Orion Rising An Orion’s Arm future history image I’ve long had this image in my imagination, an Orion rising under thrust, fortunately the current phase of discussions, in regards to my Orion’s Arm future history project, lent itself to this composition, a Martian Trader rising vertically from its launch facilities on the surface of Mars. This is a follow up to my previous image: After The Leaving … Approaching Contact Inspiration for the Martian Traders spacecraft is a hand-rendering by Poul Anderson of the Orion spacecraft from his novel "Orion Shall Rise," sketch and letters of authenticity secured by Scott Lowther are available on his Unwanted Blog. Link: Orion Shall Rise The notion of an Orion capable of vertical or horizontal launch and landing intrigued me. Paul Anderson’s concept (which differs in some details from mine) sports tri-cycle arranged landing-gear; turbofan jets for controlled horizontal flight-assist, along with chemical rocket assist for take-off. My design does not descend to a roll-out landing, but instead slows to a powered hover (at point of stall) and makes a touchdown (in horizontal orientation) riding thrust from metallic-state hydrogen rockets re-directed to three vectored belly thrusters (hidden in this view) take-off from this orientation would be the reverse of this process. Paul Anderson’s design (while admittedly somewhat fantastical – but not improbably so) bares features in common with the large manned fly-back boosters designed for the SPS program – these were fully the length of a Saturn V with body diameter and wingspans which would have dwarfed a C4 Galaxy – the canard mounted turbofan engines positioned forward for extended cross-range flight and power-assist directional control are in line with NASA thinking in regards to those behemoth boosters. Such vehicles fit the category best expressed by the Naval slang term “Kludge” meaning an inelegant combination of technology (usually hurriedly assembled in time of war or national emergency) intended to address via brute-force a specific and urgent need – the Martian Trader is intentionally such a “kludge.” The vehicle is several orders of magnitude larger than the aforementioned fly-back boosters. It is an interplanetary, heavy payload capable Orion, horizontal landing to accommodate loading/unloading freight operations. Winchell Chung’s Atomic Rocket Posterous recently posted an article describing high ISP metallic-state hydrogen fueled rockets. Article Here. I’ve adapted the concept to power the terminal descent and take off rocket system of my Martian Trader. The fuel efficiency and high-order thrust these might lend struck me as a good intermediate step between the powerful (but dirty) open-cycle gas core nuclear rockets used on the Martian Settler descent craft and the advanced gas core nuclear light bulb engines used on the Martian Terraforming vehicles. Vehicle Dimensions. Length (Nose Cone to Pusher Plate): 400 FT. Lifting Body Hull Lateral Span: 200 FT. Lifting Body Hull Ventral/Dorsal Elevation: 150 FT About the background image. Original available here: First Mars Image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRISE took this first test image from orbit on March 24, 2006, from an altitude of 2,489 kilometers (1,547 miles). Credit: Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech This is a cropped selection of the original, which I have filtered and color adjusted in Photoshop. All models are my own Bryce creations. As always thank you for your interest, thoughtful comments, and encouragement.