Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: mars01 on April 09, 2004, 02:02:48 PM
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I was watching the News and they were talking about a new small nuke under research to be delivered as a deep penetrating bunker busting bomb.
My first reaction is, great, we are building a nice small nuke that in the right hands would be perfect to take out a city. But then I guess that tech already exists.
What do you freaks :D think?
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Not a good idea:(
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Some bunkers were built to withstand 10 direct hits by 10 megaton Titan-2 warheads...
I don't think it's clever to joke with nuclear weapons.
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It's no joke, this is a Bush Admin approved R&D effort, with quite alot of money behind it.
They mentioned it's use would be against burried weapons and checmical bunkers as well as I guess anything else.
I also think this is a step backwards, but proponents say that we need to stay on the cutting edge so that we are ready and seriouse when the theats come along.
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Look at some of the links under my posting regarding Environmentally friendly nuclear missles for some interesting things done with nukes.
In fact, go up one level within the links and look at some of the history....interesting.
I believe a deep penetrating low yield tactical nuke for certain bunker busting might be a handy weapon to have in one's arsenal.
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Did getting out of the nuke treaty allow them to do this?
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Originally posted by mosgood
Did getting out of the nuke treaty allow them to do this?
I thought they got out of the ABM treaty, not nuke treaty.
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Originally posted by mars01
It's no joke, this is a Bush Admin approved R&D effort, with quite alot of money behind it.
They mentioned it's use would be against burried weapons and checmical bunkers as well as I guess anything else.
I also think this is a step backwards, but proponents say that we need to stay on the cutting edge so that we are ready and seriouse when the theats come along.
You mean against buried WMDs ? WOW ;)
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All of the above. Its designed to be a small very deep penetrating high destruction war head.
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There is something better in the works, part of a US plan to put weapons in space that can strike any targeg on earth within 2 hours notice.
They are 20 foot long tungston steel rods deployed from a space based platform . Thewy have no explosives, the impact along takes out the bunker.
Im at work, I'll get a link when I get home.... describes the US space planes, bombers and launch platforms. Designed to eliminate the need for foreign bases.
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Originally posted by NUKE
There is something better in the works, part of a US plan to put weapons in space that can strike any targeg on earth within 2 hours notice.
They are 20 foot long tungston steel rods deployed from a space based platform . Thewy have no explosives, the impact along takes out the bunker.
Im at work, I'll get a link when I get home.... describes the US space planes, bombers and launch platforms. Designed to eliminate the need for foreign bases.
Will it be called 'Satellite rain' -- as in the weapon from Syndicate Wars?
Intense idea, though, I'd love to see test footage if and when they choose to develope it.
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Surviving hits is one thing. they have to eventually walk outside that bunker and enjoy the radioactivity
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Ok guys, the premise behind these weapons is to take out hardened targets - yes and its a sound NOTION, but not a practical idea. What they are using are modified B-61 freefall bombs - basically with a hardened steel cap nose designed to penitrate into the ground.
NOW FOR THE PROBLEM....
IN order to keep the blast contained WITHIN the ground, the warhead is REQUIRED to PENITRATE upwards of 200 feet into the GROUND. As yet, no bombs have been able to get past 50 feet - so regardless if you had the yield dialed to .01 KT or 10KT, you STILL HAVE THE SAME amount of FISSILE material being blown up and contaminating the area.
YOU NEED that extra 150 feet of penitration into the ground inorder to destroy the underground complex AND CONTAIN THE BLAST within the ground cavity, because remember, the idea is not to destroy the underground facility by a high yield device - but by transfering the energy into a ground shock wave which destroy's the facility. Its exactly the opposite of using a 10 MT device to "dig out" deeply buried facilities - which would actually kill more people in the long term then if they had only used air bursts which are effective against cities and soft targets such as airfields, etc which can be destroyed with a 2PSI pressure differental.
For a brief review on the medical impacts of a thermonuclear detonation - continue reading an impact study I constructed awhile back.
