Russia: Nuclear Powered Spacecraft

Nasa's own website shows it releases HCL? Could you provide a link because I looked there before I posted. Several places listed the chemical reaction that occurs in the Shuttle solid rocket booster and I could find none that showed HCL being a product of the reaction.

So you are proposing that orion could go from orbital speed to straight down? That seems a bit unlikely, based on physics, don't you think?

You do know how the Apollo moon ships came home from the moon do you not?

Orion is not a mean of reaching low earth orbit it is a means and system for reaching deep space.

But, I am still happy you are still reaching for any method to discrediting me and the HCL error had not set you back any in that attempt. Be warn however my basic physics is first rate.

You kidding me the comment was on the NASA website question and answers section concerning if the shuttle was harming the ozone layers.

If you can not find it I will do so once more for you.

Farmerman I just had a great idea where little old me might have a very small chance of changing history for the better.

First, I will pick up ten or twenty books on the Orion project and then using Google find the names out of the top ten or twenty men in the Chinese man space program and send the books to them.

They already had placed men into earth orbit and are talking about the moon in a serous manner and Orion would be a means to jump over the rest of the world completely and their nuclear knowledge seem more then up to the challenge of building Orion.

Yes, it is a one in a billion shot and if it come off, I would be sad that the Chinese are the ones who will seize the resources of the solar system but far better them then on one.

Thank Farmerman for pointing out in a way that I needed to face that with the no risk and safest at all cost crowd firmly in control Orion can not be anything but a footnote in history in the US.

The Ammonium Perchlorate/ALuminum solid fuel has a binder of PABN (poly something butadiene ) This will, when in the burn mix, result in some HCL being formed but its not a huge concern like nuclear fallout

First below is an link from aerospace magazine article that go in great deep about rockets effect on the ozone layer including the shuttle.

http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/summer2000/01.html

The following is from that article

Most chlorine emerges from solid-propellant rocket motors as hydrogen chloride (HCl). Some of the HCl is converted into reactive chlorine atom (Cl) and molecule (Cl2) by downstream chemical processes called "afterburning." Computer models are used to predict how much of the chlorine is in the reactive form as a function of distance away from the motor nozzle. Here, a model predicts that about one-third of the HCl leaving the nozzle is converted into Cl and Cl2 in the plume of an Athena II rocket as it flies through the ozone layer.

Next we had a NASA website statement. Not the one I found on my first search but still from NASA.


http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/Ozone/depletion.html

Each shuttle launch produces about 68 tons of HCl, most of that released in the troposphere. Ten launches per year would amount to less than 0.06% of the yearly chlorofluorcarbons released which was 1.2 million tons per year in the 1980's.(18)

not a huge concern like nuclear fallout

Farmerman it is only a huge concern because you had declare it a huge concern as in the 50s we place more radiation in the atmosphere then a hundred Oriens would taking off and landings year after year would and yet we are still here are we not?

They didn't come straight down, that's for sure.

Did you mean this one?
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#5

Nothing about HCL there..

And the answer pretty much negates your argument about 100 launches harming the ozone.

Lord more education for you they come in and hit the atmosphere at full escape velocity of 21,000 MPH not orbit speed of 18,000 MPH as they are not in earth orbit and if they somehow miss the earth it is good-bye. Side note there are a lot of small print in that statement as sadly the universe is not simple as example of this if they do a return free orbit around the moon they are in a moon-earth orbit however it is still mainly correct.

So they do hit the top of the atmosphere very near to the landing zone they are aiming for plus or minus a hundred miles or two and once more there are some second order corrections but for everyday purpose it is correct.

Second note the angle of hitting the atmosphere need to be correct to a very small degree otherwise they can bounce off or at too great an angle they can overload the ship with g forces.

In any case they are not flying over half the world on landing more like a few hundred miles at most.

Let see first there is no HCL or so you claim and seem to still claim and yet according to NASA every shuttle flight release 68 tons see the links I gave you!

Now as far as that 68 tons of HCL not harming the ozone to any degree I never claim that is not their position now had I?

If they was running the nuclear Orion program instead of the shuttle the fallout produce according to them would not be a problem either I am sure!

You can't even read your own posts - you allege to be representing Prof. Freeman Dyson's position and the only source you cite is a book by his son George Dyson, a distinguished historian but no physicist. If you actually read any of the books on the Orion, or met personally, or sat in lectures by anyone working on that project you would find out that:

Professors Teller, Dyson, Wiesner, Ulam and countless others worked for years on plans for thermonuclear explosions to generate thrust - and as any number of posters here already told you those plans were shelved as wholly impractical at our current level of knowledge. Even research on Orion-type propulsion ceased in the early 1960s.

More jokers had join in.

Ok you are claiming that the men working on the project came to the sad conclusion after years of research that Orion would not had work.

So I might indeed be wrong and the project was not kill due to political factors but engineering ones instead.

Now I am waiting for you to give me links to statements from any of the four men you listed stating that Orion was impractical.

You must had access to some such material to make such a strong claim so where is it?

Are you completely delusional? Dr. Wiesner was Science Adviser in the Kennedy administration - he and many others have written and taught (Wiesner at MIT, where he subsequently became president, Teller adviser to the Reagan administration on Star Wars, etc) extensively on the subject. As to "where is it" try searching on any search engine for keywords "project orion - wiesner - dyson - teller", 1st or 2nd link you'll get is to:
http://www.honors.umd.edu/HONR269J/bibBomb.html

There's a fairly complete bibligraphy there covering many subjects in addition to Orion, so - to keep it simple, as you seem incapable of handling complexity - start here: Jerome B. Wiesner, Where Science and Politics Meet. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965.

