Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic SpaceshipIn 1957, a small group of scientists, supported by the U.S. government, launched an attempt to build a four-thousand-ton spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs. The initial plan called for missions to Mars by 1965 and Saturn by 1970. After seven years of work, political obstacles brought the effort to a halt. The Orion team, led by the American bomb-designer Theodore B. Taylor, included the physicist Freeman Dyson, whose son George was five years old when the existence of the project was first announced. In Project Orion, George Dyson has synthesized hundreds of hours of interviews and thousands of pages of newly excavated documents, still only partially declassified, to piece together one of the most tantalizing "what if" stories of the twentieth century. |
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Common terms and phrases
ablation acceleration AFSWC Air Force Alamos April ARPA Astl atmosphere Atomic's August Brian Dunne Bruno Augenstein building charges crew Defense detonate Don Prickett Dyson to parents Earth Edward Teller engineering F. J. Dyson feasibility flight flying Frederic de Hoffmann Freeman Dyson GAMD Hans Bethe high explosive hydrogen bomb idea interplanetary July June km/sec launch Lew Allen Livermore looked Los Alamos Mars Marshall Rosenbluth military missiles mission Mixson Moon Nance NASA neutrons nuclear bombs nuclear explosions Nuclear Pulse Propulsion nuclear weapons October opacity orbit Orion vehicle payload physicists physics plasma Point Loma problem Project Orion propellant pulse units pusher plate Pyatt radiation reactor remembers reported Riparbelli rocket Rosenbluth satellites Saturn says Freeman says Ted September ship shock absorbers Space Vehicle spaceship specific impulse Stan Ulam Study T. B. Taylor technical Ted Taylor Ted's Teller thing tion tons Treshow velocity wanted
References to this book
Reinventing NASA: Human Spaceflight, Bureaucracy, and Politics Roger Handberg No preview available - 2003 |
Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961-1965 Francis French,Colin Burgess Limited preview - 2007 |