Humans on Mars by 1970

[radtech497]

There is a point here that isn't often discussed with respect to space launches. That is: Getting a craft to orbital height and getting it into orbit are by no means the same thing; the former needs MUCH less energy to do it. Which leads to the possibility of getting an Orion ship off the ground (to around 300km, perhaps) and then lighting off the main drive. I rummaged around a bit and found this, which illustrates the concept:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...vsbVBy-shc

Lighting the Orion stage before it attains orbit might introduce rather widespread EMP effects in the region beneath the exhaust cone, at least while the ship is essentially vertical with respect to the Earth's surface. See http://ed-thelen.org/EMP-ElectroMagneticPulse.html for an illustration of these effects. The page at http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/02/project...s-emp.html also has some interesting data on the subject (among other aspects of Orion).

Radtech497