Project Orion

NuclearSpace.com have posted a Project Orion Gallery that shows the possible alternate history if nuclear powered spaceflight had gone ahead when originally intended. Admittedly, there is a fair degree of Cold War rhetoric in giving the bomb sizes the ships are carrying ... but it is an interesting glimpse of where things might have gone.

More interesting of course is contemplating what President Bush's renewed funding of nuclear spaceflight is like to bring us in the near future. Imagine a spacecraft taking off with virtually no weight limitations, and a much, much cheaper cost per ton of cargo than is currently attainable with chemical boosters.

Personally my bet is that the next big 'dot-com' ('dot-bomb'?) investment phase will be biotech, and the one after that will be space exploitation.