Blog

Spaceship – Orion

Another insane spaceship project from the 60s : using nuclear warhead to propel a spaceship (fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet_O…)

Most
of the design of this spaceship is conceived to dampen the initial
shock of the explosion of several (read: Lot of) kiloton nuclear
warheads. I don’t joke, this is a feasible project!

Well it
would have several issue, like stockpiling several thousands of nuclear
warheads, diplomatic conundrums when trying o land on a foreign planet,
insane acceleration for crew quarters and oh… Fallouts. Lots of it.
Yikes!

To be fair, as a strictly interstellar spaceship, it would
work. Some issues, like the degradation of the dampening plate or the
acceleration bursts are surprisingly easy to resolve.

Pencil doodle on A6 sketchbook