Orion Drive

An Orion Drive is a kind of Nuclear-Pulse Maneuver Drive used on some interplanetary or interstellar vessels. They are a type of Relativistic Drive/Reaction Drive or Impulse Drive.

Description

Orion Drives are a type of Nuclear Pulse Drive (NPD) that eject a stream of detonators which explode, producing a blast wave that presses against a pressure plate at the rear of the ship moving the ship forward in reaction. The pulsed pressure of the propelling explosions are smoothed out by Massive shock-absorbers. Orion Drives are specified by the type of detonation used for propulsion.

Orion Drive Variations

The Orion-1 (O₁) or "Fission Orion" utilizes fission or multistage fission-fusion detonators reacting against a massive pressure plate comprising approximately 10% of the ship's volume. A Fission Orion Drive produces significant radiation contamination as a byproduct of its operation. It is a TL–8-standard propulsion system.

The Orion-2 (O₂) or "Fusion Orion" utilizes a combination of nuclear dampers, induced fusion, and inertial compensators with a much smaller pressure plate to produce survivable thrust, with low to negligible radioactive contamination byproduct. It is a TL–12-standard propulsion system.

The Orion-3 (O₃) or "AM Orion" is a conjectural technology that is proposed to be the most advanced incarnation of the Orion Drive concept. It theoretically utilizes antimatter detonators, inertial compensators, and "ON-OFF" stasis fields in place of a pressure plate to produce survivable thrust, while producing no radiation or environmental damage. It is estimated to be approximately a TL–21 propulsion system.

• The Hybrid Orion-2bis (O_2bis) is a prototype device, utilizing antimatter detonators or antimatter-catalyzed nuclear detonators, inertial compensators, and a small pressure plate (instead of the more advanced and hypothetical stasis field) to produce survivable thrust, while producing no radiation or environmental damage. It is estimated to be a TL–18-standard propulsion system.

Other earlier developmental variations of Hybrid Antimatter-Nuclear Drive systems include:

• Antimatter Catalysed Micro Fission/Fusion Drive (ACMF Orion-2bis Drive). - Utilizes small quantities of antimatter to kick start a brief fission reaction which subsequently induces a fusion reaction in a D-T-U²³⁸ pellet.
• Antimatter Initiated Microfusion Drive (AIM Orion-2bis Drive), - Utilizes D-He³-U²³⁸ or D-He³-Pb²⁰⁸ pellets injected into an electromagnetically compressed antiproton plasma cloud, causing rapid fission to fully ionize the D-He³ into plasma and undergo fusion and become compressed by the potential well of antiprotons.

STL Drive Specifications

STL Drive Specifications (Starship Propulsion)

Category	Specifications	Remarks
Name	Orion Drive Orion-O1 (Fission) Orion-O2 (Fusion) Orion-O2bis (Hybrid) Orion-O3 (Antimatter)	TBD
TL	TL-8 TL-12 TL-18 TL-21	TBD
Drive Type	Reaction/STL	TBD
Velocity	TBD	TBD
Duration	TBD	TBD
Hazards	TBD	TBD
Physical Constraints	TBD	TBD
Geometry	TBD	TBD
Levels	TBD	TBD
Entry	TBD	TBD
Exit	TBD	TBD
Fuel	Fuel Pellets (Fissile/Fusible/AM)	TBD
Resource Requirements	TBD	TBD
Inventor	TBD	TBD
Characteristics	TBD	TBD

History & Background

Pulse Drives of various sorts and configurations have been proposed, and in some cases actually built, by many cultures and species over the History of Charted Space. A few such projects were in fact rather grandiose affairs built by those species which dared to reach for the stars, but who had not discovered the secrets of the Jump Drive. Such propulsion systems were immense versions of those described here, and have invariably included variations on the proposed but never built types of Interstellar Nuclear pulse propulsion vessels proposed in the ancient Solomani projects named Project Daedalus or Project Longshot, or even possibly such concepts as Enzmann starships).

Library Data Referral Tree

Please refer to the following AAB Library Data for more information:

Starships:

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Speed-of-Travel

• Speed of Travel

• NAFAL (STL) - (Not As Fast As Light) / (Slower Than Light)
• Light Speed (c)
• FTL - (Faster Than Light) - "Superluminal"

• Astronomical Unit (AU)

» Imperial Standard Astronomical Unit

• Light-second (ls)
• Light-minute (lm)
• Light-hour (lh)
• Light-day (ld)
• Light-week (lw)
• Light-year (ly)
• Parsec (pc)

» Solomani Parsec

» Vilani Parsec ("Deshi")

» Imperial Standard Parsec

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Impulse-Drives

• Spacecraft Drives (Interplanetary Drives)

• Reaction Drives:

• Reaction Rockets:

• R-Drive (Rocket Drive)
• O-Drive (Orion Drive)
• P_H-Drive (HEPlaR Drive)

• Impulse Drives:

(Field Drives / Propellantless Drives)

• Z-Drive (Lifter / <1.0 D)
• G-Drive (Gravity Drive / <10.0 D)
• M-Drive (Maneuver Drive or Thruster Plate / <1000.0 D)
• N-Drive (NAFAL Drive / <¹/₈ ly)

• Reactionless Drives:

• T-Drive (Reactionless Motion Thruster):

• Gyroscopic Inertial Thruster (GIT)
• Dean Space-Thruster Drive

• T_N-Drive (Reactionless Field Thruster)

• Deep Space Maneuver System (Advanced Gravito-Nuclear Thruster Plate) - ("Reactionless")

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Interstellar-Drives

• Starship Drives (Interstellar Drives)
  • N-Drive (NAFAL Drive / < ¹/₈ ly)
  • J-Drive (Jump Drive / > 100 D)
  • Alternative FTL Drives

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References

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Loren Wiseman. "Sublight Drives." Challenge 72 (1994): .
• Charles E. Gannon. Hard Times (Game Designers Workshop, 1991), 84.
• Frank Chadwick, Dave Nilsen. Fire, Fusion, & Steel (Game Designers Workshop, 1994), 72-73.
• Don Perrin. Starships (Imperium Games, 1996), 71.
• David Golden, Guy Garnett. Fire, Fusion & Steel (Imperium Games, 1997), 65.
• Marc Miller. T5 Core Rules (Far Future Enterprises, 2013), 328-331.