Project Orion Spacecraft

thingiverse

Model of the Project Orion nuclear pulse propulsion spacecraft concept from the early 1960s. The spacecraft would have been 10m (33 ft) in diameter and about 49m (160 ft) tall. It would propel itself to extremely high speeds by detonating nuclear bombs and catching the blast wave with the pusher plate. It would be capable of carrying a crew of 8 on a 6-month round-trip mission to Mars (current Mars mission concepts typically call for 9-month one-way travel time). A larger variant could carry a crew of 20 to Saturn and back in just a few years (the Cassini probe took 7 years to reach Saturn). I printed my model small to match the scale of some other rockets I've printed, but it will print best at a larger scale.