 This prevents the plate from melting or ablating.One issue that remained unresolved at the conclusion of the project was whether or not the turbulence created by the combination of the propellant and ablated pusher plate would dramatically increase the total ablation of the pusher plate.According to Freeman Dyson in the 1960s they would have had to actually perform a test with a real nuclear explosive to determine this; with modern simulation technology this could be determined fairly accurately without such empirical investigation.