It occurs to me that I may not have described the idea I had for this world. This is a rip-roaring, great fun idea well-suited for a SF novel about a Brave Innovative Research Team taking things a massive leap into the future. Except, its true.
*This is not based on the current Orion NASA craft, but on an idea that got worked on in the late '50's and later.
The Orion is a giant flat plate on hydraulic springs with a Coca-cola machine dispenser (scaled up) to drop nuclear bombs out underneath the plate. It sounds insane, but it should work. They built a test model with conventional explosives which worked, and actually the larger you make the thing, the more stable it is.
They were seriously considering making a manned trip to Saturn with a 4,000 tonne spaceship, and arriving by 1975 with a five year mission with a crew of about ten. For scale, the Indian Navy, in 2004, started using a guided missile frigate which weighed 4,000 tonnes. This Orion is a SpaceSHIP, not a shuttle or a capsule or a lander.
So, in this other reality, they did just that. The Russians were terrified. So were the Chinese. It made the Americans boisterous earlier than the eighties, and Communism collapsed that much earlier. It was a bit more blood than velvet in our reality, but in this reality, the Chicoms fell as well.
With the expansion into space, it became possible to put up Solar Power Satellites and O'Neill Asteroid Balloon Space Stations. Kwh's dropped to micro-pennies. The economy boomed as factories roared.
At first, the enviros were horrified, but then Off-Earth Factories became the rage in the Space Age. Instead of Microsoft and Apple, it was Nuclear Rockets, Inc. and Near-Earth Manufacturing, Inc.. The computer age, and the PC age stayed slow and calm with new and improved versions of Dos coming out every five years or so. With Off-Earth Factories, the pollution rate dropped. Also, helping in this was the turnover from Coal-fired plants to SPS power. Add in electricity being cheap enough that a nationwide network of Charger Stations was built so that the relatively poor batteries of the day could get charged every fifty miles.
Of course, with everyone using electric cars the batteries got better a lot quicker. And the pollution level dropped even further without millions of internal combustion engines.
Economically, it was a return to the 1950's for America as the middle class expanded and grew in wealth and stability. This was a world more suited to the Ordinary Guy who liked a bit of handwork and brainwork instead of the Computer Age which more favored the Nerd.
With this massive outpouring of wealth, the Second Marshall Plan was able to begin seriously reinvigorating Russia and China (after they disarmed.) There were some hard-core militarists in both nations who refused the 'devil's bargain' of massive investment aid in exchange for demilitarization, but vast majorities in both countries favored the deal. And in return, both countries became wealthy in space, and fairly pacifistic (not as pacifistic as Japan was, but close). Some of these militarists went so far as to become terrorists and this formed a continual problem for the peaceful majorities in America, Russia, and China.
Orion spacecraft became even larger with the largest one in the year 2000 being the Star of Bethleham which weighed in at a 100,000 tonnes (larger than some cruise ships). The Outer Planets were studied by the US Space Guard (descended from the Navy and Air Force). Asteroids with their huge loads of metals were towed into Earth Orbit.
These asteroids were mined, and then with giant lasers they were 'ballooned'. That is, a laser would fire down the long axis, heat the interior, and allow the asteroid to expand and form a hollow interior. After cooling, this became a space colony. By 2000, there were four space colonies like this in orbit. By 2010, there were thirty-five.
And then the Computer Age struck in earnest. It had a better basis as the Dos code had been used for decades and was very reliable. But, this also made it faster once it did strike.
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I'm pretty sure I did a variant on this before, but that's okay.
So, no long-term consequences for setting off nukes in atmosphere every time we launch an Orion?
I think they calculated that 1.5 people worldwide or so would die from the effect. Given that supposedly around 20,000 a year in America die from the side effects of coal....
Also, there's the "J-curve" for radiation. A little bit of radiation is good for you. High mountain states have less cancer (I know, it might be another variable). The theory goes that a bit of radiation invigorates you, a bit more is even better, a bit more is the same, a bit more is worse, and worse, and then finally you get enough that you're worse off than if you had no radiation, and it keeps continuing up the slanting vertical of the tilted J until you're dead.
I'm assuming more spectacular sunsets would be one effect, and probably a general mild increase in health and vigor of the human species would be another effect.
That said, no, I'm not an expert. But before you get too enthused about defending Coal...it releases radiation in the atmosphere as well.
:)
And I did write and perhaps publish a Nuclear Winter setting a couple years ago. I'm a bit of a Hack. I'll write all sorts of things even stuff I don't necessarily agree with. I wrote a world a few years back based on the premise: France is right (in the dispute that was then going on between America and France over Iraq in the UN).
I like the excuse Multiverser gives me. Every world, even the ones that don't make sense, exists somewhere, somewhen. Now maybe I should have more complications in this world because its pretty much 'roses all over', but thats not always a bad thing. I've read books that were like that. A world like that would be a fine place to teach yourself stuff.
