Top Ten Causes of death

Interesting data

Year Heart Cancer vasc resp Diab flu liver Acc  Suic.Hom.
1960 559   193.9 177.9 12.5 22.5 53.7 13.3 63.1 12.5 5.2
1961 545.3 193.4 173.1 12.6 22.1 43.4 13.3 60.6 12.2 5.2
1962 556.9 193.3 174   14.2 22.6 47.1 13.8 62.9 12.8 5.4
1963 563.4 194.7 173.9 16.5 23.1 55.6 14   64   13   5.4
1964 543.3 193.6 167   16.3 22.5 45.4 14.2 64.1 12.7 5.7
1965 542.5 195.6 166.4 18.3 22.9 46.8 14.9 65.8 13   6.1
1966 541.2 196.5 165.8 19.2 23.6 47.9 15.9 67.6 12.7 6.5
1967 524.7 197.3 159.3 19.2 23.4 42.2 16.3 66.2 12.5 7.5
1968 531   198.8 162.5 20.7 25.3 52.8 16.9 65.6 12.4 8.1
1969 516.8 198.5 155.4 20.9 25.1 47.9 17.1 64.9 12.7 8.3
1970 492.7 198.6 147.7 21.3 24.3 41.7 17.8 62.2 13.1 9
1971 492.9 199.3 147.6 21.8 23.9 38.4 17.8 60.3 13.1 9.8
1972 490.2 200.3 147.3 22.8 23.7 41.3 18   60.2 13.3 10
1973 482   200   145.2 23.6 23   41.2 18.1 59.3 13.1 10.2
1974 458.8 201.5 136.8 23.2 22.1 35.5 17.9 52.7 13.2 10.5
1975 431.2 200.1 123.5 23.7 20.3 34.9 16.7 50.8 13.6 10.2
1976 426.9 202.5 117.4 24.9 19.5 36.8 16.4 48.7 13.2 9.2
1977 413.7 203.5 110.4 24.7 18.2 31   15.8 48.8 13.7 9.2
1978 409.9 204.9 103.7 26.3 18.3 34.5 15.2 48.9 12.9 9.2
1979 401.6 204   97.1  25.5 17.5 26.1 14.8 46.5 12.6 9.9
1980 412.1 207.9 96.4  28.3 18.1 31.4 15.1 46.4 12.2 10.5
1981 397   206.4 89.5  29   17.6 30   14.2 43.4 12.3 10.1
1982 389   208.3 84.2  21   17.2 26.5 13.2 40.1 12.5 9.4
1983 388.9 209.1 81.2  31.6 17.6 29.8 12.8 39.1 12.4 8.4
1984 378.8 210.8 78.7  32.4 17.2 30.6 12.7 39.8 12.6 8.1
1985 375   211.3 76.6  34.5 17.4 34.5 12.3 38.5 12.5 8
1986 365.1 211.5 73.1  34.8 17.2 34.8 11.8 38.6 13 8.6
1987 355.9 211.7 71.6  35   17.4 33.8 11.7 38.2 12.8 8.3
1988 352.5 212.5 70.6  36.5 18   37.3 11.6 38.9 12.5 8.5
1989 332   214.2 66.9  36.6 20.5 35.9 11.6 37.7 12.3 8.8
1990 321.8 216   65.5  37.2 20.7 36.8 11.1 36.3 12.5 9.5
1991 313.8 215.8 63.2  38   20.7 34.9 10.7 34.9 12.3 10.1
1992 306.1 214.3 62    37.9 20.8 33.1 10.5 33.4 12.1 9.6
1993 309.9 214.6 63.1  40.9 22   35.2 10.3 34.5 12.2 9.8
1994 299.7 213.1 63.1  40.6 22.7 33.9 10.2 34.6 12.1 9.4
1995 296.3 211.7 63.9  40.5 23.4 33.8 10   34.9 12   8.6
1996 288.3 208.7 63.2  41   24   33.2 9.8  34.9 11.7 7.8
1997 280.4 205.7 61.8  41.5 24   33.6 9.6  34.8 11.4 7.3
1998 272.4 202.4 59.6  42   24.2 34.6 9.5  35   11.3 6.7
1999 267.8 202.7 61.8  45.8 25.2 23.6 9.7  35.9 10.7 6.2
2000 257.6 199.6 60.9  44.2 25   23.7 9.5  34.9 10.4 5.9
2001 247.8 196   57.9  43.7 25.3 22 9.5    35.7 10.7 7.1
2002 240.4 194   56.3  43.7 25.4 22.7 9.3  35.3 10.6 5.9
2003 232.3 190.1 53.5  43.3 25.3 22 9.3    37.3 10.8 6
2004 217.5 184.6 50    41.8 24.4 20.4 8.8  36.6 10.7 5.6
2032 0     184.6 50    41.8 24.4 20.4 8.8  36.6 10.7 5.6

Icarus 1968

MIT professor Paul Sandorff gave his class of graduate students a task: suppose...Icarus was instead going to hit the Earth... the

force of 500,000 megatons... pulverizing a rock the

size of Icarus would require a 1,000 megaton bomb...There was no way it could be done in the short time available....
What the group decided to do was to take six Saturn V rockets then in production, and with only minimal modifications ... The first launch would have to take place by April 1968, only a

year away, and five more launches would have to follow at two-week increments...

