Mars Settlement Project Orion Launch An Orion’s Arm future history project image. In between expanding visualizations of different era’s, I’ve been re-imaging some elements along my future history timeline – this is my latest. Initially I had not endeavored to create a render of the Mars Settler’s spacecraft launch and constructions site – the construction site image is still in progress, a complex scene rich with details. The six hundred foot tall, three hundred foot in diameter, vehicles are constructed in modular sections, assembled much in the same way we assemble large sea going vessels in Navel shipyards – in this case a seven hundred foot deep shaft substitutes for the dry-dock. The 30,000 ton Orion launch vehicle stands on a circular platform which is raised or lowered, as needed, as construction progresses. The first hundred vehicles are unmanned cargo vehicles with self guided autonomous landers. These are launched in advance of the manned craft, launched as completed, in groups of five. Surrounding construction buildings (rolling gantry cranes, and other specialized hoists and lifts, ect.) are broken down and hauled on to the next site before launch -- least they become clouds of flying shrapnel. Here you see five of the vehicles, each the size of a sixty-story office building, rising into the sky. This would be in the decade before the Year Zero mark on my future history timeline (see link below). The initial charge is a kiloton of HMX (or other chemical explosive) loaded in the open shaft beneath the vehicle – this lofts the Orion several hundred feet into the air before the first 1.5 KT nuclear charges are fired. Future History Timeline Context Link: Orion’s Arm Future History Timeline. Related Images: Aero Braking Syria Planum Landing Rare Flight test footage of Orion can be found here in an excerpt of the BBC documentary To Mars by A-Bomb. I also highly recommend the entire seven-part documentary, part one here: Project Orion- To Mars by A-Bomb-Part One. From my original image post: The challenge: Soft land one million tons of freight and 1000 settlers on the surface of Mars. A payload containing the necessary equipment and stocks of seed and frozen animal ovum required to maintain yearly harvest along with the tools required to construct the infrastructure of an industrial settlement – arriving ten thousand tons at a time in individual landing craft launched via 110, single stage, earth surface-launched nuclear fission initiated pulsed plasma rockets. The intent: to establish a permanent human settlement. The men behind the effort are known only as “The Working Group.” They have no other name. The effort is independent of any government – as it must be. For decades they lay groundwork for their effort, their labors only barely concealed, hidden away in plain sight in locations where no one noticed or gave their activities heed. The settlers are visionaries, men prepared to lay destiny at their feet and risk everything in an effort to build a new world -- a world where free men may labor in their own interest, for their own benefit limited only by science and the laws of nature -- not by the edicts, demands, or mandates of any predatory group of activists, bureaucracy, or collective of other men. Composition Notes: Terrains are cris333’s Klendathu and Tectonics Arathi Peaks No. 3 re-textured. Warehouse is a Google SketchUp Pro model. All other models are my own Bryce creations. As always thank you for your interest, thoughtful comments, and encouragement.