Casaba-Howitzer

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 primary releases an intense burst of X-rays that heat channel filler materials (believed to be similar to styrofoam) surrounding the secondary.

[2][3] For the Project Orion redesign, the team removed the secondary and replaced the channel filler with beryllium oxide, which is more opaque to x-rays.

[1] The idea behind weaponizing the Orion modules is credited to Morris "Moe" Scharff, who moved to General Atomics from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

[6] Development for weapon use is straightforward; for Casaba the tungsten was replaced with a lightweight material that would provide higher jet velocity, while at the same time thinning the plate to reduce the dispersion angle.

A Casaba-Howitzer weapon would be almost identical to this nuclear pulse propulsion unit. The explosive charge ablatively vaporizes the disk at the top, propelling the resulting plasma towards the target.