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Without question, many problems would have to be resolved before an ORION craft (nuclear propulsion via explosive nuclear devices) could be launched either from earth's surface or from orbit around earth. However, the technology is much further advanced than posts so far have reflected. The real problem is marshalling political will, not the technical side.

Actually building large numbers of nuclear devices suitable for use in ORION is not a critical issue. We already have tens of thousands of nuclear devices in the world's armories, so the expense of creating a new series of devices to launch ORION could be reduced markedly by recycling old weapons into new peaceful explosives. However, the cost of production for highly enriched fissile material is falling drastically, with new technology from improved centrifuges to atomic vapor enrichment using lasers. There will be plenty of relatively cheap fuel.

The expense or danger of testing new devices has been overstated. Today, accurate computer codes go a long way toward eliminating physical tests of the necessary devices before launch, and any such testing would be conducted in space or deep underground. This portion of the development program is unlikely to be significant. ORION's "fuel" will prove much cleaner than anyone so far has intimated.

Actual damage to the world's environment from launch of an ORION vehicle would be relatively slight. The actual damage done by all the world's atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons from 1945 to today has been negligible (discounting the actual use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at terrible cost). An ORION launch would be much cleaner than that historical program. Anti-nuclear nut cases have blown the possible environmental effects of all nuclear technology far out of proportion to actual experience.

Some form of nuclear propulsion is certain to prove a necessary component of our interplanetary program in the future. ORION offers the obvious advantage that we already know (essentially) how to do it.

I have no idea how we might contain or eliminate all the Luddites who would react to an ORION program with hysterical phobia. But we need not spend our time discussing the needs for mass public education and psychiatric aid to the distressed idiots who raise these false objections. Effort spent on further development of ORION at this stage yields valuable spin-off technology whether we ever build an ORION vehicle or not. Count on the technology to sell itself if the answers found by the scientists are sufficiently attractive.