John Clark wrote:
>
> I wrote this two or three years ago, since the subject of Orion has come up
> again I thought I'd re-post it.
> ==========================================================
>
snip...
> It all came to nothing of course, in 1963 the test ban treaty was signed
> stopping all nuclear explosions in space or the atmosphere making Orion
> illegal. The project died, but to this day most say it would have worked
> technologically if not politically.
>
> Idea for a science fiction novel: A huge nickel iron asteroid is heading for
> Earth, it would take a 200,000 megaton bomb to divert it but no existing
> rocket is nearly powerful enough to deliver such a huge payload to the
> asteroid. The Earth seems doomed, then our hero remembers Project Orion.
Niven and Pournelle used Orion in their novel "Footfall".
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:27 MDT