Project Orion

Project Orion asks you to imagine a world where Apollo was consigned to history’s trash can before it left the drawing board.  It is the story of a team of accomplished nuclear scientists, including the author’s father Freeman Dyson, who designed a spaceship powered by nuclear bombs.  Starting in 1957, they planned missions to Mars by 1965 and to Saturn by 1970, not in capsules but in 4000 ton space-cruisers, complete with a traditional two ton barber’s chair.  It was a serious, if extravagantly imaginative, plan for space exploration on a grand scale. [Read more…] about Project Orion