Give me online links to statements by anyone who work for the project and not a list of a hundred books that seem to have zero to do with Orion.

Second I do have access to a research library and had place an order for Wiener book on your kind suggestion as the title sound interesting in itself however I question if it is likely to back up your claim and even if it does that is some time in the future.

So once more where is the links?

So far it is not looking too good for you High Seas and I am sorry that I am not waiting to do more research but this was too good not to post right away.

LOL LOL LOL


http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/dsh/TRANSCPT/WEBB6.HTM


DEVORKIN: Did you have any talks with people like Dyson, who were proposing, was it called the Jupiter or was that Orion. The nuclear lifting?
WEBB: Oh yes. I talked with Teller. Teller came in, telling me this ought to be done.
DEVORKIN: Was Teller advocating the nuclear lifting?
WEBB: Yes.
NEEDELL: Not as a substitute though for the Apollo program?
WEBB: Well, it's a method of lifting heavy weights, which is what we were all talking about. What they do is just every once in a while drop a small atom bomb off behind which pushes the thing forward.
DEVORKIN: Did you ever seriously consider that?
WEBB: Well, I thought about anything that people like Teller told me, but I never got anywhere near the point of saying to the President, "Here's a possibility."
DEVORKIN: To what degree were those proposals worked out? Nova, Orion, things like that?

Alpha prticles in the atmosphere are a risk that most enlightened countries wish to void. Your cavalier attitude on this subject is kind of wacky Bill.
Lets see, weve all agreed to ban atmospheric testing of nukes. ALl except Billonia of course. Billonia has a space program that is developing a rocket that will be driven by NUCLEAR BOMBLETS. And the chief Scientist of Billonia has gone on the internet to tell us that theres nothing to worry about, everything is under control. Trust him... hes quoting up to date scientific reseqarch from the 1950's.

WHAT ME WORRY?

High Seas god you did amuse me as it took no time at all to show that you are blowing smoke up everyone rear end.

Ok the following is from Ted Taylor autobiography title “Change of Heart” by a gentleman who work closely with Dyson and just another proof that you are a !!@#$@!.

But then you are an amusing !!@#$@ and that is more them can be said for a great number of posters on this thread.



http://www.spacekb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/space-history/1996/Ted-Taylor-autobiography-CHANGES-OF-HEART

Freeman Dyson was one of the first people I talked to about the
project. In the spring of 1958 he decided to take a year's leave from
the Institute for Advanced Study to work full time on Orion. Freeman
was an internationally known theoretical physicist, so his association
with the project was a huge help in establishing its technical
credibility. But more than that, Freeman's uncanny skill at sorting
out and clarifying complex situations kept revealing the main problems
and their solutions. Within less than a year Freeman and I and a few
others were seriously planning expeditions to Mars, Ganymede, Titan,
and dozens of other distant worlds. We designed Orion spaceships for
carrying more than 100 explorers, along with vehicles for descending
from orbit to the surfaces of these worlds, and returning to the
mother ship for continuing explorations or returning home. Planning
such expeditions was so exciting that it was sometimes difficult to
focus attention on the mundane tasks organizing the technical work,
convincing others that Orion was likely to be practical, and keeping
the project financed. What Orion could do was much more interesting to
me than how it worked, nearly the reverse situation from my work on
the bombs. I never had any interst in flying bombers or launching
missiles, but I desperately wanted to be a member of the first Orion
crew.
The project proceeded vigorously through 1962, started going into a
coma in 1963, and finally died, with some twitching signs of life, in
1965. The cause of Orion's death was generally diagnosed as the
Limited Test Ban Treaty, which forbade nuclear explosions except
underground. The actual cause was the reluctance of a few people in
Washington to "running before we have learned to walk."
The nearly eight years when Orion was at my prime focus were also the
most unstable in my search for accomodation to the nuclear age. The
project started with no attention to any possible military uses. But
it was "born classified" because relevant details about the nuclear
explosives were secret. NASA was not established until late 1958, so
initial major funding of the project was under a contract between the
Defense Department's new Advanced Research Projects Agency and General
Atomic, starting in July 1958. A year later the government authority
and funding for the project was transferred to the Air Force. NASA
participated only peripherally in the project for the next several
years, largely because no-one in NASA amangement knew much about
nuclear explosives, while many people in the Air Force did. One of the
consequences of this was that I felt forced to conceive and promote
military uses of Orion to help the Air Force justify spending money on
the project.

Farmerman I love this thread and the people who are drawn to it.

In any case, it is a damn shame that a project that could have given us the solar system was kill off for no good reason and in-spite of high Seas claims not for any engineerning reasons it would seem.

However, it is nice to know that whenever any major nation have the desire to take the solar system and all it resources the technology is just waiting to do so.

And by the way your going back to the fact it was started in the late 1950s with 1950s technology but so what my friend it we dust it off today we would used current technology in it design.

Beside we happen to had reach the moon with the same technology base and strangely the post shuttle program have more in common with Apollo then otherwise.

Oh well I think that we had run this thread to it end.