Apocalyptic predictions require, to be taken seriously, higher standards of evidence then do assertions on other matters where the stakes are not as great. Since the immediate effects of even a single thermonuclear weapon explosion are so devastating, it is natural to assume -- even without considering detailed mechanisms—that the more or less simultaneous explosion of ten thousand such weapons all over the Northern Hemisphere might have unpredictable and catastrophic consequences.
A typical thermonuclear warhead of today has a yield of approximately 500 Kilotons (.5 megatons, a megaton being the explosive equivalent of a million tons of TNT). There are many weapons in the 9 to 20 megaton range in the strategic arsenals of the United States and former Soviet Union: the largest weapon ever having been detonated 58 Megatons.
Strategic thermonuclear weapons are designed to be delivered by ground-based or a submarine missile launching platform. The other method of delivery is by air breathing bombers to attack the enemy homeland directly. Many weapons with yields in the 10-20 Kiloton range (Roughly the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations) are assigned to “tactical” or “theater” weapons systems. Such systems are nuclear tipped Surface to Air Missiles (Russian S-200D: SA-5 GAMMON) and Air to Air Missiles (Hughes AIM-23 Falcon) designed to be used against bomber formations, Antisubmarine Nuclear Torpedoes, Nuclear Depth Charges (ASROC – Anti Submarine Rocket System) and artillery. It has been said that strategic warheads are often larger then their tactical counterparts…this isn’t always the case. IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles) such as the Perishing II and Russian SS-20 has sufficient range to blur the distinction between “Strategic” and “Tactical” weapons systems. Both classes of warhead are fully capable of being delivered via either land based ICBM’s (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile), SLBM’s (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile), and aircraft; as well as IRBM classes of missile. Nevertheless, there are around 18,000 Strategic Thermonuclear weapons and the equivalent of fission triggers in the United States and former Soviet Republics, with an amassed yield of approximately 10,000 megatons.
No one knows how many warheads would fall in a nuclear conflict. It seems plausible that even a “small” nuclear war would become impossible to contain before it spread to other countries of the nuclear club.
The adversary’s airfields, missile silos, naval bases, submarines at sea, weapons manufacturing and storage depot’s, civilian and military command and control centers, early warning facilities are the most probable targets.
While it’s often stated that cities are not targeted, many of the above targets are located around major population centers. Modern military war doctrine says that “war supporting” facilities are targeted. This includes the enemy’s power grid – transportation hubs, raw materials production facilities, roads, canals, railways, oil refineries, and radio and television transmitters.
PRELUDE TO APOCALYPSE
Any attempt to describe and measure the medical effects – the human death and injury-caused by even a single moderately large nuclear warhead over a United States City creates a paradox. On one hand, the nature and magnitude of the impact are within reasonable limits of precision allowed by the physics of the explosion. On the other hand, despite this apparent specificity, the consequences are unfathomable, for we are attempting to describe and understand an event that is without precedent in human experience.
Let’s make this very clear: Hiroshima and Nagasaki will not serve as precedents. The weapons used on those cities were much smaller then the nuclear weapons of today. Describing the effects of a single megaton explosion requires us to try and imagine 80 Hiroshima explosions at the same instant in one place.
The Fireball
At the moment of detonation, all of the energy of the nuclear explosion is condensed in a small superheated sphere of nuclear debris – at temperatures and pressures not unlike the core of the sun. It only takes less then 1/1000th of a second for this fireball to cool to 300,000 º Centigrade. The energy of the explosion, which is largely in the form of X-rays, transforms first into a brilliant flash of light – and then a pulse of thermal radiation that sets fires for miles around the hypocenter. In the case of an airburst over a city – the radioactive components of the bomb would rise with the formation of the fireball, high into the stratosphere. This causes other problems with long living radioactive fallout – which will be dealt with later.
In this case – the fireball from a one-megaton explosion grows to more then a mile in diameter in seconds, while forming a mushroom cloud over ten miles across punching through the atmosphere up to 70,000 feet MSL.
