While I'd been aware of the Orion Spacecraft Project since watching the old COSMOS series, I never knew there was a proposed Battleship version until seeing this.
Quoting from the source page:
"The "piece de resistance" of the Orion development project was the Orion Battleship, a 10-story-tall spaceborne "doomsday" weapon that would carry more nuclear firepower than a nuclear submarine. Its proposed armaments included 500 20-megaton thermonuclear missiles, 3 naval Mk 5-inch gun turrets, at least six Casaba Howitzer nuclear directed-energy weapons systems and numerous 20-mm close-in weapons. Propulsion would consist of several thousand 5-kiloton nuclear pulse weapons (that would also serve as powerful EMP weapons if detonated in the upper atmosphere). Six "landing boats" were on board for use in crew transfer, resupply, emergency escape, etc.
When the Battleship concept (including a scale model) was shown to President Kennedy in 1963, JFK was reportedly so freaked out that he immediately cancelled the project altogether."
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