Operation Plumbbob
A test similar to the test of a pusher plate occurred as an accidental side effect of a nuclear containment test called "Pascal B" conducted on 27 August 1957. The test's experimental designer Dr. Brownlee performed a highly approximate calculation that suggested that the low-yield nuclear explosive would accelerate the massive (900 kg) steel capping plate to six times escape velocity. The plate was never found, but Dr. Brownlee believes that the plate never left the atmosphere (for example it could have been vaporized by compression heating of the atmosphere due to its high speed). The calculated velocity was sufficiently interesting that the crew trained a high-speed camera on the plate, which unfortunately only appeared in one frame, but this nevertheless gave a very high lower bound for the speed.
Read more about this topic: Project Orion (nuclear Propulsion)
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“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)