ironically this is the most noble use of our nuclear weapons i can think of, would give us easy access to the solar system and potentially allow us to go to other star systems much more easily than other emerging technologies.
If this ever becomes a reality, just imagine the nightmare of maintenance and early disasters. So many moving parts to go wrong, but still, would be an engineering marvel if perfected.
Kubrick loved the idea of Orion, but, cinematically, he thought it might be too comical seeing it putt-putting away. He went for a more "conventional" gas-core fission/hydrogen thermal design (this came from Fred Ordway's notes), then never showed it in operation! He did pay homage to Orion though by using the name for the Earth-station shuttle.
20:53 in the 1500s it took more than a year to reach India from Portugal and get back again. And still, whole empires sprawled with that level of communication times! Amazing!
The project should be re-visited... a lot has changed since the 1950-60s in technology, understanding and application and the fundamental concept is still a brilliant idea.
Setting area the size of France on fire just by detonation in space is absolutely horrifying idea. I'd love to see this implemented in a video game though.
Honestly, vessels like the Orion should be build in space. And then we could launch logistics rockets to the orion to fill it up with the fuel pellets.
Nuclear has two faces, a fantastic technology with a bright future to push humanity to greater heights. And a god level power to level civilization to extinction.
Yours is actually the first correct animation of the Orion pusher plate I've seen on Youtube; most channels just have the big pistons as the only shock damper and forget the secondary layer to the pusher plate itself.
"One 4000 ton Orion launch would match the total mass lifted into orbit by all of the Apollo launches". This 'interplanetary' ship had a mass of 4000t, a LEO payload of 1600t, and a moon payload of 1200t. A Saturn V weighed in at 3350t, has a LEO payload of 130t, and a moon payload of 2t. With 13 total Saturn V launches, the total theoretical payloads would be 1690t to LEO and 26t to the moon. It would take 600 Saturn V moon launches to match the payload delivery potential of one single interplanetary Orion ship. That, ladies and gentleman, is bananas.
That manhole cover ran so project Orion could fly 😂
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Maybe this is the job the Sea Dragon was waiting for
"The real Project Orion."
"..."
"Perfection."