On 10/20/05, Harry Veeder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If it is a really big asteroid I doubt a small warhead would split it.
I think boring into the surface before detonation would result in a more controlled
thrust then a detonation on or near the surface.
Harry
leaking pen wrote:
penetration would be easy. an object that distant, just escape velocity would be enough to punch pretty deep, and with extra fuel, we can get missiles going pretty darn fast. its a matter of keeping the bomb intact, and the fact that penetration would shatter it, which would STILL be bad. we're talking moving, not blowing up.
On 10/20/05, Stephen A. Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Harry Veeder wrote:
> Such technology may be useful for diverting large asteroids on a
> collisions course with earth.
Unfortunately the "ground-penetrating" bombs are somewhat misleadingly
named.
They're really just big darts, heavy and pointed at one end, dropped
from a high altitude and carried down by gravity. They "penetrate"
because they've got a lot of momentum and a narrow point and they just
punch a hole in the ground.
In consequence there's no way we could get one to "penetrate" into an
asteroid in order to split it, for instance -- the bombs can't dig or
drill their way in and they don't have the kind of propulsion system
they'd need to let them push their way in. You'd need to start over
from scratch to design one that would "penetrate" an unearthly body.
> Harry
>
> leaking pen wrote:
>
> they ARE still researching battlefield nukes, and the elimination
> of fallout is being done by the fact that the ones being developed
> are ground penetrating bunker busters. make a nice glass cave
> thats self sealing.
>
> On 10/19/05, *Stephen A. Lawrence* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>
> thomas malloy wrote:
>
> > My friend was going on about the Bali bomb having been a nuke.
> > Nonsense, I replied, if it was, there would be radioactivity. My
> > friend countered that this was a clean atom bomb. My reply
> was, this
> > doesn't exist. Send me the URL, which he did, see
> > http://joevialls.net/nuke/bali_micro_nuke.htm . The first
> red flag was
> > Zionist plot, like the Israelis have nothing better to do
> than blow up
> > night clubs in the pacific.
>
> Right, well said.
>
> Real mico-nukes are hard to produce. The article mentions the
> object
> achieved "critical mass" -- no, not really, micro-nukes don't
> do that in
> the conventional sense. They need to be imploded to extreme
> density, as
> I understand it, by a perfectly shaped, very powerful trigger
> charge in
> the form of a spherical shell of high explosive which
> compresses the
> fissile material to extreme density, in order to get a chain
> reaction
> going without requiring a critical mass. (Critical mass under
> ordinary
> conditions is something on the order of 30 pounds of uranium,
> so says
> Wikipedia, and it makes for quite a good-sized "bang" -- not
> "micro" at
> all.)
>
> Research to produce really small versions of such devices
> would be a
> major project, and IIRC it has (supposedly) not been done: the
> U.S.
> abandoned research into battlefield nukes (which is what we're
> talking
> about here) quite some time back because it conflicted with
> the tenets
> of MAD. The Bush administration was going to restart said
> research, but
> I don't know if that actually happened; a lot of people found
> the idea
> pretty objectionable, because the existence of effective
> battlefield
> nukes would make it too easy to escalate a conventional war into a
> nuclear one. As long as the first nuclear step is a _big_
> step it's
> less likely that anybody will take it (or so goes the theory).
>
> As to radiation, it's really unclear how you'd go about
> eliminating the
> radiation burst when the bomb goes off. Like, really, _really_
> unclear. It's also unclear how you eliminate _all_ fallout,
> which is
> necessary if you are to fool everyone into thinking it wasn't
> a nuclear
> explosive when they examine the site afterwards. I mean,
> what's the
> uranium/plutonium/whatnot turn into that's totally
> non-radioactive?
> Breaks all the way down into iron, maybe? Hmmm...
>
> But really, you said it all, up top: Anyone who starts by
> asserting
> this is a "Zionist plot" is already lost in the weeds and I
> think we can
> disregard the rest of the page, because that initial assertion
> makes no
> sense.
>
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
--
"Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write" Voltaire