(http://[img]http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/204_1081546868_earthpenitrator.jpg)[/IMG]
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Prompt Nuclear Radiation
Associated with the fireball as mentioned before are the production of gamma rays and neutrons during the first few millionths of a second post detonation. Granted the atmosphere weakens the particles, this radiation is lethal out to approximately 1.7 miles. Within this distance, people close to the hypocenter of the explosion would be rendered unconscious within minutes. But for all intensive purposes – radiation at that close a range to ground zero would be of little consequence – for other by-products of the detonation are far more destructive.
Thermal Radiation
The thermal pulse is the first major medical effect of a thermonuclear detonation. When the device explodes, a great wave of heat, traveling at the speed of light is emitted from the fireball. This enormous pulse causes direct effects on humans in the form of flash burns to exposed skin. It should be noted that flash burns accounted for nearly 1/3 of fatalities at Hiroshima.
The severity of the damage to the tissue is directly related to the amount of heat given to an area in a period of time.
First-degree flash burns occur at 3.2 calories cm² and would be present out to a distance of 18 kilometers. First-degree flash burns are not serious, no tissue destruction occurs. They are characterized by immediate pain, followed by reddening of the skin. Pain and sensitivity continues for some minutes or hours, after which the affected skin returns to normal without scaring of any type.
Moving into 14 kilometers, we have Second degree burns occurring at 6 calories cm². Second degree burns cause damage to the underlying dermal tissue, killing some portion of it. This is characterized by intense pain and redness, which is then followed by blistering. Within a few hours, fluids would begin to collect between the epidermis and damaged tissue. Sufficient tissue remains intact however to regenerate and heal the burned area quickly, usually without scarring. The biggest problem would be broken blisters and their unique ability to provide possible sites for infection.
Closer then 14 kilometers, we have Third degree burns searing at 10 calories cm². Third degree burns cause tissue death all the way through the skin, including the cells required for regenerating skin tissue. The only way a 3rd degree burn can heal is by skin re-growth from the edges, a slow process that usually results in scarring, unless skin grafts are used. Before healing 3rd degree burns present serious risk of infection, and can cause serious fluid loss. A third degree burn over 25% of the body (or more) will typically precipitate shock within minutes, which in of itself requires prompt medical attention.
It’s important to realize that even more serious burns are possible, which have been classified as fourth (or even fifth) degree burns. These burns destroy tissue below the skin: muscle, connective tissue etc. They can be caused by thermal radiation exposures substantially in excess of those in the table for 3rd degree burns. Many people close to the hypocenter of the Hiroshima bomb suffered these types of burns. In the immediate vicinity of ground zero the thermal radiation exposure was 100 calories cm², some fifteen times the exposure required for 3rd degree burns. This is sufficient to cause exposed flesh to flash into steam, flaying exposed body areas to the bone.
The Shock Front
By far the most destructive impact of a nuclear detonation on humans and the population is the shock wave. The shock wave is produced at the surface of the fireball in the first fraction of a second after the warhead detonates. The shock wave travels as a sudden increase in air pressure followed by extremely high winds. Its primary effects are the collapse of buildings, bridges, and other structures, and the crushing of occupants within, below, or near them.
Within 1.5 miles of ground zero, static overpressures would exceed 20 PSI, which is sufficient to collapse and destroy even the strongest steel and reinforced concrete office buildings. Within three kilometers, almost everyone would be killed, either directly by the blast or by collapsing or flying masonry.
At 4 miles from ground zero, the overpressure would be 5 PSI, or over 180 tons of pressure on the wall of an average two-story home. It should be noted that very high static overpressures on human bodies will produce internal hemorrhaging and fatal impairment of the cardiopulmonary system, but the overwhelming medical impacts are due to the collapse and destruction of buildings and other physical structures.
