A version of this idea was mentioned in one of the Three Body Problem books. There, the bombs were pre-positioned along a path and detonated sequentially like dominos, with a vehicle riding the blast waves.
It is more similar to the Medusa method. Lots of ideas have been proposed. One problem is getting the nukes prepositioned (and they won't easily stay in one spot!) with chemical rockets is quite challenging (rather than carrying them launching them along the way) and also they would actually need to be set in groups of 3 to provide balanced forces along an axis, or alternately along a parabolic helix to compensate for directional errors.
I've thought that if this idea is picked up it would have to be in space. Testing the rocket on the surface of the moon (point the plate straight up) would probably have been necessary anyway. Ordinary chemical rockets can be tested on the Earth's surface, this concept, not so much.
This is among the reason I've thought nuclear waste should be disposed of in space. Send the stuff onto the moon; if future lunar inhabitants want to mine it for plutonium in the naturally radiation-soaked landscape that is the lunar surface, let them.
Article briefly talked about delivery, which is tricky to do precisely at best of times, but didn't really mention how to address delivery into a nuclear blast. Hundreds of meters behind the craft about once a second doesn't seem like it would be enough time for the blast to clear so would get in the way of sending a new capsule backward. Anyway I'm sure it's just an implementation detail
Wild cowboy ideas of yore. Will we ever be able to make it safer to use on earth or would we save that for a moon base -get to the moon and from there blast away with these atomic fahrting machines…
With hindsight being 20/20 and all, it always makes me laugh at how 1950s pro-atomics a lot of things seemed to be. Yes, it was the new, like AI is today so everyone was all about it. Yet there never seemed to be any concerns of the downsides of things like the pesky nuclear waste or fallout. Looking back at films and magazines, the feel of TFA and Fallout are not out of place which is part of what makes them good.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2024/04/17/medusa-deep-space...
https://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day....
https://idlewords.com/2014/07/sana_a.htm
This is among the reason I've thought nuclear waste should be disposed of in space. Send the stuff onto the moon; if future lunar inhabitants want to mine it for plutonium in the naturally radiation-soaked landscape that is the lunar surface, let them.
You don't say.
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But they sure love the new Michael Jackson movie!