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Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957 to 1965
Imagine a 4,000 ton spacecraft powered by 2,600 nuclear weapons
and carrying a crew of 50. Imagine that spacecraft reaching Mars in
1965,
and reaching Saturn by
1970.
It might sound like science fiction, but this was in fact a real project,
known as "Project Orion" which was seriously considered by some parts of
the US government, and backed by many leading scientists, engineers and military
people.
The story of this amazing idea is contained within
"Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957 to 1965". This is a book by
George Dyson,
the son of Freeman Dyson, who was one of the leaders of the project.
The book is well written and quite clearly a labor of love. It contains
a tremendous amount of detail about the project, how it would have worked,
and the political struggles that eventually killed it.
Many details of Project Orion are still classified, how
George Dyson appears to have been able to obtain more than enough information in order
to tell a complete story. The book also contains numerous diagrams and drawings, many
reprinted from original documents of the time - although sadly
the photographs (at least in the paperback edition that I have) are all
black and white.
Although the book is written in an accessible style that the layman can easily follow,
it should also be emphasized that this is a high quality work that professionals
and academics will appreciate too. For example,
there is an 11 page list of Project Orion technical reports (apparently
incomplete because of "restrictions imposed under the Atomic Energy Act
of
1954"),
nearly 300 footnotes, and a detailed index.
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By George Dyson
Paperback (368 pages)
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The improbable story of the wildest idea-a space craft powered by hydrogen bombs-to come out of the space race.
It was the late 1950s. The Cold War was raging. Sputnik had made its voyage and the space race was on. In America, it was the age of tail fins and "duck and cover," but it was also a time of big ideas and dreams. On his way to school one day, George Dyson learned of a truly fantastical idea: massive space vehicles that would be powered by explosions of multiple hydrogen bombs. Among the brilliant minds behind this project was George's father, the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson.
Project Orion chronicles this fascinating episode in U.S. scientific research, while capturing a unique time in American history and culture. The project brought together a cadre of brilliant physicists, the first such assemblage since the Manhattan Project of fifteen years earlier. In an idyllic seaside community in southern California-the very picture of 1950s suburban prosperity-a handful of scientists, tackled a massive project that required the ingenuity of an engineer and the vision of a great theoretician. Their work-ambitious but ultimately futile-took place against the political and cultural backdrop of the Cold War, when nuclear technology spelled both promise and terror.
Dyson's prodigious historical and scientific research, combined with his personal reminiscences and connections, make for a lively, richly detailed narrative.
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By George Dyson
Penguin Books Ltd
Paperback (368 pages)
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The race to the moon dominated space flight during the the 1960s yet, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the US Government sponsored a project that could possibly have sent 150 people on expeditions to Mars or Saturn. The project was code-named "Orion" and centred upon the effort to develop a fast, manoeuvrable, nuclear-powered space vehicle for long-range voyages in space. The proposed 4000-ton spaceship would be propelled by nuclear bombs but, strictly classified, the project was never given a chance to succeed or fail - due partly to its apparent absurdity - but its mix of sublime physics, madcap engineering, and a cast of Cold War warriors and would-be inter-galactic engineers made the mission a tantalising "what if" story. In this book George Dyson, son of physicist Freeman Dyson, one of the original project team, pieces together the story his father could only tell him in fragments at the time. |
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Books LLC
Paperback (152 pages)
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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Quantum Electrodynamics, Dyson Sphere, Freeman Dyson, Dyson's Eternal Intelligence, Ted Taylor, Project Orion, Gordon Freeman, Dyson Spheres in Popular Culture, Miles Dyson, Esther Dyson, Dyson Conjecture, Schwinger-dyson Equation, Space Studies Institute, George Dyson, Triga, Isamu Alva Dyson, Dyson Series, Astrochicken, Dyson Tree, Colonization of Trans-Neptunian Objects, George Dyson, Dyson's Transform, Helios, Circular Ensemble, Dyson Number. Excerpt: Astrochicken is the name given to a thought experiment expounded by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson . In his book Disturbing the Universe (1979), Dyson contemplated how humanity could build a small, self-replicating automaton that could explore space more efficiently than a manned craft could. He attributed the general idea to John von Neumann , based on a lecture von Neumann gave in 1948 entitled The General and Logical Theory of Automata . Dyson expanded on von Neumann's automata theories and added a biological component to them.Astrochicken, Dyson explained, would be a one-kilogram spacecraft unlike any before it. It would be a creation of the intersection of biology, artificial intelligence and modern microelectronicsa blend of organic and electronic components. Astrochicken would be launched by a conventional spacecraft into space, like an egg being laid into space. Astrochicken would then hatch and start growing a solar energy collector. The solar collector would feed an ion drive engine that would power the craft. Once Astrochicken entered a planet's vicinity, it would collect material from the moons and rings of the planet, taking in nutrients. It could land and take off using an auxiliary chemical rocket similar to that used by bombardier beetles . It would periodically transmit details of its journey when it coul... |
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By George Dyson
Allen Lane
Unknown Binding
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