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Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship Hardcover – April 16, 2002

by George Dyson (Author)

32 customer reviews

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The improbable story of the wildest idea-a space craft powered by hydrogen bombs-to come out of the space race.

It was the late 1950s. The Cold War was raging. Sputnik had made its voyage and the space race was on. In America, it was the age of tail fins and "duck and cover," but it was also a time of big ideas and dreams. On his way to school one day, George Dyson learned of a truly fantastical idea: massive space vehicles that would be powered by explosions of multiple hydrogen bombs. Among the brilliant minds behind this project was George's father, the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson.

Project Orion chronicles this fascinating episode in U.S. scientific research, while capturing a unique time in American history and culture. The project brought together a cadre of brilliant physicists, the first such assemblage since the Manhattan Project of fifteen years earlier. In an idyllic seaside community in southern California-the very picture of 1950s suburban prosperity-a handful of scientists, tackled a massive project that required the ingenuity of an engineer and the vision of a great theoretician. Their work-ambitious but ultimately futile-took place against the political and cultural backdrop of the Cold War, when nuclear technology spelled both promise and terror.

Dyson's prodigious historical and scientific research, combined with his personal reminiscences and connections, make for a lively, richly detailed narrative.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Like cheap, shiny space suits and bug-eyed rubber monsters, nuclear-powered spaceships today seem like little more than laughably naïve 1950s science fiction tropes. It might have been otherwise--and still could be. George Dyson, son of supergenius physicist Freeman Dyson, wrote Project Orion to share some of his father's amazing research with the world. Much had been kept secret for years, but Dyson's unique insider status permits great depth and breadth on this important tale. Conceived in the wake of Sputnik, Project Orion was a true vision of '50s engineering: a huge 40-person ship powered by hundreds of tiny atomic bombs, capable of much greater lift and efficiency than chemically driven rockets. Struggles between NASA, the military, Congress, and other parties doomed Orion, but Dyson has gathered hundreds of documents and interviewed most of the researchers and engineers who worked together, trying to reach "Saturn by 1970." His knack for storytelling makes the book a quick, delightful read; even the staunchest anti-nuke activist has to admit that lighting a cigarette off a parabolic mirror facing a bomb test is pretty cool. By the end of the 20th century, technology had caught up with the vision of Orion--it's considered one of our best bets for long-distance space transit. Whether or not that could ever happen politically, Project Orion is a compelling exploration of scientific imagination. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

In the years after WWII and the Russian launch of two sputniks, Americans were searching for any technology that would give them dominance in the space race. In his latest, Dyson (Darwin Among the Machines) charts the history of the failed Project Orion, which called for a massive rocket to be built atop a nuclear-powered piston. The project's physicists and engineers, buoyed by the thrilling idea of traveling through space on "pulse technology," conducted a number of explosive experiments to ascertain the abilities of such a system (which reveals how little was actually known about the bombs being produced by the world's superpowers). Meanwhile, the project, started in 1957, ran headlong into detractors Kennedy and NASA included and eventually was canceled. Much of the technical information in the Orion files remains classified, but Dyson's explanations of the nuclear science behind the system are lucid. A great strength of Dyson's project is the interviews he conducted with surviving Orion team members among them his father, Freeman Dyson affording readers an intimate view of the story's central characters (and its government contractors) who helped shape Orion. At the same time, these compelling interviews drag on; the story's drama is diffused by the musings of its key players, who sometimes crowd out the dynamic background of the Cold War, Wernher Von Braun's chemical rocket program, atmospheric weapons test bans and presidential administrations vested in nuclear capacities only designed for destruction. Illus. and photos.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1 edition (April 16, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805059857
ISBN-13: 978-0805059854
Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 32 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #222 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Aerospace > Astronautics & Space Flight
- #440 in Books > Science & Math > Astronomy & Space Science > Aeronautics & Astronautics
- #563 in Books > Science & Math > Astronomy & Space Science > Astrophysics & Space Science

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Nic Quattromani

Essential for any space enthusiast.

July 7, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified 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.

2 people found this helpful3 people found this helpful

Awful Scribbles

Amazing piece of scientific/engineering history

July 5, 2012

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I work with nuclear energy so naturally all things nuclear fascinates me. First time I heard about project Orion my spontaneous though was "that is a wildly stupid idea", but the more I read about it the more intrigued I got. Freeman Dyson is perhaps the scientists I admire the most for his combination of theoretical genius and practical engineering skills (Fermi is a close competitor) and when I found out his son has written a book about Orion I knew I had to get it. Easier said than done however, but after a year or two I saw that one can buy it used from Amazon. At 30 dollars it was a bargain compared to the going price right now.

The book is written in a very entertaining way without skimping on details, from the conceptual stage to the final blueprints all is covered. George Dyson isn't afraid to go into the details and he does so with clarity, putting him firmly in the camp of great scientific historians like Richard Rhodes.

If you are interested in space exploration and/or nuclear energy than this book is simply a must have, it is also a great testament to the times when scientist and engineers where allowed to think free and big, back when big engineering was the name of the game and the stars seemed to be within our grasp. Today we might look back at it and think it was madness, but a time will come again when grand ideas like this can be developed.

5 people found this helpful6 people found this helpful

No Laughing Matter

November 26, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified 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.

One person found this helpful2 people found this helpful

More a social-political than a technological tale.

August 6, 2002

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

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.

5 people found this helpful6 people found this helpful

Jack Kennedy Jr.

Orion, Seems Like NASA May Be Thinking Ahead

January 7, 2007

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Project Orion was indeed an exciting read. Frankly, I was 65% through Dyson's book right before Space Shuttle Columbia came burning the skies over Texas. I put it down and never opened it again until the past fall as the name Orion triggered that I should not only finish but start the book anew. The researchers of the nuclear-powered spaceship Orion were bold for their time! I recommend this book to anyone who wants to envision the exploration of the solar system by humans. This basic technology brought together in California research lab those several years ago could work today just not on planet Earth. It could work in GEO, cislunar, or translunar to get humans into deep space and back in a reasonable period of time. SO, perhaps, Orion will live again in this century to take humans to Mars, Europa, and Titan. The book was worth the purchase and even if I waited too long to read it. I commend the book to any space advocate, engineer, or anyone who dreams that humans can go beyond the moon sooner rather than later. I especially commend the book to Gen Y-space geeks. This is the next generation spaceship technology, IMHO.

9 people found this helpful10 people found this helpful

Not quite what I expected, but an interesting read

June 17, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I was hoping for a book that went into some detail about how Project Orion was supposed to work. Turns out that Orion really didn't ever get past the conceptual stage, and a lot of the details that were fleshed out are still classified (it is about nuclear bombs, after all). Since there isn't as much technical detail to talk about, the author spends more time talking about the people who were involved in the project. Still, it was a nice read.

2 people found this helpful3 people found this helpful

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