WI Kennedy gave Orion the Go ahead

So project Orion was a top secret project during the first proposed in the forties and began development in the late fifties and early sixties, in which the US military designed and biult a test modle of a nuclear pulse driven warship that was designed to be able to rain down atomic thunder onto the soviet union as well as carrying humans into the final frontier. An Orion class Warship would have dwarfed the shuttle and would have been able to travel through space at speeds that make the shuttles look slow.
JFK took one look at the program and killed it, But what if he hadn't what if he increased the budget and the Air force began full production of orion class warships? what would the soviets have done? what could they have done? Would America have started to colonize space? and what would the modern day world look like? Would there be a great American colonial empire in space? would the soviet union be aa smoldering pile of radioactive ash? would the earth be uninhabitable do to nuclear bombs raining down on it from space? If so would the Americans abord the ships find a new place to cal home or would that be the end of the human race.
 
After a few launches, nuclear winter would set in, and then where would we be? Nuclear pulse is great for in space, but not the brightest idea inside an atmosphere.
 
After a few launches, nuclear winter would set in, and then where would we be? Nuclear pulse is great for in space, but not the brightest idea inside an atmosphere.

You'd need a truly massive number of nuclear detonations to get that kind of climactic effect.

The greater danger would be the radioactive crap drifting from the launch zones.
 
Ian Montgomerie (the admin) has an essay pointing out various problems with Orion.

I've read it and I don't think any of them are innately unsolvable, but it's food for thought.
 
Where would you find that essay? I tried search and got zip.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/gateway/essays/OrionProblems.html

Many of the problems Ian cites can be worked around--not triggering the Orion's primary drive until it's well away from satellites, for example, or simply not wanting to wait a few decades for robotic probes.

(A single Orion could sail around the entire solar system leaving robotic probes at every planet or interesting site and we'd learn a lot more than sending one probe every five years, as we currently do now.)

In the current mutation of my Afrikaner TL, I take some of Ian's criticisms into account and have Orion-class vessels as giant exploration platforms. The Orion concept is developed further, so we get much less wacky, less-polluting pulse-drives (zapping uranium pellets with lasers to generate the necessary fusion, for example).

The old bombthrower models are retired in the early 1970s after an orbital accident nearly leads to WWIII, but the groundwork has been laid for newer, more advanced pulse-drives to return to the outer solar system by 2010 (they would have gone earlier, except the US and its allies have WWIII with the Afrikaner Confederation and its allies and squash them).
 
You'd have to first butterfly away both the test ban treaties and the outer space treaty, plus massively increase the space budget. Then, maybe, maybe you could have a Saturn V launched Orion to Mars.

NERVA is far more likely, but still pretty implausible...
 

Faraday Cage

Maybe the Soviets grab some German scientist they didn't get in our world and are in the early phases of some LEO-skimming ICBM when the issue of something like the Partial Test Ban Treaty comes up, so they don't sign it. From there no Outer Space Treaty equivalent and the U.S., once it gets intelligence of this program even if it's unlikely the Soviets will be able to complete it, has the impetus to push through Orion.
 
You'd have to first butterfly away both the test ban treaties and the outer space treaty, plus massively increase the space budget. Then, maybe, maybe you could have a Saturn V launched Orion to Mars.

NERVA is far more likely, but still pretty implausible...

Perhaps the treaty merely bans military use of nukes in space. Civilian things like Orion are cool.
 
You'd need a truly massive number of nuclear detonations to get that kind of climactic effect.

The greater danger would be the radioactive crap drifting from the launch zones.
Agreed. Pluse you could launch an orion that had the parts for a space station that could be put together and then you could send up the parts for mor orions that could be built at the space station.
 
Agreed. Pluse you could launch an orion that had the parts for a space station that could be put together and then you could send up the parts for mor orions that could be built at the space station.

That is true, but one reason the Orion was sold as being so awesome was the ability to transport truly massive quantities of stuff into orbit.

If Orions (at least the early generation uber-radioactive ones) aren't launched from the ground, there goes one of the big things making them cost-efficient.

Of course, if actually building and using the Orion speds up the adoption of the laser-to-uranium-pellet later generations of pulsedrives, those might be launched from the ground without generating nearly so much dangerous crap.
 
at Kennedy era
Orion Concept was alrady move to Orbital or Suborbital launch

a Solid Booster catapult the Orion to high of 80 km (50 miles) and launch there.
Favorite of USAF

or a Saturn V bring Orion in Parts in Orbit, build togetter and launch
Favorite of NASA


v2n2ad1.jpg

this Picture show in same scale (Copyright Scott Lowther)
top USAF Orion Orbital Nuclearweapon Platform
down NASA Orion Mars spacecraft

the Best Information on Orion Program is Scott Lowther "Aerospace Projects Review"
http://www.up-ship.com/eAPR/index.htm

v1n5ad2.gif

from Issue Volume 1, Number 5 on NASA and USAF Orion project in 1963 (Copyright Scott Lowther)
http://www.up-ship.com/eAPR/ev1n5.htm
 
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