20LogRoot10
Since: Aug, 2011
Dec 19th 2011 at 8:37:02 PM
•••
Removed from the main page because I don't think it actually qualifies:
- Project Orion.
What if I told you that we had the technology to explore the entire Solar System at a extremely good "bang for your buck"? With Project Orion, it may have been a reality. With Orion, we could have sent a ship to Pluto and have it return within a year. A single large-scale Orion could have potentially set up a permanent moon base. Even Interstellar travel would have been (theoretically) possible, at least using unmanned probes. So why would this awesome technology not be used? It's like this: it would run by riding the shockwave of precisely timed A-Bomb blasts.
- Specifically it was the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 that killed Project Orion by banning nuclear detonations in space.
- And no-one would want to be around when this thing launched either.
- Even the nuke-happy United States of the 1950s - when nuclear first-strike was still a tactical option on the table for the United States Armed Forces - was a little leery of this one. Once the true horror of radiation sickness and atomic fallout became established in the popular imagination... yeah.
The links on this one are broke. Feel free to restore the entry if you've made it work without them or found more permanent ones:
- I offer The BATTLEMUG. Even after adding the cool of a pistol bayonet, it is still a bit overpriced.
- The Battlemug operates on the principle that no, you don't want to Pistol Whip someone with your gun, and it might break your gun. Okay, true, but if I don't want to pistol whip someone, why would I want to bash them in the face with that very same gun, only this time, with the barrel, where the chance of a) damaging the barrel or b) accidental misfire skyrockets?
Where would the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound go? I placed it under Electronics & Programming, but I'm not sure if Unsorted or Misc. or High Technology would be a better category.