And I think this might be a good thing for me. I have a tendency to be too bloodthirsty and too dramatic. A normal world where you have to hunt down trouble instead of my usual take where trouble hunts you down might be a good idea for me to grow as a GM.
I am not a scientific expert. But I think the enviromentalist stance against nukes and nuclear power is at the very least, over-excited. France gets 60% of their electricity from Nukes, Japan 80%. These are not dumb people. But I'm not sure what more effect there should be than a few people killed, and spectacular sunsets.
I actually support nuclear power over coal. I just got the impression that this spaceship propelled itself by means of nuclear bombs, which is another matter entirely. You know, ash/soot, ground on which it exploded uninhabitable for decades, all that jazz. Am I getting the wrong impression?
Good.
No, you're not getting the wrong impression.
But I think you're attributing more damage than might be justified. And perhaps launches would all come from the same place.
And yes, the first few bombs going off would cause most of the bad effects.
Night.
Three points from the back of my memory:
- I heard this plan under the name Daedalus. It was on the drawing boards in the late fifties and early sixties, before the first treaties on nuclear proliferation banned the use of bombs in space. The concern was not that nuclear explosions might be used for propulsion, but that someone might establish ICBMs with nuclear MIRVs in orbit, giving them a particularly direct way of attacking the surface. The movie Space Cowboys included the assumption that the Russians violated this treaty and built a launch platform in space but never used it. It's not a particularly likely scenario. In any case, the agreement that no one would put nuclear explosives in space put the kabosh on the Daedalus project. I read about it in Omni in the early 80's.
- No part of the plan included atmospheric detonation of nuclear explosives. Ships of the size described would be built in orbit and then propelled from orbit by nuclear blasts (fasten your seat belts, please). Any increase in radiation would come from fallout finding its way through the atmosphere, but the amount of radiation generated by nuclear explosives is minimal compared to the amount which hits the atmosphere from the sun, and thus it is assumed that the same protections that keep most of the solar radiation out would do the same for this slight increase.
- Daedalus was envisioned as an interstellar project. In theory, half a dozen explosions well-timed and placed could accelerate the ship to upwards of eighty percent of the speed of light, and then a similar number could decelerate it as it entered another star system. At 80% LS the nearest star could be reached in five years, and because of time distortion it would seem like considerably less time for the travelers (I think about one year, but the math is more complicated than I can do).
--M. J. Young
I've got the non-fiction book written by the son of Freeman Dyson, one of the scientists involved. Its definitely called Orion in the book. However, I suspect that it got renamed by the '80's for your Omni article to Daedalus, and the plans got refitted a bit to avoid that whole 'multiple airbursts' in atmosphere thing.
However, yes, the no nuke testing aboveground treaty did put the kibosh to the Orion project.
This of course, suggests an alterate reality.
Daedalus version: Chemical rockets to get to orbit, and nukes from there. Its basically rowboats and clipper ships all over again. It does take longer to get started because you're trying to build the clipper ship off-shore, and so the raging economic boom does not kick in. But, from the distance of several centuries in the future, you might not notice much difference. And there is substantial economic growth, just not enough to totally derail the Computer Age for several decades.
The Russians collapse as they did in our timeline. Reagan's Star Wars was a key factor in outfacing the Russian Soviets. Here its Reagan's Icarus spaceships. The Icarus spaceships are the ones for Solar System travel.
Much of the increase in wealth is used for building the ten mile long Daedalus, but SPS' and other things get built. The cost of electricity drops drastically by nearly 70%, and with some effort the country tranfers to electric cars.
Also the Computer Age makes things a lot smaller, lighter, and more intelligent. Bill Gates makes several hundred million dollars in this timeline instead of tens of billions in the Prime timeline. In 2000, the cutting edge PC is a 386 with Windows 3.0. One advantage of the somewhat slower computer release schedule is greater quality control, and less bugs. Apple computer does better in this timeline as do several other computer companies. Microsoft does not obtain a monopoly or near it.
The Chinese Communists stay 'communist', but in reality 'fascist'. They harness capitalism to government aims, and try to keep the US from noticing them.
A worldwide crew is selected for the Daedalus, and over a thousand people (400 of them American) set out for a star in 1995. Already, the second giant starship, the Millenium, is being built. Its hoped that it will launch in the year 2001.
These starships are formed of asteroid material.
There is considerable benefit to the environment in this world. There is almost no increase in radioactivity, and the cars do run cleaner. However, only a few factories are off earth, and so the air is not as crystalline clear as it is in the Orion variant world.
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Thats a little slapdash, but I think it works. And again, its not a world with huge problems. For MJ's worlds, its more Mary Piper than that Army of Darkness inspired world. You can find trouble. You can find adventure or schooling if you like. You can volunteer, and maybe succeed in becoming an interstellar crewman, or learn how to be a factory hand in zero g on the Daedalus, or join in the Outer Planets missions run by NASA, and using the Icarus ships.