From: Wayne Smith (cosmic_disturbance_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Feb 07 2004 - 04:23:48 PST
As many of you probably know Orion was the best shot
we ever had at serious manned spaceflight. We could
have truly claimed the heavens. Only one thing killed
this opportunity. Fear. Misplaced fear. Perhaps we had
become too lazy and fat in the last century. That
pioneering spirit and hunger to achieve was gone.
Politics was allowed to destroy the only chance we
ever had of getting off this rock and colonising new
worlds. The reasons given for it's demise were based
on ignorance. False assumptions about radiation and
the nature of nuclear technology. We assumed that
bombs were the only thing possible with fission or
fusion. We didn't stop to ask whether 'any' level of
fallout would be acceptable. We just took it for
granted that any amount of radiation exposure
whatsoever was deadly and evil. Today we know this to
be a fallacy and to experts familiar with the
radiological sciences it is a laughably childish one.
We need the background radiation around us to grow and
maintain healthy bodies. Orions launched with
groundburst minimisation protocols in place would have
virtually no impact on the sea of radiation we bathe
in every day. Airbursts are essentially but for wisps
of atmospheric dust and vapour. Preventing ground dirt
from being sucked into the initial fireballs means
very little to irradiate and therefore only miniscule
amounts of fallout. We seem to have forgotten that
hundreds of nuclear tests each released thousands of
tons of fallout into the atmosphere and the impact on
our health was extremely low if indeed any harm was
done at all. Governments use archaic methods to
estimate such harm. Questionable methods. There are
numerous ways in which an Orion launch can achieve
acceptably low levels in residual radiation. It's time
we built an Orion. We only need one launch to open up
the final frontier and building Orions is perfectly
legal. So long as we don't make the pulse units until
the ship is allowed to fly.
http://www.projectorion.com
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