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A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs , a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits.
The nuclear shaped charge concept was also studied extensively in the 1980s as part of Project Prometheus, along with bomb-pumped lasers. Using a combination of explosive wave-shaping and "gun-barrel" design, up to 5% of a small nuclear bomb could reportedly be converted into kinetic energy driving a beam of particles with a beam angle of 0.001 ...
Thomas Powers writes that "of course the bomb designers all knew the truth, and many considered Teller the lowest, most contemptible kind of offender in the world of science, a stealer of credit". [10] Teller became known in the press as the "father of the hydrogen bomb", a title which he did not seek to discourage.
The simplest way of building a fusion rocket is to use hydrogen bombs as proposed in Project Orion, but such a spacecraft would be massive and the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prohibits the use of such bombs. For that reason bomb-based rockets would likely be limited to operating only in space.
The hydrogen bomb, which carried the force of 50 million tons of conventional explosives, was detonated in a test in October 1961, 4,000 meters over the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago above the ...
Although the system appeared to be workable, the project was shut down in 1965, primarily because the Partial Test Ban Treaty made it illegal; in fact, before the treaty, the US and Soviet Union had already separately detonated a combined number of at least nine nuclear bombs, including thermonuclear, in space, i.e., at altitudes of over 100 km ...
Trinity, part of Project Manhattan, was the first ever nuclear explosion. The nuclear weapons tests of the United States were performed from 1945 to 1992 as part of the nuclear arms race. The United States conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests by official count, including 216 atmospheric, underwater, and space tests.
The bomb was hailed as a hydrogen bomb, and the truth that it was actually a large fission bomb was kept secret by the British government until the end of the Cold War. [135] [136] An Operational Requirement (OR1142) had been issued in 1955 for a thermonuclear warhead for a medium-range ballistic missile, which became Blue Streak. This was ...