The insane USAF space battleship that almost got built - Project Orion Battleship

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Published 2022-10-30

All Comments (21)
  • @enigma6482
    The Orion Space Battleship idea has a lot more in common with, "The Expanse" series, than it does with Star Trek.
  • @killman369547
    Fun fact there is an even more insane version of the Orion's propulsion system. It's called the nuclear salt-water rocket engine. It basically harnesses the power of a continuous nuclear detonation to produce hilarious amounts of thrust.
  • @AubriGryphon
    I learned about the Orion drive from Niven and Pournelle's sci-fi book Footfall, where humanity builds an Orion-type battleship called Michael to strike back against an alien force that holds the orbital high ground. Forget 5" guns, they pulled the 16" main guns off of the USS New Jersey!
  • Forgot to mention this earlier but from a pure tonnage/size perspective it’s more of a destroyer than a battleship. The role is also more that of a cruiser
  • @stefaneer9120
    My grandfather was a Star Trek fan from 1962 until the 90s, because he was really interested about the technology and the message behind the story of the series.
  • It's scary, but as long as it was built in space or delivered to space via rocket booster, the radioactive particles from the explosions would disperse relatively quickly thanks to gravity/solarwind/etc.
  • I always liked the orion project with nukes because how stupidly insane it was. Even a mind boggling 8 million ton monster was proposed with a 400 meter pusher plate for interstellar voyages Just crazy, as at orions, the bigger it was, the better it got.
  • Aliens: we come in peace Humans: We don’t *Proceed to nuke the planet out of the solar system*
  • @jdiluigi
    Cold war era concepts were awsome. for every 100 concepts we would get 1 test bed/prototype. And they would mostly be canceled because of cost. In the end we were left with stealth and the internet😁
  • @IshijimaKairo
    I hear Casaba Howitzer, I get really excited. Simple as that.
  • This spacecraft reminds me of the Realistic Space Warships made by artists on Twitter. Just that the propulsion needs booms.
  • @Intrepid17011
    I mean, the original NX01 only had 85 Personel while being much bigger. So, 120 is a good Number, still, must be quite cramped in there.
  • @ReddwarfIV
    Casaba Howitzers use the nuclear shaped charge aimed at a blast plate to create a particle beam. I assumed that was why you mentioned them, since it's similar to phasers, but then you confused them with bomb-pumped X-ray lasers for some reason.
  • @jdiluigi
    3% speed of light is almost 9000km per second...Not to shabby.