Thats why I only propose a single launch. It reduces the risk even further. Life is not about eliminating all possible risk anyway but balancing it. You must weigh up the risk and benefits. Over a million people die every year from car accidents. I don't see a mad rush of protestors bombarding the traffic department with demands for such automobiles to become abolished. Why not? Because we believe that the cost is superceded by the right to own a car. Back in the 60's it was estimated that an Orion launch might kill 10 people around the world from cancer given to them by the fallout. This was for a launch straight off the Nevada desert floor with no attempt to control the residual radiation. It would have sucked tons of dirt up through the fireball and irradiated it. I don't support that kind of a launch. What I propose is a launch with every kind of radiation reduction method we can apply. Something as simple as building a thick steel launchpad or a sea platform eradicates that groundburst completely. Something like 99.9999999999% of the fallout is never created. There is only bomb material, atmospheric dust and water vapour to contaminate. More radioisotopes would get pumped out of a coal plant in one day. Further reductions can be accomplished by using specially designed bombs. With weapons the fallout is of no concern. They are designed to kill. Pulse units aren't. It is perfectly reasonable to expect we can make them a lot cleaner. Zero fatalities. We could launch from an isolated region like Antarctica to eliminate any immediate threat to life in the unlikely event of something going wrong. Orion has so much power it can go straight up through the atmosphere without any orbital trajectory. It would be gone in minutes.
http://www.projectorion.com
None of this prevents us from building an Orion without pulse units.
Who said anything about NASA? I wouldn't trust those clowns to build a Go-Kart.