"God was knocking and he wanted in bad."
However, 'Footfall' by Niven and Pournelle does have an Orion, as does Invisible Sun, by Charles Stross.
Nothing obvious in [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stories_featuring_nucl...
The wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David%27s_Spaceship
It's been a long time since I read it... but the specifics of that part of the story:
> Back in Haven, Dougal's men used the acquired knowledge to build a primitive crewed spaceship, adopting a low-tech design of Robert Goddard—a rapid firing cannon using high-explosive shells detonating behind the ship to provide propulsion (but which might blow up the ship). Because the ship would not be airtight, only members of MacKinnie's company (who still had their space suits) could pilot it, and because it would only be able to carry a minimal payload, Graham (the lightest of the company) volunteered and was chosen as pilot. Before the launch, MacKinnie proposed to her, and she accepted. As soon as Prince Samual's World was unified, and in the presence of unsuspecting Imperial witnesses, Graham's ship was launched and achieved orbit, although it could not re-enter the atmosphere (meaning that the Imperials had to rescue Graham). King David then immediately requested that Prince Samual's World be admitted to the Second Empire as a self-governing world capable of crewed space travel, not as a colony.
Yes, there was an Orion. No they didn't launch the USS Missouri. The ship was called Michael and featured, among other crazy weaponry, X-Ray lasers of the SDI type, i.e. some material (ruby?) pumped by a nuke. The nuke would destroy the material, but in the process get it to lase X-Rays. Heck, if you're using nukes for propulsion, might as well do that as well.
Maybe they repurposed the guns for something?
I distinctly remember some dialogue that there was some fairly rough welding of thick steel plates going on, none of the ultra-fine tolerances of traditional rocket engineering.
Yeah, you don't need to cross the T's on that as much.
A few other uses of Orion in fiction that I am aware of:
The Ship 'Michael' (as in avenging angel) from Footfall (Again by Niven and Pournelle).
And the ship from Orion shall rise by Paul Anderson.
A CBC Miniseries featuring a (faked) Orion derived interstellar ark supposedly launched in the 60's and the people that have been living on it for almost 40 years.
I think it was from SyFy. It was so bad it could only be SyFy.
Could be a good murder mystery, if it were not ruined by the whole fake ship idea.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries)
You have to rate a show like this relatively if you are watching on a network filled with crap. It was not bad for a SyFy show!
> Could be a good murder mystery, if it were not ruined by the whole fake ship idea.
Not quite what you are thinking, but you may enjoy Aniara:
I keep thinking this was a Larry Niven story, maybe someone here is familiar?
Edit; another classic story was the novel Footfall by Niven and Pournelle which featured launching the USS Missouri into orbit on an Orion style pusher to battle the invading aliens.