hull storage for a crew of 25 travelling for 15 years in space the required supply items: baked beans, water and oxygen? The answer is travelling for 3 months out and 3 months in, 6 months is a reasonable calculation. Those insisting on the 15 years minimum (7.5 light years out and 7.5 light years in) are only a hamper to the complex project calculations, being better used to putting in a corner and let to make such calculations free of further involvement.
The Theory of Relativity despite its vital uses in Quantum mechanics and exploration of the galaxy by instrumentation, is effectively the flat earth theory of our era. Columbus set sail to America without the blessing of the majority of intellectuals or well to do because the idea of a round earth was almost heretical. This was in 1492, a long period of Western growth for less than 140 years after the Black Death and plague in England of 1349. Is it not possible that the Western world was ready for the discovery of Columbus in 1349 but that the flat earth theory was a block to such development? That the radical alteration in state power and town/country balance following the massive loss in population as a consequence of the plague, was the only means by which the Status Quo in the Western World surrendered power? Thus Columbus could conquer the Americas 143 years later because the form of society that regenerated after 1349 was flexible enough to permit the sailor and navigator to sail away to the edge of the world? Einstein's association with the speed of light being an impassable barrier is this flat earth block, one that challenges where the afterlife or heaven is located and accommodating our innate suspicion that the Sun is God and a tendency for sun worship. Thus each ray of the mid summer sun bronzing the body is a deity, a speed of light deity that should not be challenged.
Is our world fated to leap from inter-continental to inter-stellar society in a manner more knowledgeable or less knowledgeable than a world whose continental plates by chance never created a flat earth theory, as the world was transferable right from the beginning. Such a transversal world would have never known a flat earth theory and a continental jump in development as astronomers would have long ago pointed out through observation of the constellations from various vantage points that the earth was round. By historical analogy we should know that like the Chinese, the Americans have invented the reaction but not the physical containment. Similarly by historical analogy we should be aware that the intellectuals threaten us with a bubonic plague because they have created a myth of man trapped on his planet, interstellar travel being not a voyage into the unknown but a simple falling off the edge of the world. Sailors used to be terrified of leaving sight of the land, not many accepted the earth as round and feared the waters that fell off the edge. With this advantage of hindsight, can we not agree that travelling faster than light is a very probable outcome of new inventions in space?
The biggest "Catch 22" of life is mortality. However common sense tells us never to waste time thinking about any possible avoidance of the inevitable. Tales on the search for eternal youth or immortality are confined to legends, fables and myths.
If science and economics cannot present us with a solution to a problem and that problem is so fundamental, we simply ignore our desire for a solution. Just like it is in respect to human mortality. We simply blank out our need for avoidance. Our entry into the atomic age quickly led to the "Catch 22" of MAD. That it could all go up tomorrow, we now totally fail to acknowledge. Not because of a lack of evidence that global conflicts do and have happened, but simply because there is no possible solution to this danger we are aware of. Unless that is travelling to the stars were possible.
In an evolutionary sense our atomic age is unique because quite literally any repeat of our 2 global conflicts held in the previous century would return us to the Stone Age. This is a literal danger because of the nature of thermonuclear weapons, difficult as it is to imagine such a complete reversal of human fortunes.
Even though the global security doctrine of MAD has been disbanded, the potential is very likely to remain always. If there is no territorial expansion out of our solar system then our "Catch 22" is that we must avoid global conflict until the end of time. It is more likely that we will therefore as some time stumble into a global conflict and return to the Stone Age. Then we will recover and over centuries reach the same evolutionary point and the light speed barrier being an absolute, that subsequent atomic age will stumble back into the Stone Age again. Ad infinitum.
A simple "what if" analysis would ask "what would any planet do anywhere upon reaching the atomic age?” The obvious upbeat thought would be that for the majority of those planets, the "atomic" part of the atomic age would supply the means to reach the stars. One alternative scenario might be that this step always awaits a yet to be discovered new power source material. This could be discovered in 10 years or 10,000. That random exposure to an atomic age for "any planet, any where", wherein there is no safe way to evolve beyond it before a further invention or discovery takes place, makes a mockery of any belief in a universal creator.
