Insane weapons projects that never made it past the drawing board

>>34214065
I'm not going to look it up, but before NASA top scientist had an idea to get to the moon/Mars by dropping nukes and riding the impact. Just nuclear exploding our way into space.

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>>34214083

project orion

It had a military derivative/variant that supposedly scared jfk so much he cancelled the whole orion family

>500 20-megaton thermonuclear missiles
>3 naval Mk 5-inch gun turrets
>six CASABA HOWITZER nuclear directed-energy weapons >numerous 20-mm close-in weapon

>>34214083
Everyone and their mom knows about Project Orion

>>34214083
Then they calculated the effects of releasing that much radiation into the atmosphere, and the amount of people who would indirectly die, and decided to stop.

>>34214109
>>34214112
>>34214119

Ok ok boys. Never said it was top secret. Op wanted ideas that never left the drawing board and I thought that qualified.

>>34214119

wrong.

> Freeman Dyson, group leader on the project, estimated back in the 1960s that with conventional nuclear weapons each launch would statistically cause on average between 0.1 and 1 fatal cancers from the fallout
>From many smaller detonations combined the fallout for the entire launch of a 6,000 short ton (5,500 metric ton) Orion is equal to the detonation of a typical 10 megaton (40 petajoule) nuclear weapon as an airburst, therefore most of its fallout would be the comparatively dilute delayed fallout. Assuming the use of nuclear explosives with a high portion of total yield from fission, it would produce a combined fallout total similar to the surface burst yield of the Mike shot of Operation Ivy, a 10.4 Megaton device detonated in 1952.

Project Pluto, the flying crowbar

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>>34214109
Orion gets more awesome the more you look at it.

>The Orion nuclear pulse drive combines a very high exhaust velocity, from 19 to 31 km/s (12 to 19 mi/s) in typical interplanetary designs, with meganewtons of thrust.[5] Many spacecraft propulsion drives can achieve one of these or the other, but nuclear pulse rockets are the only proposed technology that could potentially meet the extreme power requirements to deliver both at once

>Since weight is no limitation, an Orion craft can be extremely robust. An unmanned craft could tolerate very large accelerations, perhaps 100 g. A human-crewed Orion, however, must use some sort of damping system behind the pusher plate to smooth the instantaneous acceleration to a level that humans can comfortably withstand – typically about 2 to 4 g.

>The biggest design above is the "super" Orion design; at 8 million tonnes, it could easily be a city.[12] In interviews, the designers contemplated the large ship as a possible interstellar ark. This extreme design could be built with materials and techniques that could be obtained in 1958 or were anticipated to be available shortly after.

Nuclear pulse propulsion would have made all of our sci fi dreams reality half a century ago. Multi-million-ton superships cruising at appreciable fractions of c to establish colonies in the nearest star systems - we could have had it all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

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>>34214065
CONTINUOUS
VISIBLE
SONIC
BOOM

>>34214840
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

*autistic thunderscreeching*

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>>34214409
This is why I come to /k/. For as much shit posting and general autism I'm you can always find some pretty amazing stuff.

My additions: Horton H. XVIII and the Ku-Go

Horton: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_H.XVIII
>The Horten H.XVIII was a proposed German World War II intercontinental bomber, designed by the Horten brothers with pioneering features such as a flying wing configuration, turbojet engines and stealth characteristics. The unbuilt H.XVIII represented, in many respects, a scaled-up version of the Horten Ho 229, a prototype jet fighter. The H.XVIII was one of many proposed designs for an Amerika Bomber, and would have carried sufficient fuel for transatlantic flights.

>...the stealth and speed of the Hortens' flying wing jet designs would have made interception, prior to bombing, difficult and unlikely.[1] For instance, modelling suggested that hypothetical Ho 229 raids on England may have been undetectable by radar, until such a bomber was within eight minutes or 80 miles (129 km) of its target.[2]

So if the Nazi's had not gon and attempted to shit kick more nations then it was able to it would have built the WWII equilivent of a B-2 stealth bomber

>pic related

Ku-Go(death ray):
>Death ray "Ku-Go" :Ku-go aimed to employ microwaves created in a large magnetron.

Japan took Nikolai Tesla's death ray seriously ans made a working prototype; although it did not outright kill anybody, the magnetic force exerted was severe enough that people within 100 yd would become extremely nauseated and people within 50 could become incapacitated.

>>34214409
>would have made all of our sci fi dreams reality half a century ago.
No, full stop.

It was typical early naive optimism of relatively unknown new field, no doubt inspired by the same science fiction your uneducated ass talks of even 60 years later. A ship weighing as much as 20 000 International Space Stations? (or 400 000 Apollo CSMs since we're talking about that era) Firing nuclear engines in Earth orbit? No plans to smoothen and dampen the acceleration effects? No actual designs for a self-sufficient colony ship? It's all laughable, nowadays even (hard) scifi is better with details.

It is true that nuclear rockets uniquely have high specific impulse combined with high thrust, but that is not even the main issue here.

>>34217608
You must be fun at parties.