So ive been reading about project orion and it sounds like a great idea but it was shut down because people were worried about nuclear fallout in space but space is full of radiation naturally im sure that what little radiation we would add would be infintesimal compared to the vast amouts or radiation in space.
Yeah, that and the fact that the take off put like 105G's on your body, when normally a body can only take like 4G's. EDIT: "Since weight is no limitation, an Orion craft can be extremely robust. An unmanned craft could tolerate very large accelerations, perhaps 100 g. A human-crewed Orion, however, must use some sort of damping system behind the pusher plate to smooth the instantaneous acceleration to a level that humans can comfortably withstand – typically about 2 to 4 g." It's a great idea, if i was smart enough i would really like to try and restart a program like that. But I'm no rocket scientist.
I've thought a lot about this. Both widely used nuclear energy and the Orion project would be huge advancements for us. Although unfortunately after the Japan earthquakes, people are ever more worried by nuclear applications For now We'll have to keep using coal for energy, and chemical rockets which really keeps us limited to the inner most planets. Orion would make a speedy journey to some of our gas giants and their moons a lot more likely and feasible!