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Nuclear pulse orbital launch vehicle. Year: 1968. Family: Orion. Country: USA. Status: Design 1968. The ablative version of Dyson's starship would be smaller and faster then the heat sink version. It would have a mass of 100,000 tons unloaded and be equipped with 300,000 one megaton bombs. It would accelerate in ten days to 10,000 km/sec, a velocity of 1 parsec per century. It therefore could reach Alpha Centauri in 130 years and would cost only one tenth of a GNP, or $ 150 per kilogramme of payload. Manufacturer: General Atomic. Total Mass: 500,000,000 kg (1,100,000,000 lb).
Bibliography and Further Reading - Brower, Kenneth, The Starship and the Canoe, Bantam, 1979. ISBN: 0030391962. A meditation on the values and lives of Frederick Dyson, weapons scientist, father of the Orion nuclear pulse starship, and his son, who lives in the Pacific Northwest forest and builds canoes. More at amazon.com...
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