Images of Project Orion

by | Jan 12, 2007 | Advanced Rocketry | 9 comments

Orion in flightOn his Crowlspace site, Adam Crowl points us to the artwork of Rhys Taylor, a remarkably gifted graphic artist in the U.K. Taylor has created a series of Project Orion images from the nuclear pulse propulsion studies conducted in the late 1950s and early 1960s (and I presume he’s unrelated to Project Orion leader Ted Taylor). Check this animation of an Orion launch, for example, or click here for Taylor’s gallery of other Orion art, including (my favorite) Orion at Enceladus. The Saturnian moon was once considered a prime destination for an early Orion mission. Taylor’s work is lovely indeed. Now if I can just get Adam to explain the term ‘gob-smacked.’

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9 Comments

  1. Christopher L. Bennett on January 12, 2007 at 10:02

    “Gob-smacked” is a British expression meaning stunned, shocked, astonished, as if smacked in the mouth (“gob”).

    Just to be clear, this is the old theoretical nuclear-pulse project named Orion, and not the current, much more conservative NASA program of the same name?

  2. Administrator on January 12, 2007 at 10:29

    Yes, sorry I didn’t make that clear; I just went back and touched up the entry to properly identify the work. Taylor’s images depict his conception of Project Orion and what it could have led to, back in the 1960s and later.

    Re ‘gob-smacked,’ it was the derivation that interested me, but you cleared that up. I hadn’t realized what a ‘gob’ was!

  4. Adam on January 12, 2007 at 16:21

    Hi Larry

    I just wrote to Adrian about his “Daedalus” artwork and his “TTA” artwork – a classic SF pastiche series from the late 70s, now redone in digital. Thanks for linking to his work…. now I’ll have to put up my own blog post on his work. Unmissable stuff.

    Adam

  5. Adam on January 12, 2007 at 16:24

    Hi again

    BTW Adrian is a good friend of Alan Bond and has worked with him to visualise Alan’s SKYLON RLV. And Alan is, of course, the project leader from the “Daedalus” study by the BIS. So it’s a small world indeed…

    Adam

  7. Rhysy on February 13, 2007 at 18:15

    I was doing one of my occasional, egocentric checks to see if people are still watching this… it’s nice to know they still are. Makes me inspired to finish the next one, if only I could find the time. Damn PhD ! And Medieval 2 Total War, come to that…
    Yes I am unrelated to Ted Taylor. :)
    Really nice paintings by Joe Bergeron there.

  8. ljk on May 1, 2007 at 10:40

    Space Week on the Science Channel

    http://science.discovery.com/convergence/space-week/about/about.html

    May 6-12, at 9 p.m. ET/PT

    Starship ORION: The Future of Space Travel

    Tuesday, May 8, at 9 p.m. ET/PT

    NASA has taken the lead in designing the new space exploration vehicle, ORION, with which man will go back to the moon, to Mars and beyond. To compress the development process, experts combined old and proven technology with the most current insights to make ORION the spaceship for the 21st century. Information from the Apollo program, space shuttle missions, personal experience and scientific data were combined to create ORION, the heart of “Project Constellation,” NASA’s new space program.

  9. James M. Essig on June 16, 2008 at 2:40

    Hi Folks;

    I was briefly involved in another discussion at a thread on another site wherein someone brought up the concept of doing nuclear fusion with highly compressed hydrogen or deuterium fuel confined to the interior of buckyballs or perhaps some sort of multiwalled buckyball like carbon configurations wherein the material in such dense form could be used as fusion fuel for reactors but also presumably for fusion bombs also.

    One of the themes this person focused on was hydrogen in a theoretical metallic state that is about 5 times denser than hydrogen ice. One of the more senior commenters on that site, perhaps one of several administrators of that site, did not seem to think the concept held much weight. Incidentally, I proposed some related concepts and became the laughing stock of this senior commenter. Another person chimed in and suggested that fullerene cages of Boron-Nitride might provide an adequate fuel wherein the Boron would interact with the hydrogen or deuterium for more complete fusion. The concept under discussion was how to obtain sufficient fuel density to permit muon catalyzed fusion at greater than breakeven levels for useful power production given the finite lifetimes of muons and the stickiness issues of muons in many proposed muon fusion schemes.

    The point I am trying to make is that if we could somehow develop pure fusion nuclear explosive devices wherein the device would or could be set off with small amounts of antimatter interacting with dense forms of hydrogen, we might have a very volume specific energy dense form of nuclear fusion fuel with which to power the original Orion type space craft. If several to many times the dry weight of the space craft could consists of small hydrogen isotope fuel pellets wherein the pellets would be detonated within a rocket cone or rocket chamber with electrodynamic shielding, perhaps a very practical way to send humans to the nearest stars could be worked out with relatively minimal engineering difficulty. The pellets conceivably might have a yield as low as 0.001 kilotons or one ton of TNT for purposes of safely confining the explosions in an open end electrodynamic mirrored rocket chamber.

    Thanks;

    Jim

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In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities. For many years this site coordinated its efforts with the Tau Zero Foundation. It now serves as an independent forum for deep space news and ideas. In the logo above, the leftmost star is Alpha Centauri, a triple system closer than any other star, and a primary target for early interstellar probes. To its right is Beta Centauri (not a part of the Alpha Centauri system), with Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon Crucis, stars in the Southern Cross, visible at the far right (image courtesy of Marco Lorenzi).

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