All,
The Orion project was fascinating. Sort of bootstrapping your way to the stars, spacetravel by steam engine.

I went to the website to see what was being said and turned to the section on Fallout Fallacies, as that would worry me the most. After some discussion of how to limit fallout by airbursts and a graphite coated concrete launchpad (I can't comment), he turns to where to launch it from. I quote, "Launching from an extreme polar region which has no life would take care of any immediate threat to organisms within the blast area. Antarctica would be ideal. Nothing lives there."

My underlining. Hmmmmmm. From whales to krill, the Antarctic sea is one of the most diverse we have left, and the krill may be a potent CO2 sink too.

Sorry, Mr.Orion. There are no people (except scientists - who cares about them?) in the Antarctic, but a great deal of life.

John