Darpa Project Orion (1958) - Theoretical 8 million ton spacecraft the size of a small city.
Darpa Project Orion (1958) - Theoretical 8 million ton spacecraft the size of a small city.
Darpa Project Orion (1950-60s) >Project Orion was a study conducted in the 1950s and 1960s by the United States Air Force, DARPA, and NASA into the viability of a nuclear pulse spaceship that would be directly propelled by a series of atomic explosions behind the craft. >Non-nuclear tests were condu...
There's a great documentary online, on most documentary websites and YouTube, that talks about this project.
Link?
Not who you asked, but I found this, which might be the one.: https://youtu.be/znmZeEycRwE?si=T0v3FHdJe4oFndgN
It's an hour long and has the BBC logo at the start so it should be decent at least. Not watched it yet, but I will be :-)
That’s not the size of small city.
Edit: apologies. I don’t think that hit quite like it meant to. I’ll delete the offensive part because it doesn’t really sound very nice.
The biggest design above is the "super" Orion design; at 8 million tons, it could easily be a city.[25] In interviews, the designers contemplated the large ship as a possible interstellar ark. This extreme design could be built with materials and techniques that could be obtained in 1958 or were anticipated to be available shortly after.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
[25] Dyson, George (2002). Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship. New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 978-0-8050-7284-6.