Arrrgh
Somebody give me money to organize a propaganda operation to bring Project Orion into. Overton Window.
In George Dyson’s book, he interviews Freeman Dyson about one of the unsolved problems of the project, the radioactivity.
[Fallout] meant about ten people would be killed per mission from Orion. That was a number that I took very seriously. You were condemning something like ten people to death if you didn’t do anything to reduce the fallout. That to me was the real show-stopper.
That’s why I went to Livermore, because I thought we could make clean bombs. Unless the bombs were cleaned up drastically the thing really made no sense. But what I discovered when I went to Livermore was that this was more difficult than I had thought. What Livermore could do was something like a factor of ten. This was called the neutron bomb, producing neutrons without fission, and neutrons you could easily absorb. That would have meant killing one person per mission—on the edge of being acceptable considering that all these big projects kill people one way or another. From today’s point of view, it’s unacceptable.
It really seems like one of those fairytale bargains: you can launch your spaceship to the moon, but only if you pledge your first-born to the witch/keep the child in the basement of Omelas/make someone you don’t know die in cancer.
Now the question is: could one meaningfully hybridize Orion with traditional rockets to only do the dirty where it’s less harmful to everyone?
(via nostalgebraist)
1 month ago · 37 notes · source: thathopeyetlives · .permalink
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thathopeyetlives reblogged this from youzicha and added:I think the “eventually” is the point. You keep the fission products in space for several days, weeks, years, and they...
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- typicalacademic reblogged this from nostalgebraist and added:
Wow, a fairytale bargain of transportation in exchange for human sacrifice? Who would ever do such a thing?
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youzicha reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:There were studies about using chemical rockets to launch it out of the atmosphere, but apparently this is very...
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Now the question is: could one meaningfully hybridize Orion with traditional rockets to only do the dirty where it’s...
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voximperatoris reblogged this from nostalgebraist and added:Well, these estimates assume the “linear no-threshold model” of how radioactivity causes cancer. That is, you simply...
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