At 8 kilometers, it’s estimated that the impact effects of the blast would kill about fifty percent of the people. Immediately following the blast wave would be hurricane force winds, first outwards from the explosion and then inward to replace the air that went out. Crushing injuries of the skull, chest, abdomen and limbs; traumatic amputations; multiple compound fractures of bones; paralyzing lesions of the spinal cord; damage to internal organs, particularly the brain, liver, kidneys; rupture of the lungs and eardrums; multiple severe lacerations. People at a distance, if they realized what had happened when they saw the flash, would have a few seconds to lie down, or even to dive into a ditch before the blast hit.
Secondary and tertiary blast effects
This is best described as flying objects and flying people, being primarily related to the extremely high dynamic pressures – or winds of velocities exceeding 600 mph near the hypocenter. The range of secondary blast effects is in fact much greater then the primary effects – i.e. collapsed buildings. As far as 13 miles from ground zero, people would be in grave danger of enormous amounts of flying debris consisting of bricks, pieces of masonry, steel, wood, and shards of glass. At a range of almost 15 miles, these objects would have a high probability of severely injuring anyone hit. The overwhelming medical effects would include fractures, penetrating wounds of the chest and abdomen, not to mention serious lacerations.
Another example would be the effects of wind on a human body. As far as 8 miles from ground zero, the wind is sufficient to hurl a 180-pound man against a wall at several times the force of gravity.
Incendiary impacts
In a word, fires would be the greatest vehicle for human injury and death. The thermal pulse is so intense that paper; dry trees, leaves and grass, debris and wood outside buildings would burst into flames as far as 10 miles away. Within buildings, there would be spontaneous combustion of upholstery, bedding, which are all likely to create self-sustaining fires. To these numerous conflagrations we’d add exploding boilers, overturned furnaces, stoves, broken gas mains, and downed power lines. Fires will directly ignite or spread to gasoline stations, fuel storage depots, large natural gas storage tanks, and industrial chemical stockpiles.
In any large city stricken with a thermonuclear detonation, a mass fire would cause a staggering increase in the number of burns and burns combined with other injuries. With a one-megaton detonation, the circle within which the entire population is counted as fatalities is labeled at 4.3 miles from ground zero.
Mass fires, and especially firestorms, pose a significant threat to the human population. Burst fuel tanks, gas mains, and collapsed buildings would provide more fuel, and it is likely that confluent fires would cause a firestorm. This is when coalescent fires cause sufficient updraft to form their own wind, blowing inwards from all sides and thereby increasing the intensity of the fire.
The temperature even in basements and bomb shelters rises above lethal levels, and the fire uses all available oxygen. The wind blowing inwards is of gale force, so that even strong uninjured people would have difficulty walking or trying to run outwards away from the fire. Control or containment of these fires---hundreds of them per acre---would be virtually impossible. Water mains would be shattered and pressure non-existent. Streets would be impassable. Fire-fighting crews and equipment would be destroyed or disabled.
Firestorms pose a threat in addition to their searing temperatures: the generation of large amounts of carbon dioxide and other toxic gases. Blast or fallout shelters would provide little protection. The survival of occupants within a shelter would depend critically on the temperature and humidity within the shelter. Unless there is an independent oxygen supply and a venting system for each shelter, toxic gases would be deadly to the occupants. Ordinary shelters would then become crematoria in which occupants would be burned to death and asphyxiated.
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Delayed Radiation “Fallout”
The radiation from a nuclear detonation can be classified into two separate categories: Initial Burst and Residual – the latter being fallout. Depending whether the weapon is detonated as an air burst or ground burst, fallout can be either Initial or Long term.
The initial burst is comprised of gamma rays and neutrons, a dose so intense as only to be lethal at a short range within 1.75 miles of the hypocenter. However, this wouldn’t so much be of a factor since anyone within that ring of destruction would be dead or morbid from the subsequent thermal pulse and passage of the shock front. Only over two miles is radiation exposure from the initial pulse down to a relatively insignificant level, at least compared to the other threats.
If the device were exploded on the ground, early or local fallout would be as a result of soil and rock descending from the fireball’s ascension into the stratosphere. Airbursts tend to deliver a smaller radiation dose over a longer period of time, to global populations. The direction of fallout is a misnomer since wind patterns make fallout widely scattered and unpredictable – leaving certain areas hot and others untouched.