Early Orion Posts

Thrust Into Space

Date: 16 Dec 1981 21:50:29-PST
From: decvax!utzoo!henry at Berkeley
Subject: Project Orion and relatives

If anyone is interested in the details of nuclear pulse propulsion,
possibly the best place to start is the lead paper in the August 1979 issue
of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society: "Nuclear Pulse
Propulsion: A historical review of an advanced propulsion concept". It
discusses everything from the original concepts to the recent schemes
based on beam-ignited microexplosions. About 1/3 of the 25-page paper
is the best technical (as opposed to project-history) discussion of Orion
I have seen, including an attempt at an analysis of the rather vague vehicle
descriptions in "The Curve of Binding Energy". The 97-item bibliography
might also be of interest.

Subject: Re: Reactors banned in NEO?
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 14:50:55 -0800
From: gwh@lurnix.COM
...
Nuclear bombs are banned, in any form, in space.
The test ban treaty saw to that. Which theoretically
nails down any "Orion" vehicles... 8-) As if anyone
would build one unless they were desperate enough to
violate a treaty anyway. Which is likely scienci fiction
not space-tech 8-)

-george

Date: 05 Dec 1981 2140-PST
From: Ted Anderson
Subject: Request for references on Project Orion
To: space at MIT-MC

MSG: ORION1 1
LEVIN@MIT-MC 12/05/81 16:25:45 Re: Project Orion
A recent rerun of Cosmos extolled the virtues of Project Orion.
I am interested in finding more information about its performance, design
and failings. I would appreciate any pointers to review articles or government
reports. Replies to Levin@MC

Date: Sun, 1 Mar 92 18:34:44 EST
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu
To: UC369801@UMCVMB.missouri.edu, jfc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: dumb really dumb big booster idea
Cc: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu

Propellant costs are low, but there are structure costs proportional
to propellant mass and volume and structure is not cheap. However,
fuel tanks cost less than engines and it takes probably takes less
tank mass to support explosives than liquid fuel.

I think chemical explosives have less energy than H+O.

TNT is about 4.2 MJ/kg. H2 + O2 (stoichiometric) is 13.4 MJ/kg.
Even LOX + hydrocarbon is much better than high explosives.

An Orion-style rocket with chemical explosives sounds quite
impractical. The mass overhead for the shock absorbers would be
large, and the launcher for the explosive packages would have to be
much larger than for the nuclear version.

http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/bowery.txt

Reply-To: mordor!rutgers!trout.nosc.mil!pnet01!jim
Date: Sat, 9 Jul 88 12:55:47 PDT
From: mordor!rutgers!pnet01.cts.com!jim (Jim Bowery)
To: crash!space@angband.s1.gov
Subject: Ron Paul's Libertarian Party Space Policy

Dale Amon presented me with a copy of Ron Paul's space policy and I felt
it appropriate to post on the net, especially since Dale claims to have
contributed to this policy and is available for discussion of it on
the network. Here it is:

======================================================================

Ron Paul's Space Policy
Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate

Time after time NASA has developed capabilities at great expense then
discarded them: a space station larger than the Soviet MIR, a heavy
lift vehicle competitive with the new Soviet Energia, a nuclear engine
twice as efficient as the space shuttle main engine, and a well-tested
Earth-Moon transport system.
...
We must also demand a revision or understanding to the 1967 Outer
Space Treaty so individual property rights are recognized. If
there are no implementing protocols for property rights within a
specified time limit we should withdraw from the treaty entirely.
In any case, we should immediately open a land office and accept
claims of Americans to specific pieces of land, subject to occupancy
within fifteen years.

Back in the late 1950's a project called Orion seriously considered using
small nuclear explosions to power a spacecraft. The lifting capacity
would have been vast, measured in thousands of tons instead of
the miniscule abilities of today's mightiest rockets. This brute-
force approach was simple enough to be considered feasible 30 years ago.
Unfortunately, the idea was shelved by the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.


http://groups.google.com/group/alt.history.what-if/browse_frm/thread/3088fa8293ce95d3/b03194979d6ea722?lnk=st&q=utzoo!henry+orion&rnum=4&hl=en#b03194979d6ea722
No, Orion was not "available" in 1951. In his book *Adventures of a
Mathematician* Stanislaw Ulam says he and C. Everett cooked up the
idea around 1955.

