With renewed interest in sending people on interplanetary voyages, the
thought has to occur that an Orion type space craft would fit the bill. The
1959 version would have resulted in two year round trips to Mars (including a
long sojourn on the Martian surface) or three year round trips to Jupiter or
Saturn. These trips would have carried a hundred and fifty space explorers in
relative comfort and safety to and back from these destinations.
Modern materials, nuclear bombs, radiation shielding, and other technologies
would surely enhance the capabilities of a modern Orion interplanetary ship.
The advantages of using Orion technology over even conventional nuclear
propulsion are obvious. More people in less time can be delivered to destinations
such as Mars. The dream of colonizing the planets would happen much sooner.
Plus, a fleet of Orion ships would provide a certain defense against the
possibility that an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs
sixty five million years ago, would impact the Earth in the future, to wipe out
our species.
The only problem that seems to stand it the way of reviving Orion seems to
be political. The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty of 1996 would seem to preclude the use of a propulsion system that
uses nuclear explosives. But it would seem to be the case that an amendment to
those treaties could be easily negotiated to allow for the use of nuclear bombs
as fuel for space craft.
Of course, the revival of the Orion project would cause great upset and
anger in certain quarters of the environmental movement. The launch of
planetary probes, such as Galileo and Cassini, using a relatively benign power
source based on the atomic decay of plutonium are the regular venue of
protests. Imagine what the reaction would be if nuclear bombs were being lofted
into Earth orbit to fuel an orbiting Orion ship.