Project Casaba-Howitzer was a 1960s-era study into the use of nuclear weapons as the drivers for intense beams of plasma for use in space warfare. The name comes from the casaba melon, a variety of honeydew. The concept got a second lease on life during the Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s.
About Casaba-Howitzer in brief
Project Casaba-Howitzer was a 1960s-era study into the use of nuclear weapons as the drivers for intense beams of plasma for use in space warfare. The basic concept grew out of work on the Project Orion spaceship concept, which studied nuclear shaped charges. The name comes from the casaba melon, a variety of honeydew, because the lab was on a melon kick that year, naming various projects after melons and having already used up all the good ones. The concept got a second lease on life during the Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s, but details are lacking.
The design for Project Orion originally used small hydrogen bombs whose explosion ejecta was captured on a pusher plate, a large metal plate mounted on shock absorbers. A conventional hydrogen bomb includes two stages; the primary is an atomic bomb normally based on plutonium, while the secondary is a mixture of fusion fuel and various boosters.
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This page is based on the article Casaba-Howitzer published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
