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George B. Dyson

Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship Paperback – April 1, 2003

by George Dyson (Author)

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In 1957, a small group of scientists, supported by the U.S. government, launched an attempt to build a four-thousand-ton spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs. The initial plan called for missions to Mars by 1965 and Saturn by 1970. After seven years of work, political obstacles brought the effort to a halt.

The Orion team, led by the American bomb-designer Theodore B. Taylor, included the physicist Freeman Dyson, whose son George was five years old when the existence of the project was first announced. In Project Orion, George Dyson has synthesized hundreds of hours of interviews and thousands of pages of newly excavated documents, still only partially declassified, to piece together one of the most tantalizing "what if" stories of the twentieth century.

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Holt Paperbacks
Publication date

April 1, 2003
Dimensions

6.24 x 0.97 x 8.32 inches
ISBN-10

0805072845
ISBN-13

978-0805072846
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Project Orion describes one of the most awesome 'might have beens' (and may yet bes!) of the space age. This is essential reading for anyone interested in government bureaucracies and the military industrial complex." --Sir Arthur C. Clarke

"The sheer outlandishness of the forgotten space endeavor is nothing less than fascinating." --Discover

"George Dyson has done us the favor of relating a truly strange and wonderful yarn. This [is] a better space story than any we have now, in fact or fiction." --Neal Stephenon, author of Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, and Snow Crash

About the Author

George Dyson, the son of distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson, grew up immersed in the world of groundbreaking science. His previous books include the acclaimed Darwin Among the Machines. He and his father are also the subjects of Kenneth Brower's classic profile The Starship and the Canoe. Dyson lives in Washington State.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Holt Paperbacks; Reprint edition (April 1, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0805072845
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0805072846
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.24 x 0.97 x 8.32 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,319,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #776 in Astronautics & Space Flight
- #1,486 in Aeronautics & Astronautics (Books)
- #2,136 in Astrophysics & Space Science (Books)

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Kenneth W.

Just what I was looking for when I bought it

Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2020

Verified Purchase

When I first heard about project Orion I thought, "What a crazy idea!" Then I wanted to know: who would consider doing such a thing, why they would consider doing such a thing, who would fund such a thing, was such a thing even feasible, and what technical issues would have to be addressed. This book answers those questions. It also left me convinced that, barring some new discovery in physics, if we ever send people to planets beyond Mars, this is how we'll do it. No Orion spaceship was ever built so it doesn't have all the answers but, they made a really good start. I found this an easy read and very informative.

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Great Idea, bad book

Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2003

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The idea of Project Orion will appeal to everyone. It is one of those great ideas that open new chapters in human achievement. There are serious risks involved with the technology that would have to be managed carefully if it is ever revisited, but it could be done.
With a year's warning, we could deflect the sort of asteroid/comet that ended the dinosaurs. We could build a city on the Moon or survey Mars. We could send manned expeditions around the solar system 10 years after we decide to do it, starting any time.
The idea Project Orion studied back in the 50's is wonderful. This book is not. You can get all of the story contained in this book by reading the first 9 chapters and studying all the illustrations carefully. All of the project's technical details of interest are classified and not included. The book suffers from a lack of any sort of useful timeline as to the events of Project Orion. The reader is left to piece together the story from a sprinkling of semi-random vignettes and personal reminiscences.
Most of this book is filler, with the details left to the reader's own mind to fill in. And yet, the idea is so Grand that I found myself staring off into space every so often as I ground my way through the turgid prose and confusing organization, imagining where we might be now if hopes had been realized 40 years ago.
Here are some tips that will help the reader get the most out of this book:
1) Ignore all mentions of Tungsten propellant that are sprinkled confusingly here and there. They belong to suboptimised designs, though this fact is hidden toward the back of the book.
2) Skim the personnel intros. They don't pay off.
3) Study the table toward the end of Chapter 6 for the best understanding of what Orion can do. Compare this to similar NASA Mars mission studies and you will find yourself grinding your teeth.
4) The politics of Orion are simple in outline but complicated in detail. NASA killed this program because it's own NERVA program was in competition with Orion. The book makes this point over 100 pages. If you look into what happened to NERVA you'll start grinding your teeth again.
5) There is a lot of teeth gnashing about atomic scientists feeling guilty about the bombs after they had made them. They acknowledge that Orion was a constructive use of that effort, but in their old age many of the scientists interviewed for this book are a little hypocritical in their disavowals. More grinding.
6) The mention of Tungsten in Chapter "Fallout" is another red herring. It was easy to detect in an unrelated bomb test. Orion designs did not use Tungsten propellent.

19 people found this helpful

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Nic Quattromani

Essential for any space enthusiast.

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2016

Verified Purchase

This fascinating volume explores the origins and development of Project Orion, a 1950s proposal to propel interplanetary and even interstellar spacecraft by detonating nuclear weapons behind them. What's crazier than the idea itself is the fact that it probably would have worked. With an Orion drive, it would have been entirely possible to take off from the ground, fly to Mars or the moons of Saturn, and then return home with fuel to spare, a capability matched by no other engine design before or since. George Dyson explains in exhaustive detail how this propulsion system would have worked, and what difficulties its researchers faced in designing it. Included in the text are plenty of pictures, too, including photographs of the Orion team along with numerous original sketches.
This book does not limit itself strictly to the technical aspects of the project. It also gives biographical accounts of many of the engineers and physicists involved in it, allowing the reader to understand them as people rather than names on a page, and there is a detailed overview of the political environment in which Orion was born, struggled for survival, and ultimately died an obscure death. All of the text is well written and interesting. For anybody who wants to know about one of the most ambitious projects of the Cold War, or who has a passionate interest in the history of space exploration, this book is absolutely essential reading.

5 people found this helpful

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W. Graney

More a social-political than a technological tale.

Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2002

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Traveling through space on the fireballs of nuclear explosions! Now there's a techie's dream. Unfortunately, the book spends much more time on politics than on physics or engineering. Still, I suppose you've got to be quite a political animal to get money for this sort of thing.
Dyson excuses the lack of technical data by noting that much Orion information is still secret (like how to make a nuclear bomb with a golf ball-sized chunk of plutonium), but the deficit still cries out. There's just enough technical material to make you wish for more. Virtually all the graphics seem to be multi-generational copies of just a few original project drawings. There were no significant original graphics.
The character sketches and descriptions of fighting for funds are well done and tell us a lot about how government really works (slowly, wastefully, and on an old-boy network), but "The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship" is not an accurate title for this book.
I sold the book immediately on finishing it.

8 people found this helpful

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Florida PhD

No Laughing Matter

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2016

Verified Purchase

Other Engineers/Designers I work with laugh when I suggest getting to Mars with a nuclear fission pulse rocket. "What are you going to do...blow up small atom bombs behind you?" Yes...and this is no laughing matter or fantasy warp drive. This is how to get to Mars, Enceladus or anywhere else in the Solar System with technology that is real in human friendly time frames. A fascinating read on the US effort to design and build such ships.

4 people found this helpful

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