Radiation Injury
Most medical estimates of risk are in that of LD/50 or the lethal dose for 50 % of the population exposed. Short-term exposure is rated at 450 REMS with excellent medical care available. That meaning that possible bone marrow transplants would be needed, in addition to whole blood transfusions. Lethal doses for the very young, elderly or those with serious blast and burn injury can be as low as 225 REMS.
Effect If delivered over one week If delivered over one month
Threshold for radiation sicknes150 200
Five percent may die 250 350
Fifty percent may die 450 600
(It doesn’t matter much whether a dose of radiation is received as intense radiation for several hours or at a slower rate over several weeks. What matters is the total accumulated dose.)
Rescue Problems
If the bomb exploded squarely over the center of a city, no rescue services within the area of major structural damage would be able to function. All downtown hospitals would be destroyed, and there would be no electricity, water, or telephone communication in the area served by city utilities. Impassable roads would hamper rescue services from the outside world and the central area of severe damage would be inaccessible.
The number of injured in the peripheral area would be so great that emergency services of surrounding cities would be completely overloaded, as would be any surviving suburban hospitals and all the hospitals of neighboring cities. Even to be seen by a doctor and given analgesics, the injured from one city would need to be distributed among all the hospitals of North America.
The destroyed city would be radioactive. Decisions to attempt rescue work would depend first on a survey of the area by a specialist team with appropriate protection, and then on a policy decision as to how much radiation the rescue teams should be permitted. Willingness of the team members and their unions to accept the risk would be the final factor.
Medical Responses
Medical help of any sort would be virtually non-existent. Medical care, in fact, serves most usefully as an illustration of the impossibility of coping with such a horrific impact. Civil defense estimates suggest that the ratio of surviving uninjured physicians to the number of seriously injured attack victims being somewhere between 1:350 and 1:1500. Looking back, even this calculation is optimistic.
There are no emergency rooms, no operating rooms, and no diagnostic or therapeutic equipment within reach. There are no blood banks left; drug stocks have been destroyed. The number of injured, if they could be distributed throughout the hospitals or North America would occupy something like a third of all beds available – no hospital can deal with such an influx of cases. A whole year's supply of blood for transfusion would be needed immediately, and of course is not available in storage nor could it be collected from volunteers in a few days. The injured that reached hospitals would have to be assayed for radioactivity, for the safety of the staff, which would cause a serious bottleneck and delay in most hospitals.
There might be fifty times as many severe burn cases as there are beds available in all North America. Let me remind you – this is if there was only a 1-megaton weapon targeting a single city.
The true scope of the medical impact of a thermonuclear weapon only becomes clear if you turn to a major nationwide attack. If you can imagine the impact of a single 1-Megaton warhead – just try to comprehend 6,000 Megatons aimed simultaneously at military targets, other basic industries and population concentrations of 50,000 or more.
Survival
In the post-shelter survival period, when fallout has reached an “acceptable” level that allows survivors to emerge for longer times, the problems will change. Tens of thousands of still surviving injured must be nursed. There will be millions of human and animal corpses to be buried or burned. Food will be an overwhelming concern since most of the food stored in shelters would’ve been destroyed. Other food supplies, grain in particular is stored where the population density is least concentrated, on farms. Approximately 99% of the refinery industry would’ve been destroyed; there would be no means to transport the food since there would be no fuel.
Locally food-rich regions may try to fight off any attempt to share their holdings. But throughout this period, the epidemic potential will continue and worsen, probably made more intense by both malnutrition and rampant disease. Since insects are far more resistant to radiation then humans, it is anticipated that cockroaches, mosquitoes, and flies—will multiply unchecked in an environment that is devoid of birds but has ample waste, untreated sewage and human and animal corpses. Trillions of flies will breed in the dead bodies alone.
