the resulting shock wave was 220,000 feet per second (67 km/s). The apparatus exposed to the detonation was completely destroyed, but not before useful data was extracted. In a typical Voitenko compressor, a shaped charge accelerates hydrogen gas which in turn accelerates a thin disk up to about 40 km/s. A slight modification to the Voitenko compressor concept is a super-compressed detonation, a device that uses a compressible liquid or solid fuel in the steel compression chamber instead of a traditional gas mixture. A further extension of this technology is the explosive diamond anvil cell, utilizing multiple opposed shaped-charge jets projected at a single steel encapsulated fuel, such as hydrogen. The fuels used in these devices, along with the secondary combustion reactions and long blast impulse, produce similar conditions to those encountered in fuel-air and thermobaric explosives. Nuclear shaped charges The proposed Project Orion nuclear propulsion system would have required the development of nuclear shaped charges for reaction acceleration of spacecraft. Shaped-charge effects driven by nuclear explosions have been discussed speculatively, but are not known to have been produced in fact. For example, the early nuclear weapons designer Ted Taylor was quoted as saying, in the context of shaped charges, "A one-kiloton fission device, shaped properly, could make a hole in diameter a thousand feet (305 m) into solid rock." Also, a nuclear driven explosively formed penetrator was apparently proposed for terminal ballistic missile defense in the 1960s. Examples in the media The Future Weapons program of the Discovery channel featured the Krakatoa, a simple shaped-charge weapon system designed by Alford Technologies for special operations deployment. The weapon consisted of a simple plastic outer shell, a copper cone and a volume of plastic explosive. This device was effective at penetrating steel plate at a range of several meters. See also Explosive lens High-explosive squash head M150 Penetration Augmented Munition References Further reading Fundamentals of Shaped Charges, W.P. Walters, J.A. Zukas, John Wiley & Sons Inc., June 1989, . Tactical Missile Warheads, Joseph Carleone (ed.), Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics Series (V-155), Published by AIAA, 1993, . External links 1945 Popular Science article that at last revealed secrets of shaped-charge weapons; article also includes reprints of 1900 Popular Science drawings of Professor Munroe's experiments with crude shaped charges Elements of Fission Weapon Design Shaped bombs magnify Iraq attacks Shaped Charges Pierce the Toughest Targets The development of the first Hollow charges