Nuclear bomb rockets

One of the crazier projects funded by the US government was a plan in 1957 to build a 4,000-ton spaceship powered by exploding nuclear bombs. A small group of scientists aimed to reach Mars by 1965 in Project Orion, long before the dream of NASA’s Apollo. One of those working on the project was physicist Freeman Dyson. His son George Dyson interviewed his father and all remaining participants, and got thousands of declassified documents to tell the whole astounding story in a remarkable book, Project Orion. Published to little fanfare in 2002, Dyson has re-released a self-published expanded version (2025) with new material, new documents and illustrations, full citations of his sources, all material that the original publisher excluded. This strange story has lessons for attempting (and funding) hairy, audacious seemingly impossible projects. It’s great historical storytelling, too. – KK