[jkaplan]

Maybe this is outside the scope, but one thing I’m really curious about —- what about the radiation!?

I’m guessing the payload could be sufficiently shielded and/or would just outrun it. But would there be any eventual issues with blasting out tons of radiation all over space wherever it went? In particular, this seems like a big problem during take-off from Earth…

[themadturk]

Calculations at the time (late 1950s-early 1960s) were that the radiation released by Orion in the earth’s atmosphere would lead to a single additional death from cancer each year. And isn’t there already a great deal of radiation in space?