With all the little publications I’ve written and illustrated, and all the years of blogging ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT political opinions and the like, it seems that at least *one* of my efforts will go down through the ages: my design for the Orion Battleship. We know to a fair certainty that such a craft was designed in the early 1960s, and that a mockup the size of a car was built; we know some of the components and features of that design. But other than that… we don’t know much. The overall size and configuration are unknown. So, fifteen years ago when I was working on an article for Aerospace Projects Review about large Orion vehicles, I went ahead and made a speculative reconstruction design. I did my best with what was available… and in the years since, nothing seems to have come out to refute the design. I do not contend that the design is an accurate reconstruction; I was never able to get in touch with anyone who knew the Battleship design first-hand to confirm my reconstruction. I could well be *badly* wrong, especially since the descriptions of the original design tend to be second-hand. One day we might find out for sure.
But in the years since I showed my design to the world, I’ve seen it recreated here and there. It seems to be the accepted Actual Design.
Huh.
Behold:
That second video uses a model based on my design, more renders of which are HERE.
A purchasable 3D printed, lower fidelity copy of my design on Etsy:
My renders – unimpressive even by 2009 standards – even made it into meme format:
If you want to see the Orion Battleship as I designed it in its original format, check out Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N2.
6 responses to “Orion Space Battleship”
Hey now, that is truly awesome sauce – congratulations.
If the ship is going to be in atmosphere long enough for it to be worthwhile giving the craft a bullet shape, perhaps it would make sense to enclose the shock absorbers in some kind of telescoping cylindrical fairing. In between nuclear pulses, how much atmospheric drag would be acting on the outer edge of that pusher plate? And would those shock absorbers do well if they were pulled backward as well as being compressed?
Your design, of course, shows what’s going on, which I take to be the main point of the exercise. But I suspect that in “real life” (whatever that is) those shock absorbers might be better off inside some sort of fairing.
The space around the shock absorbers is going to be an effective replica of hell. A fairing would be turned into confetti.
While the 4,000 ton Orion was intended for a ground launch, something like the Battleship would be lofted above the atmosphere via something like a Nexus, so the aerodynamics of the shock absorbers wouldn’t matter anyway.
A fairing would be turned into confetti.
Hmm. That’s very, very plausible. Fill enclosed space inside fairing with air, light the first bomb to take off, move plate forward with the blast, compress air inside fairing, burst and shred fairing …
Come to think of it, an easier solution to the problem might be to have the diameter of the pusher plate be slightly smaller than the diameter of the ship, so that the plate would be inside the shock envelope of the craft for the short time that atmospheric drag would matter. (If it would matter at all.)
A smaller pusher plate than ship means any blast going around the edge of the plate has a chance of striking the side of the ship. Suboptimal.
For a large Orion, aerodynamics is comprehensible at the “nose,” and pure chaos around the ass end. Probably no point in even trying. You’re brute forcing your way through the air with atomic blasts, and only going to spend a minute or two dealing with out out of the lifetime of your spacecraft. Given that it’s an Orion with the mass of a small naval vessel, it’s already built far more ruggedly than any air vehicle ever imagined. Your concerns with aerodynamics are going to be in the area of control, not survivability or reduced drag. That’s why the operational Orion vehicles I envisioned for my “Pax Orionis” series had a trio of all-moving canards near the nose. Computers would use them (and powerful thrusters) to keep the nose pointed int he right direction, and once out in space explosive bolts would blow them off.
Don’t forget the giant bomb Orion…that might be nice to include in this compilation.
Meat tenderizers can have a similar look.
I think for Mars you would jettison the pusher-plate/shocks to land flat…but if kept with inflatables to either side…it might look a bit like the US Capitol Building.
Start all over.