Disease problems in the survival period may be heavily skewed toward infections. Particularly hazardous epidemics of TB and plague may occur, but outbreaks of flu, amoebic dysentery, rabies, cholera, hepatitis, and bacterial dysentery are also very likely. All of this is in addition to the usual incidence of coronary heart disease, stoke, diabetes, and occurrences or cancer. Antibiotic supplies would be rapidly depredated. Since the pharmaceutical industry will be almost totally destroyed, there will be little chance of replacement. Diagnostic labs will be non-existent. Vaccines and other immunizing agents will be unavailable.
For physicians and other health care workers, all these scenarios are apocalyptic in scale. It will not only raise practical burdens but the ethical as well. Within the shelter or outside…how are health workers to accomplish making life and death decisions on the basic of radiation exposure estimates that may be inaccurate by several orders of magnitude. Shall the demands for euthanasia be fulfilled as opposed to living maybe 3 or 4 weeks? Should antibiotics or narcotics be reserved for those whose prospect for survival is best? For those who survived this grotesque destruction of human beings, it would change the meaning of being human.
References
Countermeasures: A Technical Evaluation of the Operational Effectiveness of the Planned US National Missile Defense System, Union of Concerned Scientists, April 2000
Arms Control Today: October 2000
The Nuclear Age: Arms Control and Defense Are Back in the News: Brookings Review 1994
NUCLEAR ALMANAC M.I.T. ed. Jack DENNIS 0-201-05331-2 Addison Wesley 1982
SECURITY AND SURVIVAL-THE CASE FOR A NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONVENTION-published by IPPNW, IALANA and INESAP(1999), Cambridge, Mass.
CENTER FOR DEFENSE AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES (http://www.cdiss.org)
EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS; JAMES GREEN 1996
THE COLD WAR; A MILITARY HISTORY; DAVID MILLER 1999
THE CLIMATIC BIOLOGICAL AND STRATEGIC EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WAR; HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMITTEE ON NATIONAL RESOURCES AND ENVIROMENT; 98TH CONGRESS, SEPT 12, 1984
MEGATOONS, CARTOONISTS AGAINST NUCLEAR WAR, 1984
SHAPING NUCLEAR POLICY FOR THE 1990'S; A COMPENDIUM OF VIEWS, REPORT OF THE DEFENSE POLICY PANAL FOR THE COMITTEE ON ARMS SERVICES, HOUSE OF REPS, 102ND CONGRESS, 12/17/92
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Yeah If we use a nuke all the other clowns who have em will think what the heck we can to.
imagine that:(
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Originally posted by Capt. Pork
Will it be called 'Satellite rain' -- as in the weapon from Syndicate Wars?
Intense idea, though, I'd love to see test footage if and when they choose to develope it.
Actually they are known as "Rods from God"
Space weapons (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03209/206344.stm)
Colloquially called "Rods from God," this weapon would consist of orbiting platforms stocked with tungsten rods perhaps 20 feet long and one foot in diameter that could be satellite-guided to targets anywhere on Earth within minutes. Accurate within about 25 feet, they would strike at speeds upwards of 12,000 feet per second, enough to destroy even hardened bunkers several stories underground.
No explosives would be needed. The speed and weight of the rods would lend them all the force they need.
Space planes
Closer to operational readiness is a hypersonic bomber which could attack nearly any target in the world within four hours from bases in the United States.
The FALCON (an acronym for Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States) would be sent into the upper atmosphere by a boost vehicle and cruise at an altitude of 100,000 feet at speeds up to 12 times the speed of sound. The first flight demonstration is scheduled for 2006.
Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs is already thinking about a follow-on to FALCON -- a genuine space plane that would fly even higher and faster, stay up longer and carry more weapons.
"Once a target is identified, the space plane can respond from the U.S. and strike worldwide targets in under an hour," SpaceCom researchers said in a white paper last year.
A key advantage of a space plane, the writers said, is its weapons could enter the atmosphere over a target, so there would be no need to seek overflight permission from other countries. "Technology exists today to create this capability and evolve it now," they wrote.
