"Tim Ward" wrote in message
...

I know Niven & Pournelle had something
like that in Lucifer's Hammer, but that was an effort to throw off
alien
conquerors.

The book was "Footfall", not "Lucifer's Hammer". In the fictional
account, the city of Bellingham WA was scragged by the Orion-engined
takeoff.

BTW, "Orion spacevehicle" and "aviation.homebuilt" are not a close
match. ;-)