Ignorance is still one of the greatest problems the human race needs to face and address as a civilization if we are to survive. Salutations go out to Phil and people like him for addressing issues such as these and their attempts to educate people about this stuff.

Your tale of Thor reminded me of an old joke:

The morning after the orgy in Valhalla, a young Valkyrie awoke to find herself sleeping beside the God of Thunder. He stirred, and woke up a moment later, looked at her and proclaimed, “I AM THOR!”

The Valkyrie looked up at him and said, “You’re Thor? I’m tho thor I can hardly pith!”

Cassini still has at least a decade to go (hopefully more like 2 decades); why are they talking about it now?

A link to stories about Thor: http://www.geocities.com/medea19777/thor.html

It was a joke.

Flying out to hit Saturn would be an anomaly

Bah… It’s only a matter of time before the revolution, and we’ll silence them… all…

Don’t worry, Phil. We like you. Just, you know, go easy on the spiders.

Having been taken in by this stuff before I have a personal interest here. I hope I’m not being blinded by that. But I think I have something to offer. I was one of those Goobers but then “repented” as it were.

I too, do not like these Missions being slandered in this way. I also wonder how seductive this stuff is. How many people are being taken in by all this ? Do we have any numbers ? Not that one is too many. I myself was deceived at a very difficult point of my life when I was too upset by other issues to tell I was being manipulated. Reminds me of the CSI / Randi stories about “Psychics” preying on family’s who have lost children. Serious …. humour is helpful though

DJ Barney

> Don’t know a lot about the Orion’s engines, but why are we still going with old school fuel when we have a reliable source that will provide power AND propulsion?

Project Orion’s concept was to chuck micronukes in a shaped propellant casing out the back and then detonate them; the propellant would be vaporized into plasma and then push against a very large pusher plate attached to the ship through an extremely robust dampening system. This makes it, in essence, an external combustion plasma drive (compare to, say, NERVA or your typical golden-age-SF fusion torch drives).

The advantage to Orion is combining (in normal rocketry terms) high specific impulse with high thrust, so not only can you carry a lot of stuff for a given amount of propellant you can actually get places in some sort of decent time as well. I’ve run the numbers on an Orion-style spacecraft and done basic design work on such a thing, mostly for fun.

The disadvantage is that you’re chucking micronukes out the back. Let’s just say that Greenpeace, Earth First, Riverwatch, and other groups that range from honestly concerned to simply wahoo wouldn’t much appreciate it. Then there’s the problem of atomic proliferation: okay, so the military has thousands of nukes and a few Russian ones may have been stolen. Now presume that the operators of Orion drives have millions of microatomic propellant squibs with the pinnacle of miniturized ‘active components’ and needing to keep inventory on every single one when a disgruntled worker could get a /lot/ of money from any tinpot Third World dictator (or First World terrorist) for smuggling out just one…

And why do I constantly use “atomic” instead of “nuclear?” It sounds cooler, especially with the plosives to punctuate it. It’s a much heartier sort of word not prone to slurring (as opposed to “noocl’r”) or mispronunciation (the infamous “nucular”).

> When you consider some of the real things in this world, these theories pale.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto

Come on, what’s /not/ totally awesome about an autonomous atomic ramjet Mach 3 cruise missile that flies nape-of-earth and is designed not only to blow up itself at some point, but carry still more nukes it has to chuck vertically due to the low altitude and generally make the Soviet Union lifeless territory simply by flying around and letting a combination of supersonic shock waves and radioactive exhaust do the work? In the paraphrased words of Strong Bad, atomics can be used for good or they can be used for awesome. Project Pluto certainly classifies as the latter.

I agree. We’re so sorry HAL! Please forgive us!

Sorry for the inconvenience.