Project Orion and why the Bozanian did not attack Earth

Project Orion was an ambitious and may I say crazy project planned by American scientists in the 1950's. The project was a top secret  military space program planned to do a preemptive invasion of Bozania . But the US military would not admit this.  

The spacecraft was an ambitious project. Here are the specs from Wikipedia:

	"Energy Limited" Orion	"Momentum Limited" Orion
Ship diameter (meters)	20,000 m	100 m
Mass of empty ship (metric tons)	10,000,000 t (incl.5,000,000 t copper hemisphere)	100,000 t (incl.50,000 t structure+payload)
+Number of bombs = total bomb mass (each 1MT bomb weighs 1 metric ton)	30,000,000	300,000
=Departure mass (metric tons)	40,000,000 t	400,000 t
Maximum velocity (kilometers per second)	1000 km/s (=0.33% of the speed of light)	10,000 km/s (=3.3% of the speed of light)
Mean acceleration (Earth gravities)	0.00003 g (accelerate for 100 years)	1 g (accelerate for 10 days)
Estimated cost	1 year of U.S. GNP (1968)	0.1 year of U.S. GNP

Orion's diameter was 20 km; a Nimitz class aircraft carrier has a length of 330+ meters. The gross tonnage of the space ship was 10 million tons for the limited edition (did not know what limited means, did not read the whole technical thing about the project); a Nimitz class aircraft carrier has a displacement of around 100,000 tons.

It was supposed to be powered by 30 million-1 megaton atomic bombs. To imagine this power, the atomic bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima had a 13-18 kiloton yield. This meant that this spaceship's fuel could destroy an entire galaxy.

The project was estimated to cost a year of the United States' GNP. During the 1950's the US GNP was .35 trillion dollars, adjusted to today's US GNP, the project would cost around 15.27 Trillion Dollars. In figures that would be 15,270,000,000.000.000.000. Give or take a few zeroes.

Simple mathematics would show that the Orion spacecraft was not a simple ship, it was in fact a city--it could contain hundreds of aircraft carriers plus other smaller ships. It was a ship designed to battle it out with the Bozanian skull ship Sky Rook. 

When NASA intercepted a Bozanian transmission on its planned invasion of the planet Earth, top US scientists scrambled to assemble a spacecraft that could meet the challenge of an interplanetary invasion. Though thetechnology available then was crude, but it sure was powerful and destructive.

 It was planned that Orion would be propelled by Nuclear pulse propulsion. This meant that a series of atomic bomb would be set off in intervals to move the ship. This is like like putting thousands of extra-super-explosive-powerful dynamites under a house to lift it into the atmosphere.

Anyway, the initial take off alone would create a nuclear fall out and could fry, irradiate, sterilize and blind people for miles around. Though global warming was not an issues then, the series of atomic explosions could block the sun for months resulting to irreversible changes in the earth's atmosphere. 

The project was given initial funding but was later stopped when the Bozanian backed out from their planned invasion. A floating radio active city is too much for them to take. It was later found out that their horns contained their sperm cells and naturally were sensitive to nuclear radiation. Mere proximity to the Orion could sterilize a Bozanian, and Orion, even just it debris landing on Bozania,  it could sterilize the whole male population of the planet. The fear of a ship carrying 30 million atomic bombs scared the excrement out of them.

Orion was scrapped. The project was later declassified and though the information the military gave to the media was baloney, the Japanese knew the real score.