Catching up on my reading : the Orion bomber section is fascinating !
Strategic Weapon Delivery AKA raining nuclear warheads onto the nation that attacks us. This would require a full blown 12-meter Orion engine, because nuclear missiles are very heavy. And because you want to carry as many as you possibly can.
The wet mass was 6,800,000 kg (15,000,000 lbs), of which 136,000 kg (300,000 lbs) was payload. Stack height with the solid rocket boosters was 88 m (290 ft) (cluster of seven 156-inch solid rockets). At an altitude of 76.2 km (250,000 ft) and a speed of 3,100 m/s (10,000 ft/sec) the 12-meter Orion engine uses its 4,300,000 N (970,000 lbf) of thrust and 3,670 seconds of Isp to get the rest of the way to its patrol orbit. At this point it would still have a delta-V reserve of 23,000 m/s (75,000 ft/sec) for further maneuvers.
These mass ratios seem very poor for standard Orions, but I suppose that's because they include the booster rockets. And heck, it's still got enough delta-V to go on a jaunt around the Solar System if the crew get bored.
The crew will number 20 or more. A semi-closed ecological system will be used to permit a six-month tour of duty, with an emergency capacity of one year. It would require about 1 megawatt of onboard power for ship systems. The interesting details about the weapons loadout are either not defined or classified. They are not in the report at any rate. Drat!
Defensive weapons include decoys and antimissile weapons. Defensive weapons are carried because bombers are the enemy's prime targets. The enemy knows that every single strategic weapon a SSSWD carries is a mushroom cloud with their name on it.
The nukes could be launched in either of two ways. [1] warheads could be mounted on missiles, launched from deep space, and guided to their targets. [2] the Orion bomber could use its 23,000 m/s of delta-V to enter a close hyperbolic flyby of Terra and release the warheads when near Terra.
The second option means the Orion bomber has to go into harms way. The up side is it can use its awesome amount of delta-V to deliver the MIRVs ballistically. And it probably can deliver the warheads to the target much quicker than any missile. One can just imagine the enemy generals freaking out at the sight of a three-hundred-ton spacegoing ICBM-farm dive-bombing you at hyperbolic speeds on a trail of freaking nuclear explosions while machine-gunning your continent with city-killer nukes.
But perhaps the most fascinating section of all is not on the performance on this doomsday weapon, but on how much effort was put into its research :
General Power was not out there alone. He had the full support of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Curtis E. LeMay. Writing in a 1962 letter to Power, he said, “I share your views regarding the potential of ORION.”[5] Nor was it just talk: both the SAC commander and the US Air Force Chief of Staff were willing to put their money where their mouth was. In 1962, funding for the SEOB and Orion propulsion development together accounted for $1.36 billion (over $10 billion in 2014 dollars), or 18 percent of the total Air Force space development budget for fiscal years 1963–1967, as requested by LeMay in his Air Force Space Program.[6]
Fascinating. Terrifying. Gloriously mad.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns2.php#orionbomb
Fascinating. Terrifying. Gloriously mad.
ReplyDeleteIndeed so. And if history had taken another turn, we would have had these monsters in the 1970s, plying the space ways.
The EMP from the Orion would done enough infrastructure damage without the 'rain of nukes'.
ReplyDeletemark wollschlager
ReplyDeleteI've seen figures that since the Orion propulsive charges are only a couple of kilotons (instead of the megatons used in EMP calcs), the range of the EMP damage is only about 276 kilometers from the detonations.
Which means it will not reach the ground (unless you are doing something risky like using an Orion drive to lift off from the surface of Earth)
projectrho.com - Engine List - Atomic Rockets
Winchell Chung Wow, very cool page.
ReplyDeleteChock full of my ( adolescent ) fascination with spaceflight and all things atomic. I spent many hours poring over AEC booklets about NERVA, and other nuclear propulsion systems as well as spaceship designs beyond the NASA reality of the 1960's.
I stopped following it in the late 1970's as the bright shiny of college and the demands of advisors steered my interests away.
It lives on as , perhaps, the only real way to get around the solar system.
EMP way out there not so much of a problem, I was reacting to the image of the Orion driven SEOB diving towards the target under thrust.
mark wollschlager
ReplyDeleteThank you for your kind words.
And realize that is just one page out of the 120-odd on the website