20 metre NASA Orion

Mars arrival

In Mars orbit

This is the 'last chance' Orion nuclear pulse vehicle proposed to NASA in the 1960s. A larger design with a 20 metre pusher plate, as opposed to the 10 metre plate of the 'baseline' design. This vehicle can deliver 50 people to Mars for a 450 day mission. Performance of the vehicle was nominally 16 Meganewtons of thrust, with a specific impulse of 3150 seconds. Ultimately it was never built, due to the changing climate in NASA at the time. This was a fun exercise in modeling, tricky sometimes due to the scarcity of good diagrams and references.