![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQ6h3aqqyCmw79vwcD23tGvTLPnoA67oMYMzVtb85cxfu/image.png)

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#### Check Out The First Post In This Piqued Miniseries: [Project Orion Part I - Riding Nuclear Bombs To The Stars](https://steemit.com/science/@dber/piqued-11-project-orion-part-i-riding-nuclear-bombs-to-the-stars)

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# It takes a certain type of scientist to work on something like Project Orion.

The initial concept is so intuitively outlandish that many people simply wouldn't waste their time, or risk their reputations, pursuing such an idea. *It's the rare scientist who would spend their energies working on this kind of project, and an even rarer one who would conceive of the idea in the first place.* 

**I want to go into detail about the people behind this project in order to highlight that this wasn't some fly by night, UFO conspiracy level "project". This was the real deal, with real players convinced they would build a real spaceship to take them to the stars.**.

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# The Starting Point - Stanuslaus Ulam and Frederick de Hoffman

The first to consider using nuclear explosions as a direct propulsive force were Frederick de Hoffman and Stanuslaus Ulam, the latter pictured to the left. These scientists, working in New Mexico in 1944, both worked on the Manhattan project and thought it would be possible to utilize the explosive power of a nuclear blast to propel a ship into space.

In part, they may have been inspired by Jules Verne's “From the Earth to the Moon”, an 1865 science fiction novel about a gun club whose members attempt to build a giant cannon in order to fire three club members to the moon.


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Ulam is perhaps most well known for his development of fusion nuclear weapons, specifically the “Teller-Ulam” design which yielded 10.4 megatons. Ulam eventually went on to work on Nuclear rockets, but he appears to be the first to theorize the use of nuclear pulse propulsion: which is to say, “blowing up small nuclear bombs behind a ship to push it into and through space.” He worked at Los Alamos until becoming a professor at the University of Colorado.

It was de Hoffman, however,  who fomented the founding of General Atomics. For most of his life, de Hoffman worked in furtherance of the peaceful use of nuclear technology, primarily nuclear power. Then, in 1970, he made a switch into biological research and was quite successful, joining the [Salk Institute](http://www.salk.edu/) and eventually becoming its president.

It was de Hoffman who hired Ted Taylor to head Project Orion in 1958.

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# [Ted Taylor](https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/23198)

Taylor worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1948 to 1956, with a focus on the miniaturization of nuclear fission bombs. He was famous for designing fission bombs with an eye to making them as small as possible while achieving maximal energy.

His experience in both miniaturization and shaping of nuclear bombs would play an important role in the development of Project Orion – specifically in the theory and design of the propellant charges.

Unlike de Hoffman, Taylor eventually soured on nuclear research – whether peaceful or otherwise. He strove, at the end of his life, to put the genie of nuclear power back into the bottle, so to speak – arguing against the proliferation of nuclear technology and apparently frightened by the ease of creating fissile weapons with a minimum of fissile material.

It isn't clear whether is was de Hoffman or Taylor who convinced Freeman Dyson to come work on the project. But Dyson eventually said of Taylor:

> He was the Columbus who never got to go and discover America. I felt that he--much more than von Braun or anyone else--was the real Columbus of our days. I think he is perhaps the greatest man I ever knew well. And he is completely unknown. [1]


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# Freeman Dyson

Far from unknown, the inimitable Freeman Dyson remains a famed, at times iconoclastic, genius. Born in 1923, Dyson's career spanned the majority of the 20th century and his influence has continued to leak into the 21st . During that time, he's touched upon a great many scientific topics. His primary focuses are physics and mathematics, and he has been influential in both fields.

Dyson's education spanned several universities, in both England and The US. He jumped from topic to topic and institution to institution, writing, along the way, several influential research papers and mathematical proofs. Early on he connected with some of the most famous scientists in modern history.

Dyson met Richard Feynman almost immediately upon arriving at Cornell in 1949 and then soon thereafter deciphered Feynman's, at the time, cryptic work on Quantum Electrodynamics, which earned Dyson the respect of Robert Oppenheimer and a lifetime appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study. Dyson worked as a theoretical physicist at the Institute until 1957.

In 1957, Dyson was convinced to come to General Atomic to work on Project Orion, and did so until 1961. Post Orion, Dyson's work spanned nuclear reactor design, theoretical physics, as well as a wide range of mathematical topics. For the more science fiction oriented reader, Dyson may be most familiar for some of his more outlandish theoretical ideas – like the [Dyson sphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere) and [Dyson tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_tree).

Despite receiving a boatload of science awards over the course of his life, and achieving global recognition and success, Dyson never actually earned his PhD. This, and his often [contrarian views](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/freeman-dyson-and-the-irresistible-2009-04-30/) have earned him a reputation as a maverick. **The fact that he spent four years working to launch a spaceship into and through space on a chain of nuclear explosions could be viewed as further support**.

Although originally a supporter of nuclear weapons, and obviously nuclear propulsion, in the last fifty Dyson has moved toward anti-nuclear positions, starting with a report he authored in 1967 as a military adviser to the white house, wherein he attempted to make an objective argument against the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam.

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# These are the scientists who conceived of and worked on Project Orion.

They were among the smartest, most capable individuals in the world, cumulatively responsible for helping to invent and revolutionize not only the field of nuclear science, but a broad range of fields both before and after taking part in Project Orion. Moreover, they surrounded themselves with a world class group of scientists at General Atomic whose names aren't even mentioned in this post.

#### These were no quacks – nor was this some fly by night operation. It was a real project, fueled by the intelligence and energies of some of the smartest people on Earth. And Dyson and Taylor were not interested in theory alone – they planned on building a functional spacecraft quickly and then riding it to the stars themselves. But before they could get airborne, they needed to design their fuel.

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# Next Time On Piqued: Orion's Fuel – The Compact Nuclear Bomb.

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# Support SteemSTEM - curation and support for high quality STEM related content on Steemit.

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Informational Soures:
[1][John McPhee, 1974 - *The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey Into The Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor*]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Taylor_(physicist)#Career
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/us/theodore-taylor-a-designer-of-abombs-who-turned-against-them-dies-at-79.html
http://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/ted-taylor
http://www.islandone.org/Propulsion/ProjectOrion.html
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED054967.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Ulam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_de_Hoffmann
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/07/obituaries/frederic-de-hoffmann-65-dies-physicist-and-salk-institute-chief.html
[Video On Freeman Dyson – Quanta Magazine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlaPLvETBug)
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/04/01/freeman_dyson_on_the_phd_degree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/freeman-dyson-and-the-irresistible-2009-04-30/

Photo Sources:
[1][By Uploaded by Georgewilliamherbert 10:59, 10 January 2007 UTC Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/ProjectOrionConfiguration.png)
[2][By Los Alamos National laboratory Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AStanislaw_Ulam.tif)
[3][Public Domain, via Wikicommons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_Jules_Verne.jpg)
[4][By Taken by Flickr user ioerror, Jacob Appelbaum CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Freeman_Dyson.jpg)