Orion was named after the astronomical constellation also known as the hunter. Probably because from the get go the Orioneers were hunting for funding to maintain their research. For some crazy reason nobody from the airforce to the newly formed NASA wanted anything to do with a rocketship that fired atomic bombs out of its ass. The concept was simple enough in principle. It spat out nukes like an atomic bomb machine gun in its wake. These bombs would then drive a pusher plate nailed onto the back of the vehicle. Using a conventional rocket chamber to try and "contain" a nuclear detonation had been dismissed as impossible. Physicist Professor Ulam summed up the engineering challenges of containing a nuclear blast quite succinctly in his letter to the team leader Freeman Dyson in august of