Project Orion?

Yes, setting a nuke off beneath something is a good way to get it off the ground, but the radioactive crap spreading all over and causing 7K extra cancer deaths per year presents a slight problem.

It wasn't stated as 7k extra deaths a year, it was:

Dyson did some calculations and found out that if Orion did two launches a year from 1960 to 1980 (or something) the result would be approximately 7000 extra deaths worldwide from radiation-related diseases.

So 7000 deaths over 40 launches, or 175 per launch. And in fact that's wrong too according to the Wiki page. It says:

Freeman Dyson, group leader on the project, estimated back in the '60s that with conventional nuclear weapons, each launch would cause fatal cancers in ten human beings from the fallout

So in fact it'd be 400 extra deaths over the 20 years. Worthwhile? Perhaps...
 
I think he meant chemical rockets on the satellites to change their orbital positions, to stay out of the way of the EMP and such.

I meant chemical rockets on the Orion to push it out of EMP range before setting off the bombs.

Rearranging satellites would be a bit of a pain--they might fall out of orbit or collide or something.
 
If one was just a little bit hypocritical he could commit to the Orion program and just give NHS proportionally increased funds for cancer research and treatment.


Second. The lander part. You must remember that with Orion you have a ginormeus payload, you dont need to fly a paper thin Eagle to the surface with barely enough fuel to land and relaunch. You can have a massive lander reinforced like hell landing a simple chemical SSTO or TSTO return vehicle.
 
This isn't Britain doing it ;)

Oh well, I forgot how the barely existent USA national health service/institute is called.

Back to the lander critique. Like I said, while you are limited to 1960es tech, with Orion you can almost completely disregard size or mass of your payload. And as technological history has shown, you can solve any problem with proper application of brute force ;)

Only problem with full powered landing is the fuel weight, and with Orion as a main ship, you can take a massive lander with equally massive and durable heat shield.
 
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