Nuclear cargo launcher?

Question

The manhole cover of one of the nuclear detonations in the '50s was launched into space due to the blast.... My idea was to bore a 1km+ tunnel, place a small nuclear weapon at the bottom with a cargo "bullet" held about halfway up. The acceleration would kill people but it would be fine for cargo... Anyone care to add any ideas, point out flaws, please, please point out flaws!!! Would it work?!?!

The nuclear device required would be very small, around 5 kt, which the army has plenty of (out of date of course) the area around the blast that would be vaporized is 50 to 100 meters so at 500 meters away the cargo is safe.

Underground nuclear tests produce very little and localized fallout which is why they are still legal and above-ground tests are not.

Also the cost to launch the space shuttle is 450 million dollars and can only carry 50,000 lb of payload into orbit.
The high of the cost of nuclear weapons is in the equipment, facilities, expertise and nuclear material, america has all of these already.

Answer 1

What you're describing is a "space gun" - see the link below. Whatever your cargo is would need to be pretty tough.

I think the biggest problem with your idea is the use of nuclear explosions for the launch. Public opinion would definitely be against it because of the risk. I'm not sure that using a nuclear device wouldn't actually turn out to be more expensive than using a conventional rocket.

Answer 2

Peaceful uses for nuclear weapons would be awesome. This certainly would be a wonderful application for it. It seems that with a large enough blast chamber, the force of the blast could be released slow enough to cause a soft initial acceleration.

The problem is, public opinion. Back in the day, scientists who worked on our weapons programs tried to get two ideas using nukes for peaceful purposes off the ground. Both ideas were killed by public opinion. Very poorly informed public opinion.

The two projects I am aware of were the Orion space craft, which used the smallest nuclear devices ever designed to provide pulse blasts to propel a ship. The other was the use of nukes to dig channels like the Panama Canal. This would have done the work of digging the canal in a very short time.

The Orion project, if it were left to it's conclusion would have put men on mars by now. There is a book about it in book stores now. It's available on amazon as well. It was more than just a thought experiment, the scientists involved made a working model powered by plastic explosives and tested it in San Diego.


Will

Answer 3

I had a similar idea to propel our own nuclear waste into the sun to dispose of it. But what would stop the blast from vapourising the cargo? Being heavier, it would have far more inertia that the manhole cover, i.e. it would absorb far more energy from the blast and consequently be destroyed. Also there would be no way of containing the 'muzzle flash' - huge amounts of contamination being poured from the mouth of the gun into the atmosphere. Perhaps the blast could drive a piston, and the exhaust be contained in the 'chamber' for disposal elsewhere. But do we have materials or the engineering capability to produce a piston strong enough to contain the force of an explosion powerful enough to drive a container into space? I don't think so.