Your History Lesson continued
It seems more likely that the power source material is indeed the nuclear fission that Orion seeks to utilise. Again, on the "god and creator" level, that the invention exists without any "useful use" except as a mass killing device is probably a good clue. Furthermore all scientific dogma on light speeds being unbreakable is pure, pure theory. It is rather more likely that some very clever humans got it back-to-front, than a creator of worlds enjoys watching each civilisation enter the atomic age and then plunge back to the stone, ad infinitum.
Economists should be very aware that our present economic system is called the "classical economics" model. Both Marxism and the subsequent Keynesian theories were very complex and clever, only they didn't hold true to life. I find it reassuring to find a parallel so that I can call myself a "classical physicist" and return to the Newtonian fundamentals. Especially in respect to a self-propelled million tonne spaceship hurtling to the stars, with no speed limit. With a vengeance I then take the theory of relativity and say well the theory is more likely applicable to acceleration rates in space, meaning as you get faster you can endure much greater acceleration forces on the human body. Voila, I am on holiday in the galaxy.
Any travel to the stars that takes more than Columbus's voyage to the Americas is a big "no, no". Of course Americans have never really discovered any physical territory and seem to be plagued by stories of being visited by aliens. It is a pity that there cannot be made more useful analogies between the socio-political nature of Europe prior to 1492 and the America of today. Europeans although much backward to the Americans in the technologies, have no problem encompassing the reality of travelling into the unknown to discover alien cities. In reality that is and not in Hollywood.
Every schoolboy knows China invented gunpowder but failed to develop the cannon. The space programme is flagging and failing to colonize into this frontier leaves the world leaderless. The development path from cannon to rifle shaped nations, so why again does an empire reject the engineering jump? Until America revises the Orion project concepts made before Apollo, the obvious threat of disaster of straying from the natural evolutionary theory of non use, space propulsion, is an awful probability.
It is illogical from the historical point of view to enter into the atomic age with the belief that the speed of light is a true law, if you wish to be around for long as a living planet. The argument must then hinge on whether because of wartime secrecy, did we enter the atomic age off-balance? Is not the counter-balance to the MAD doctrine, this contrived and deliberately slanted "theoretical relativity" against all that is interstellar? After-all in the MAD political climate, a way-out to the stars would undermine such a doctrine if one side's leaders could take refuge in the stars while each side fought it out to the end. Also the MAD doctrine required all atomic materials to be dedicated to the production of deterrent, and not reserved for space propulsion experiments.
The NASA comment on Dyson's history of Project Orion even acknowledges such uses would now be quite convenient for using up the now no longer required atomic assemblies. Even more I would say, for if reaching the stars were a rampant success, the H assemblies would be dismantled to release the A assemblies as much needed propulsion propellants. Then we could get to the sensible stage in atomics where the very assembly of an H would be an act of war-like aggression. Still wouldn't stop an errant space pilot captain dropping a propulsion pellet on top of an unfriendly city, but mankind would have progressed beyond the very dangerous "all-or-nothing" mentality towards world peace we still are locked into. Orion of course needs revised. Ground launches are unacceptable and belong to the project period when standard chemical based payload launches were in their infancy.
Pusher-plates even if they were not a technical fantasy, are also unacceptable outside of the project period where billion dollar satellite systems were non-existent and hence not a prohibitive cost to absorb in collateral damages. America perhaps need to have a long look at what happened to the Chinese empire hundreds of years ago when it failed to champion containment of gunpowder. Coca-cola need not really provide technical insight for such project innovations, when 1,100 years of human history have been about containing explosions within a hollow cylinder closed at one end with a pusher-plate. Known by the "non-techs" as the cannon or firing tube! It does not need re-inventing this wheel!
If we had had the luck to enter the atomic age in a period of peace with less fear and secrecy, perhaps relativity would have a different more positive slant. If you wish to slant F=MA to advocate interstellar travel, think to make "Acceleration" relative to planetary gravities. That is to say it is not good enough to say there is no light speed barrier (or that the barrier is found at C squared or C to the power of another C). Rather that "relatively" acceleration diminishes as an effect on the human body at C+ speeds when outside the real "pull acceleration" of natural planetary gravities. Our observation that 1 G acceleration in a rocket leaving earth is felt as 2G on the body, should not be automatically assumed to be the same as 2G acceleration in a gravity-less space environment. String theory might help, but basically slanting relativity away from the concerns of MAD is to say artificial accelerations are relative to planetary. Anyone care to come up with a top G "lovingly endured" reaching a 20 light year distant planet, travelling at a maxium speed of 10C. That is to say accelerating at a constant until reaching a peak speed half-way of 10C and then de-accelerating the remainder to arrive static.
