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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.

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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 and 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.

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2024/04/17/medusa-deep-space...

Would they? Why not just shape your ship like a big torus so as you fly the bombs go right through your central axis?

I think there were big reflectors in the book, but it's been years since I read it. It's the sail that would need to be toroidal and huge. I guess the better point is that, if you can always maneuver the bombs at EXACTLY the right point relative to the sail and they are are perfectly uniformly spherical, and you can orient the sail perfectly before hand, then you can balance on top of the nuclear pin and don't need a stabilizing concentric force.

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