2. Henry Spencer Jun 8 1994
Herbert F. York's "Building
Weapons, Talking Peace" (I think that's the title). He was the unnamed
man mentioned in Dyson's account, the one making the funding decisions.
He basically thought Orion was a *very* long shot, with a lot of major
unsolved problems.

How efficient is Orion?

The question comes up. Also on the web. And blogs.

The are four types of efficiency to consider.

1- Most simply; payload fraction, the part of the launched mission that is useful.

    a) Orion - 40+% is common for easy missions.
      i)  880 Ton test vehicle 34%: 300 tons to 300 mi orbit
      ii) 4000 Ton Interplanetary
          one)   40% 1600 tons to orbit
          two)   30% 1200 tons to Lunar landing
          three) 20% 800 tons to lunar surface and back
          four)  20% 800 tons to mars orbit and back
          five)   5% 200 tons to Venus orbit then Mars orbit then Earth orbit.

      iii) Advanced Interplanetary 10,000 tons
          one)   61% 6100 tons to orbit
          two)   57% 5700 tons to Lunar landing
          three) 53% 5300 tons to lunar surface and back
          four)  53% 5300 tons to mars orbit and back
          five)  45% 4500 tons to Venus orbit then Mars orbit then Earth orbit.
          six)   13% 1300 tons to Enceladus and back

     iv) 10m 1963 Orion Design from Ga-5009
        300 day Mars mission from earth orbit and back 103,300 ft/sec
        6.4%: 1145 mt gross 72.8 mt payload

      v) 10m 1963 Orion Design from Ga-5009
         450 day Mars mission  97,355 ft/sec
         8.3%: 73 mt payload 880 mt gross

     vi) 20m 1963 Orion Design from Ga-5009
         450 day Mars mission  72,850 ft/sec
         26%: 300 mt payload 1141 gross


    b) Shuttle - Cargo 1.6% (LEO) to 0.8% (ISS) , non cargo missions do a  
      little better.

    c) Apollo can be broken down into fundamental tasks, that contribute to the
       total payload. Oversimplifed the payload fraction is 25/3000 = .83 %, this
       combination is invalid, but the breakdown
       will be useful when looking at energy.

         i) Place the 15 metric ton Lunar Module on Luna
         2) Move the 5 metric ton Ascent Stage to Lunar orbit.
         3) Return the 5 metric ton Command Module to earth.

    d) Viking -  632,970 Gross mass
         i) 2328 kg Orbiter in LMO  : 0.36 %
        ii) 572 kg Lander on Mars      : 0.09 %

    e) Voyager 1 -  0.114 % 721.9 kg /  632,970 Gross mass

2- ISP - A measure of efficiency developed early in rocket research.

Project Orion - Compared to other high performance options .

3- Energy efficiency - Especially apealing to children of the seventies.

    a) Project Orion - A detailed analysis of the 880 ton Orbital Orion Test Vehicle. 
       450 KT  yields 4.87 kt. of orbital energy. 1.66 KT of cargo energy. 
       Efficiency is therefore .37% percent.

    b) Shuttle - The external tank starts with 1.2 Kt of , the SRB's with 3 for  
       a total of 4.2 Kt. The ISS cargo energy is .11 Kt, for an efficiency of 2.5%.

    c) Viking - The 572 kg Lander on Mars has .007 Kt more potential energy than
       before launch. The 2 metric ton orbiter has 0.03 Kiltons of extra energy.
       Launch fuel:  530 Tons mixed, energy to be calculated.

    d) Voyager 1 - Solar Altitude 14,919,000,000 km, v 17,147 m / sec
       mass 721.9 kg, total potential and kinetic energy added by mission: .19 KT
       Launch fuel:  530 Tons mixed, energy to be calculated.

4- Cost efficiency - Most complicated, but most important.
Dyson 8 million ton Super Orion was as efficient as 5 cents per pound.

Relationships and examples to be calculated...

----------------
Constants

From:               To:                [m/s]             MegaJoules/KG

Earth surface       Low Earth Orbit     9300             43
Low Earth Orbit     GTO                 2500
GTO                 GEO                 1500
GTO                 Earth escape         700
Earth escape        Low Lunar Orbit      700
Earth escape        Mars Transfer Orbit  600
LEO                 Mars surface        4800
LEO                 Solar escape        8700
Lunar Lunar         Lunar surface       1600
Mars surface        Low Mars Orbit      4100
Mars capture orbit  Mars low-energy      900
Low Mars Orbit      Phobos Transfer      900