Project Orion: more classified, unpublished space nuke docs
George Dyson, our guest for this week's edition of the Boing Boing Boing podcast (link to BB post with podcast audio urls and story background) shares another batch of documents from Project Orion. This was America's abandoned plan to send nuclear bomb powered spaceships to other planets. Most of these documents have never before been published, and were classified for many years.
Images -- Above Left: Dyson explains, "This document is really provocative, it's from the Arabic edition of Project Orion, and includes this cutaway of a pulse unit that is still classified."
Above Right: Cutaway diagram of 10-m vehicle.
Lower Left: redacted USA version of the pulse cutaway diagram (the unredacted version in Arabic is shown above).
Link to complete set of scanned "Orion" documents, on Flickr.
Update: BoingBoing reader Samir M. Nassar emails a translation for the Arabic text (after the jump).
Xeni, Here is a translation of the "Orion" Project scan you posted. Translation Start:George Dyson replies:
Pulse unit of the Orion craft with a diameter of 10 meters: The output is approximately 1 kiloton and the weight is approximately 933 kilograms. Between 2000 and 3000 charges are enough for a roundtrip from Earth to Mars. When the bomb explodes the initial release of energy is contained in the radiation shield and directed toward the propellant.
Translation End.
I have tried to use the english labels instead of direct translation of the text to the best of my abilities.
The weight of the pulse unit is way, way less that 933 kg. Must be a typo somewhere. 93 kg is in the ballpark. They are watermelon size.Samir responds:
I am tickled pink that I even get to be corrected by George Dyson. In any case, regarding the translation. I should have been more careful. In the colloquial use in Palestine the unit of weight used means 3 kilograms. I used that. In the use of Modern Standard Arabic it means 'pound' so the modified translation should be:
Translation Start:
Pulse unit of the Orion craft with a diameter of 10 meters: The output is approximately 1 kiloton and the weight is approximately 311 pounds Between 2000 and 3000 charges are enough for a roundtrip from Earth to Mars. When the bomb explodes the initial release of energy is contained in the radiation shield and directed toward the propellant.
Translation End.
This still comes to about 141 kilograms.
