Joseph Friedlander had a brainstorm on how to launch the Wang Bullet (project Orion pulsed propulsion variant) from under the sea.
The core idea for the nuclear verne launch gun is simple though dramatic: Dig a kilometers deep shaft—a salt layer would be easiest to penetrate (some exist 3.5 kilometers thick) —build at the bottom a giant shell, from components lowered into place, layer by layer enclosing its internal payloads with external structures (such as a supporting sabot) and sealing the unit to flight-ready status. Place sets of guide rails around the perimeter of the shaft with ‘slippers’—metal contact shoes—touching the rails from the edges of the Wang Bullet. Finally, after all is in readiness, pump reaction mass through an access shaft under the sabot into a prepared chamber and place a thermonuclear explosive device in the midst of the reaction mass.
The reaction mass (in our conceptual model, water, but many other substances would work) not only becomes the propulsive hypersonic plasma and impulsive gas but also serves as an accelerative, radiation (boron included against neutron flux) and impact shield relative to the extreme violence of the blast chamber. So it is not the nuclear blast that directly accelerates. The blast acts on the propellant and filler.
Terms -
Nuclear Verne BlowGun - the entire system, the hole, the nuclear device, the cistern of propellant and the projectile
Wang Bullet - the projectile being launched
Friedlander Sabot - the base of the projectile
One of the biggest objections to the nuclear cannon concept has to be the idea of a radioactive hole left behind. It is an emotional feeling.
Suppose the launch tube and setup at sea costs $75 million, and the Wang Bullet and thermonuclear device all together, including launch and payload costs $200 million. That is less than a shuttle launch. But instead of 15 tons to orbit (the equivalent of 3 tons to the Moon) we are talking probably 1000 tons to the Moon. That is $200000 a ton to the Moon, or $100 a pound. The benefit would remain very low cost to launch material and payloads that are resistant to high G forces and no radiation in the atmosphere and no radiation in the ground. The sea would disperse the radiation from the underwater explosion. The underwater explosion will make it easier to prevent radiation from getting to the atmosphere.
* Nuclear bombs exist and there is no question that they work and there are thousands that have built, paid for and in storage
* There were tests which showed that nuclear bombs can launch heavy metal objects at high speed and the objects survive
* The system is taking material and using a nuclear bomb to provide the energy to make it into more energetic propellent. Chemical propellant maxes out at lower speed and energies. Nuclear take the same chemicals and ups the heat (100 million degrees instead of a few thousand) for more speed and energy
* the Ocean already contains 3.5 billion tons of Uranium
The current space capability versus the proposed system is the difference between starting a colony and industry with the supplies you can put in a pickup truck or what you can put into a container ship.
Nuclear effects would not get into the air, what will be in the water is safe, hundreds of times more supplies at one hundred times lower cost for space using technology that exists.
