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Orion Starship - Ablative
Part of Orion Nuclear Pulse Vehicle
American nuclear pulse orbital launch vehicle. 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.

Status: Design 1968. Gross mass: 500,000,000 kg (1,100,000,000 lb).

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 kilogram of payload.



Family: nuclear pulse, orbital launch vehicle. Country: USA. Agency: General Atomic.

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