I have read that by 2025 the US will have a global srike capability anywhere on earth within minuts. Do some searches for "space weaopons" or "space planes" Interesting stuff
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What Nuke posted sounds like a clever and effective system for penetration
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1 foot wide 20 foot long tungsten penetrators weigh a lot... The costs of putting that up into space in any worthwile quantities would be "astronomical"... :lol
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Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
1 foot wide 20 foot long tungsten penetrators weigh a lot... The costs of putting that up into space in any worthwile quantities would be "astronomical"... :lol
I wonder how much it would cost? I thought it was a cool idea myself, but maybe it would cost too much.
On the other hand, maybe it wouldn't cost any more than the b-2 program, or maybe even cruise missles. Don't cruise missles cost over a million a piece?
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I dont know about the latest and greatest, but I thought they were on the order of $250,000-$500,000 a pop for a tomahawk.
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Originally posted by Golfer
I dont know about the latest and greatest, but I thought they were on the order of $250,000-$500,000 a pop for a tomahawk.
I think a tomahawk runs around $2 -$5 million depending on its targeting package.
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Well getting stuff into orbit currently costs $10,000 a pound...
So figuring it all out, and if my math is right:
Volume penetrator: meters^3 0.4448
Density: Steel kg/m^3 8030
Density: Tungsten kg/m^3 19250
Average density: kg/m^3 13640
Weight of penetrator: kg 6067.072
Weight of penetrator: lbs 13347.5584
Multiplied by $10,000/lb launch cost: 133475584
Cost just to launch a single penetrator: $133,475,584
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Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Well getting stuff into orbit currently costs $10,000 a pound...
So figuring it all out, and if my math is right:
Volume penetrator: meters^3 0.4448
Density: Steel kg/m^3 8030
Density: Tungsten kg/m^3 19250
Average density: kg/m^3 13640
Weight of penetrator: kg 6067.072
Weight of penetrator: lbs 13347.5584
Multiplied by $10,000/lb launch cost: 133475584
Cost just to launch a single penetrator: $133,475,584
The payload of the shuttle was up to 65,000.00 pounds but it's liftoff weight was 4.5 million pounds. The cost for a shuttle launch was about 300 million I think.
I would think a one way launch platform could do it for a lot less $$
The Shuttle got the cost down to 4, 000.00 a pound or so....
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Originally posted by NUKE
The Shuttle got the cost down to 4, 000.00 a pound or so....
Bzzzzzt! Wrong answer. The payload rate for the shuttle is currently estimated to be between $10,000 and $12,000per lb.
A good quote about this from someone in the space industry is that 'the amazing thing about the shuttle is that it's the only launcher that can make the Titan IV look economical.' (paraphrased)
This is telling as the Titan IV is a program frought with cost overruns, reliability problems, and astronomical (pardon the pun) launcher prices.
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boo..coem one guys.we are getting stuff into space cheaper and cheaper..just a matter of time..
You gusy see the disc thats is propelled into space by burts of light?...technology is badddddasssss
RODS OF GOD!!!...dam what a kikassname
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BGBMaw finished the bottle......
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LOL hawker :D
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I still feel it's a good idea to put "Rods from God" into space.
I read that the shuttle got the cost per pound down to 4,400.00. I also read that a new shuttle had the estimated cost down to 100.00 per pound.
Who knows? The cost of the B-2 development compaired to the few bombers we got out of it was very high. I think space based weapons are logical choice to invest in for our future.
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I'm all for 'Rods from God', allthough I think they should rename them: 'Rods from Fred'... Just because.
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This new weapon is proof that the USA is evil!!! :)
From Babylon 5 TV series, the bad guy aliens had the same thing and used them destroy whole planets...
(http://www.babtech-onthe.net/shadows/spksky.jpg)
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Originally posted by NUKE
I read that the shuttle got the cost per pound down to 4,400.00. I also read that a new shuttle had the estimated cost down to 100.00 per pound.
