Humankind lost it on Moon

Dyson's book on the Orion Project emphasizes the debate had over space exploration before we reached the moon. Was chemical or atomic propulsion the way forward? We lost our way with a journey to the moon.  Successful evolution of any planet "anywhere" is at a disadvantage in a post-MAD structure to have rejected a flight to the stars in favour of cold war propaganda success to reach a moon. The excess military products of this cold war only threaten our imminent vaporisation at the end of misunderstood interstellar fuel pellets. Rather than give us a huge advantage of ready energy resources to power to the stars, which NASA acknowledges in Dyson's book as being a useful thing (if it were possible).

One fundamental problem with those scientists attempting further thinking about 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. The repetition by the leading nation America of China when it encountered gunpowder is telling.

Humankind lost it on Moon continued

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. This use of secrecy reduces the risk to America today (as it would have China back then) of permitting devastating malicious use of the new technology. But it also obviously stifles any possible evolution of desirable uses. Hence the source of new theories from anyone not a direct participant in The Manhattan project is a product of this deliberate obscurity of fact. Politicians or mandarins who "need to know" guard the secret but are hardly in a position or of the likely intellectual calibre to invent anything useful themselves. It is not surprising therefore that even the basic applications in space and interstellar travel of nuclear power are greatly misunderstood by even the most educated majority. The safest education strategy is to remain within the historical limits of the Manhattan project and not to go further along the development timeline.