Project Orion was the first engineering design study of a spacecraft powered by nuclear pulse propulsion, an idea proposed first by StanisÅ‚aw Ulam during 1947. The project, initiated in 1958, envisioned the explosion of atomic bombs behind the craft and was led by Ted Taylor at General Atomics and physicist Freeman Dyson, who at Taylor’s request took a year away from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton to work on the project. By using energetic nuclear power, the Orion concept offered high thrust and high specific impulse (10 to 1000 km/s[1]) at the same time; the optimum combination for spacecraft propulsion. As a qualitative comparison, traditional chemical rockets (the Moon-class Saturn V or the Space Shuttle being prime examples) provide (rather) high thrust, but low specific impulse, whereas ion engines do the opposite. Orion would have offered performance greater than the most advanced conventional or nuclear rocket engines now being studied. Cheap interplanetary travel was the goal of the Orion Project. Its supporters felt that it had potential for space travel, but it lost political approval over concerns with fallout from its propulsion.
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