1. You read wrong.
Look at page 14 (PDF page 16) of this document:
http://cism.jpl.nasa.gov/events/workshop/Preston_Carter.pdf
According to it, the claimed shuttle payload cost is $19,100 per kilo, or $8,700 per lb. The GAO says that the number is actually higher because it doesn't account for the amortized development cost, so $10,000 per lb is pretty easy to get to. Certainly larger then $4,400 per lb.
2. There is no new shuttle. If you're talking about a 'new shuttle' you read about years ago, then it's probably the Venturestar project (which was cancelled).
Cheaper access to space is definately possible, but it won't be with a space shuttle. If you really want to put these flying crowbars into orbit, you'd use a cheap ELV like the Proton (similar payload to the shuttle, but payload costs $1,180 per lb. $16 million per rod to put in orbit. Quite a bit cheaper, and there's more savings by shaving down the size to the bare minimum needed, also the lowered cost of putting them in orbit you'd get from a large production run of cargo rockets.
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and that's just the shipping charges. I wonder what a tungsten rod that size would cost. for comparison a 1/8" x 7" long tungsten rod costs about $5-8. if this thing is 1'X20" thats a lot of tungsten. thats just for the material, not including labor, launching, guidance.
doesn't seem very practical.
but then again, neither does irradiating our planet.
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Perhaps a better source for kinetic space-to-ground weapons is the moon. It's just a matter of time before there is an industrial presence there, it would be a logical place to build these devices from native materials and ship them back to LEO using magnetic launchers. This is hardly "5 years from now" stuff, but definately practical as a side effect of lunar industrialization, eventually asteroids too.
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seems like just dropping it form a high-alt plane would be cheaper. I'm fairly sure you wouldn't have to leave the atmosphere to get high enough to reach terminal velocity
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weteher its 1000$ or 12k$ a pund its still expencive if these rods are made of heavy stuff...
why not just put them on high alt scramjet powered UAV's? they would reach their target in a VERY short time with less cost.
the scramjets are not sience-fiction for much longer are they?
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Originally posted by Nilsen
weteher its 1000$ or 12k$ a pund its still expencive if these rods are made of heavy stuff...
why not just put them on high alt scramjet powered UAV's? they would reach their target in a VERY short time with less cost.
the scramjets are not sience-fiction for much longer are they?
No! I want this!!!
(http://www.babtech-onthe.net/shadows/spksky.jpg)
:D
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looks like a place in the florida swamps to me....so you can take it!
(seruiously..what is that?)
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Looks like an orbital shot of a plant with 20 mushroom clouds racing skyward.
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A bunker that would take 10, 10 Megaton direct hits is an impossibility. Even if the bunker held up, how would you escape?
Les
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hawker238 ...or swamp trees above the fog with little Yodas pointing flashlights skywards to mark the landing spot for Obi Wan.
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Originally posted by Leslie
A bunker that would take 10, 10 Megaton direct hits is an impossibility. Even if the bunker held up, how would you escape?
Les
Pravda says so!!!!!
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1. it could be a typo...he ment to say A 10 megaton egg
2. these eggs are usually detonated at a fairly hig alt so their pure explosive/penetrating power is not that huge and if it is 1 or 30 eggs should not matter........until you try to get out of your bunker when the food/water/air runs out :D
its like fiering 1 or 1000 5.65mm rounds at a the armour of a tank..result is the same...none
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Originally posted by capt. apathy
seems like just dropping it form a high-alt plane would be cheaper. I'm fairly sure you wouldn't have to leave the atmosphere to get high enough to reach terminal velocity
These kinetic kill weapons hit at much higher then terminal velocity. Much, much higher.
Terminal velocity for lots of things are like 200-300mph (assuming they're aerodynamic). These guys would hit at something closer to 4 to 5 miles per second.
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Originally posted by Chairboy
These kinetic kill weapons hit at much higher then terminal velocity. Much, much higher.
Terminal velocity for lots of things are like 200-300mph (assuming they're aerodynamic). These guys would hit at something closer to 4 to 5 miles per second.
plus, the idea is to have them in position to strike on very short notice.