Orion!

[scott_sanford]

I know this will be of interest to some of my readers. Back in 1959 the Orion project was still getting funding (sanity had not yet set in) and some actual flight tests were done. This short video clip shows an unmanned 105kg test vehicle taking off propelled by 1kg C4 charges.

(Related only by reader interest, it seems that Los Alamos has a large wildfire.)

Comments

[kengr]

It wasn't that insane. As long as you only launched a few, (and given that it was best suited to *heavy* launches, like say an entire moonbase) it wouldn't have been all that bad.

What killed it was the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

As I recall, the fallout was expected to be pretty much constant and not affected by payload - so you might as well boost the whole of Moonbase Alpha in one damn big load! All things considered I'd just as soon not be on the first one up, but the numbers are very impressive.

Incidentally, this was echoed by James Nicoll, who has more followers than I.