robunos said:
on a related subject, do you have any info on the 'casaba-howitzer'
Let me put it this way: the only official bibliography of Casaba Howitzer I've ever seen compiled was itself classified.
i understand the continued secrecy surrounding CH, i believe it's still considered a viable weapon.
CH was, in effect, a modified atomic bomb. The likelihood of *ever* seeing anything remotely accurate about it declassified is extremely low. The original Orion pulse units were simply meant to be conventioan (albeit small) A-Bombs in a carfeully designed shell to help give some direction to the bombs blast; CH was a specially designed a-bomb meant to provide a directional blast right from its basic design. And those simple pulse units themselves are impressively classified: I have a few reports on them, and all the pages that might prove enlightening are blanked out.
my understanding has proved to be incorrect. in his book 'project orion', george dyson says that CH worked 'like an orion pulse unit backwards'. now my understanding of the working of the orion pulse unit is that the nuclear detonation vaporises the propellant slab incorporated into the pulse unit by means of the _radiation_, like the way the primary in a H-bomb ignites the fusion component. furthermore, it's the shape of this propellant slab that determines the behaviour of the expanding plasma cloud. in the case of an orion pulse unit, the propellant is shaped to give a comparitively gently expanding cloud, which impinges on the pusher plate, and drives the orion vehicle forward. from this, i inferred that the propellant in the CH was shaped in order to produce a high energy jet, not unlike a hollow-charge anti-tank warhead. it didn't occur to me that the nuclear device itself could be engineered to produce a directional blast.
Pure speculation on my part would have the CH bombs looking not much unlike a household garbage can. Consequently, to be used as weapons onboard an Orion spacecraft, they'd have to be either cannon- or rocket-launched. You couldn't simply set one off right next to the ship.
i appreciate that, i know the orion was to be strongly built, like a submarine hull, but even they aren't nuke proof,(not that we know of, ;D)