Project Orion was an idea that cropped up in mid-60's US spacecraft research. The basic notion being to put your spaceship on top of a big steel plate, then let off a nuke under it. That sucker will MOVE. Then, as it starts to lose speed, let off another nuke under it, and so until you reach orbit.
This is a really good idea in some ways, a pretty small nuke gives off a lot of energy so you don't need to carry much extra mass, you can even launch them from the ground and carry no extra mass. It's really good apart from boring technicalities like what happens to the poor b******s underneath the launch site, what happens to all the other poor b******s on earth when the fallout starts dropping and who the hell you'd find crazy enough to sit on top of an upside-down wok and have nukes detonated underneath their arses. Nevertheless, the US having lots of nukes and still more crazy people, rumour has it that the Pentagon still keep the plans for an Orion on file in case they suddenly have a need to put something big in orbit. Barring an alien invasion we're fairly safe from anyone actually launching one of these things.
An Orion spacecraft featured rather heavily under the name of Michael in the rather excellent Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle novel Footfall. In which they launch one after the Earth is invaded by aliens.
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