25 years from now sure. But what value would raw materials be in space currently? Need to have an assembly team up there, which no one has. Or a robot to assemble, which no one has. The concept or something similar will eventually be used for raw materials but we are not at that stage of space exploration where we can fabricate our structures in space

Nope. The Partial Test Ban Treaty bans atmospheric testing. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996, while it has never entered into force, has been signed and de-facto adopted by all nuclear powers except for India, Pakistan and North Korea. It "bans nuclear weapons test explosions and any other nuclear explosions, for both civilian and military purposes, in all environments".

No the g-forces wont exclude humans. A proper Orion craft has a payload section and a pusher plate. The pusher plate and the payload are separated by massive shock absorbers to minimize the forces exerted on the payload.

>Two shock absorber designs were explored. The first consisted of three donut-shaped gas-filled cushions, each one meter high, looking like a stack of tires. Six-meter high aluminum pistons rose from these absorbers. This system would limit peak G forces to 3 to 4 G's. But it would be a bumpy ride for the passengers. Therefore the second design was more complex but allowed the shock absorbers to operate in synchronization in order to further even out the G-forces. This would limit peak forces to 1.5 to 2.0 G's.

1.5 -2.0 Gs is less than the 6Gs of early rockets and the 3 of the shuttle.

$200k and radiation over an area, downwind from the fallout and environmental damage noticeable across the world. We didnt stop Orion strictly because of the treaty. If it had been viable (ie worth the environmental damage) we would have negotiated it into the treaty.

Orion’s $100k bombs never existed, it was a design objective that they’d have to achieve (and a very hard one) if they wanted it to be economically viable

Who told you this? Are we discussing Nerva/Heavy Orion, as proposed by Dr. Pournelle and Dr. Kingsbury? Yes they discussed quite a few multistage designs, yes the SatV was the obvious choice of system. No. They never got comfortable enough with the Murphy factor to move forward. There was no acceptable design when the treaty showed up.

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Yeah so your bomb accidentally has a yield 10% below predicted and now the payload will hit Paris...

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This attitude is exactly why you are getting downvotes.

The manhole example is a back of the envelope assumption that it reached orbit and an assumption it actually stayed a manhole. No one is arguing whether an explosion has enough theoretical energy to move a hypothetical point-mass to a certain altitude, people are arguing that you are overestimating the strength of materials.

Even if you got a chunk of raw materials like steel or water into space and plan to intercept them with starship you still have huge problems. The first one is that you need to be able to dock with the payload if you plan to adjust it’s orbit, and you aren’t going to be able to dock with a fused reverse-meteor of steel. You actually need the structure to survive.

You are also going to have to circularize it’s orbit which is not as easy as you’d think. Your “manhole” example is one thing, but if you’ve played kerbal literally even once you’d know that going straight up is not a good way to get into orbit. You are going to have to angle your trajectory so that the relative speeds of your intercept are more similar than a straight vertical shot, and that is going to take way more explosive power. Add on top of that the fact that you’d have to travel sideways through the atmosphere if you want to Rendezvous in a single impulse and you need exponentially more explosive to overcome drag, plus more mass to protect from the atmosphere, which requires even more explosives.

And none of this even mentions the extreme difficulty of hitting your ideal trajectory in a single impulse with no way to error correct. Yeah it’s mathematically possible in a simulation, but you need to be able to adjust for error in the real world. Changes in the wind or air pressure at a certain altitude will have significant effects on your final altitude and position which will make to miss your intercept.

This tech would be much more useful on the moon sending water back to earth. There is no atmosphere to fight and your chances of making the Rendezvous are probably higher because you could circularize a bit using atmospheric braking. You’ve still got lots of other problems that make it difficult, like getting the nuclear material to the moon which is exactly why a spin launch installation on the moon makes way more sense, but whatever.

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You could launch a solid chunk of titanium to the altitude of the ISS, sure, but that isn’t a “working solution.” You need “machines” to be able to interact with the other spacecraft. You need to move able to adjust your trajectory. You need to be able to reuse your launch site and not destroy/irradiate it every time you launch. You need to be able to stop once you get to altitude, or you need to be able to somehow punch through the atmosphere and overcome the “I need more mass to block the atmosphere but that means I need more thrust but that means I need more reinforcement but that means I need more mass…” problem.

I think you are falling into that trap where you have a neat idea and then feel personally attacked by anyone who points out flaws. That’s not how you solve engineering challenges. Instead of arguing with the haters and insisting “trust me bro,” I encourage you to do the math. Get on kerbal and demonstrate an ISS rendezvous using a single impulse and a starship. I’d watch that video, for sure. Do some research on the g-force ratings for modern docking adapters and explain how they would be able to survive your hypothetical launch. You’ll get way better results than arguing “nuh ah” with people and then complaining about being downvoted.