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Comment by marktangotango | Hacker News Reader

There was a classic science fiction story with a twist on this idea; a low tech species was about to be discovered by a more advanced species. And according to the rules of the more advanced species, any planet that wasn't capable of space travel would become a client or vassal, and a planet with space travel would be seen as a peer. The protagonist built a pusher style rocket using an explosive, and launched the lightest person he knew into orbit, who happened to be his girl friend.

I keep thinking this was a Larry Niven story, maybe someone here is familiar?

Edit; another classic story was the novel Footfall by Niven and Pournelle which featured launching the USS Missouri into orbit on an Orion style pusher to battle the invading aliens.

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replying to all... The story you're thinking of is King Davids Spaceship by Jerry Pournelle. It IS a co-dominion story (so same universe as The Mote in Gods Eye w/Larry Niven)

A few other uses of Orion in fiction that I am aware of:

The Ship 'Michael' (as in avenging angel) from Footfall (Again by Niven and Pournelle).

And the ship from Orion shall rise by Paul Anderson.

A CBC Miniseries featuring a (faked) Orion derived interstellar ark supposedly launched in the 60's and the people that have been living on it for almost 40 years.

> A CBC Miniseries featuring a (faked) Orion derived interstellar ark supposedly launched in the 60's and the people that have been living on it for almost 40 years.

I think it was from SyFy. It was so bad it could only be SyFy.

Could be a good murder mystery, if it were not ruined by the whole fake ship idea.

Yes, it was on SyFy, but was a CAD co-production so aired on CBC here.

This one I believe:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries)

You have to rate a show like this relatively if you are watching on a network filled with crap. It was not bad for a SyFy show!

> Could be a good murder mystery, if it were not ruined by the whole fake ship idea.

Not quite what you are thinking, but you may enjoy Aniara:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7589524/

> Footfall by Niven and Pournelle which featured launching the USS Missouri into orbit on an Orion style pusher

Yes, there was an Orion. No they didn't launch the USS Missouri. The ship was called Michael and featured, among other crazy weaponry, X-Ray lasers of the SDI type, i.e. some material (ruby?) pumped by a nuke. The nuke would destroy the material, but in the process get it to lase X-Rays. Heck, if you're using nukes for propulsion, might as well do that as well.

Maybe they repurposed the guns for something?

I distinctly remember some dialogue that there was some fairly rough welding of thick steel plates going on, none of the ultra-fine tolerances of traditional rocket engineering.

An orion spacecraft's best efficiency is a ship the size of millions of tons.

Yeah, you don't need to cross the T's on that as much.

I very much have a soft spot for Footfall. Sending up a battleship kludged into an Orion style ship to battle alien invaders is just so cool.

I haven't read that book in 30 years, but the description of experiencing the launch from inside the craft was so succinct and evocative I still think about it from time to time.

"God was knocking and he wanted in bad."

One of my favourite lines ever! Note, it wasn't from the perspective of inside the craft but rather the towns people huddled in a bunker in Bellingham.

"King David's Spaceship". I believe it was by Niven, but I'm not sure.

"King David's Spaceship" aka "A Spaceship For The King" by Jerry Pournelle

It certainly is that book.

The wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David%27s_Spaceship

It's been a long time since I read it... but the specifics of that part of the story:

> Back in Haven, Dougal's men used the acquired knowledge to build a primitive crewed spaceship, adopting a low-tech design of Robert Goddard—a rapid firing cannon using high-explosive shells detonating behind the ship to provide propulsion (but which might blow up the ship). Because the ship would not be airtight, only members of MacKinnie's company (who still had their space suits) could pilot it, and because it would only be able to carry a minimal payload, Graham (the lightest of the company) volunteered and was chosen as pilot. Before the launch, MacKinnie proposed to her, and she accepted. As soon as Prince Samual's World was unified, and in the presence of unsuspecting Imperial witnesses, Graham's ship was launched and achieved orbit, although it could not re-enter the atmosphere (meaning that the Imperials had to rescue Graham). King David then immediately requested that Prince Samual's World be admitted to the Second Empire as a self-governing world capable of crewed space travel, not as a colony.

That doesn't sound part of Niven's Known Space canon.

However, 'Footfall' by Niven and Pournelle does have an Orion, as does Invisible Sun, by Charles Stross.

Nothing obvious in [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stories_featuring_nucl...

It was a Niven / Pournelle mashup. Also, Lucifer's Hammer is a fun read I recall.

Speaking of sci-fi, project orion/nuclear propulsion is also featured in Marko Kloos' Frontlines series (though not in the first book if I remember correctly)

https://www.markokloos.com/?page_id=1859

The last book of the Remembrance of Earth's Past series (Death's End), also features a similar concept. They just send a brain into space though and use sails to capture the energy of the nuclear blasts.

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