Like a game of Risk the post-MAD political order has limited pre-thought in respect to Western economic development. I am in accordance with one important Orion project summary and conclusion : we lost our way with a journey to the moon. In so far as the only the human species exists with a consciousness to express religion and hence evolution, any planet "anywhere" is surely at a disadvantage in a post-MAD structure to have rejected flight to the stars in favour of cold war moon bravado. Indeed the excess military products of this cold war rather than point to our preparation to travel to the stars as hypothesized by Orion project devotees, only threatens our imminent vaporisation at the end of interstellar fuel pellets misunderstood or at least not even recognised by their "any planet - anywhere" evolutionary poise.
Of course the fundamental problem with Orion is the failure to counterbalance the goal of physical containment with the true size of explosion. Hence the continual attempts of academic studies to reduce the reaction size considerably or to place it outside any necessary direct containment pressures e.g. somewhere behind the craft. Most telling in this whole sorry evolutionary period of this plant is the repetition by the leading nation America of China when it encountered gunpowder. Not only did the Chinese fail to develop "physical containment" in the form of the cannon but they masked secret of the reaction in a science of alchemy. Hence any reader of this who did not actually participate in The Manhattan project is a product of this deliberate obscurity of fact and likely to misunderstand even the basic applications in space and interstellar travel. The safest education strategy is to remain within the historical limits of the application of the project's fruit, the surrender of Japan and not to go further along the development timeline. At least in my opinion! Draw your own historical analogy, but China in failing to physically contain gunpowder failed to initiate the longest technical development path in history: cannon - musket - rifle - machine gun. Interstellar space travel starts and finishes with physical containment.
Finally, I cannot express quite how strongly the framework conclusion of “Any planet, anywhere” insists that a choice exists absolutely in the long term only between an evolution to the stars or an incomplete or partial MAD global event.
Scientists could not, do not and will not ever shoulder the burden of prime political leadership. Instead they are allocated the charge of placing the burden of scientific rationality upon the body politic of scientific but it is still “perceived” theological wisdom. Therefore I wish to underline, above all else, that it is the very conceived scientific wisdom in insisting a light barrier irrefutably exists for all “self-propelled objects” that burdens politicians with no means in the final scheme of things to avoid nuclear war in the long term. I thus ask you to reflect (as best as you can), if after a potential and frankly foreseeable destruction due to any incomplete or partial MAD conflict, what scientist would not actually lay the blame squarely at the door of professional politicians? This raises the question that, if it is inevitable scientists must evade the final political responsibility for the use of scientific discovery at the highest level, what general command and hence the all encompassing mode of all current space exploration theory is not invalid?
I thus, humbly, advocate my reluctant but necessary willingness, to defend these theories to whatever appropriate panel you decide if given the opportunity. However, notwithstanding my personal moral imperative of “star reaching”, this revised Orion should still be considered technically pursuable within less than light speed parameters if expedient. Yet I remain, both as an economist and a “social and economic” historian, guarded of my need to declare a “moral assertion” that only by reaching the stars at faster than light speeds might our planet progress safely beyond the “Catch 22” of MAD.
My understanding of atomic science was essential to make possible this independent formulation of the “Any planet, anywhere” framework. It has enabled me to propose a unique and I believe possibly the only attainable development path to other stars. I do urge you to consider the revised Orion model as thoroughly as time will permit and whilst we are still at a moment of comparative global peace. It is very probable that the current and existing time frame of opportunity to consider space exploration as a whole would be beyond reach for many years if, when and should “partial or incomplete MAD” events unroll. Many economic historians would likewise plot a positive correlation between economic pressures and a propensity for war. Thus “Fry or fly!” might be the cry a world’s future might want to hear, some reputations and global budgetary models notwithstanding.