Experiments are being developed to shock compress metal foils in the solid state to study the material strength under high compression. The x-ray drive has been characterized and hydrodynamics experiments performed to study growth of the Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability in Al foils at a peak pressure of about 1.8 Mbar. Pre-imposed single mode modulations with an initial wavelength of 10–50 &mgr;m, and amplitude of 0.5 &mgr;m show growth. Variation in the growth factors may be a result of shot-shot variation in preheating of the Al sample due to emission from the plasma in the hohlraum target. ©2000 American Institute of Physics.