Space Force

[aztek]

Just now, toast said:

So you are saying that there is no air resistance for such an object entering the Earth`s atmosphere?
 

nope, you said that.

[RavenHawk]

3 hours ago, Gromdor said:

I've always been more keen on the idea of launching asteroids from the asteroid belt towards the earth myself.

Or Klendathu!

[Gromdor]

15 minutes ago, aztek said:

24000lb, m10, do not factor in air resistance. rough number is 42m j

Eh, my math doesn't double check with the splat calculator: https://www.angio.net/personal/climb/speed.html

A nuke is 4.18 x10 ^15 joules though.  The splat calculator only shows 11 x10 ^9 joules.  Substantially lower.  Still wouldn't want to be hit by it.

[aztek]

Just now, Gromdor said:

Eh, my math doesn't double check with the splat calculator: https://www.angio.net/personal/climb/speed.html

A nuke is 4.18 x10 ^15 joules though.  The splat calculator only shows 11 x10 ^9 joules.  Substantially lower.  Still wouldn't want to be hit by it.

 

 

EDIT, i was wrong,  kinetic energy calculator shows KE = 73500000000 J.   a lot more than i calculated before. i real world air resistance will slow it down a bit, and may be burn off some mass, but still a big boom

 

Edited August 20, 2018 by aztek

[Gromdor]

1 hour ago, aztek said:

 

 

EDIT, i was wrong,  kinetic energy calculator shows KE = 73500000000 J.   a lot more than i calculated before. i real world air resistance will slow it down a bit, and may be burn off some mass, but still a big boom

 

Looking at it, I think it isn't really feasible.  It has too much mass to fly into orbit.  And just imagine if a rocket failed while carrying one up.  Maybe if we could build them in space it would be alright. 

[aztek]

why not? lunar module was heavier about 35k lb,shuttle can take up 50k lb

[Gromdor]

4 minutes ago, aztek said:

why not? lunar module was heavier about 35k lb,shuttle can take up 50k lb

The energy/cost per shot basically.  A plain old nuke is cheaper.

[aztek]

Just now, Gromdor said:

The energy/cost per shot basically.  A plain old nuke is cheaper.

maybe, but treaty prohibits them.

[AnchorSteam]

On 8/19/2018 at 11:35 PM, RoofGardener said:

Depends. Are we talking about the African sparrow, or the European sparrow ? 

Ah, a fellow student of the classics! 

 

For all of you who didn't get that, I guess I need to share a little something;

 

 

 

[Tatetopa]

On 8/20/2018 at 12:59 PM, aztek said:

maybe, but treaty prohibits them.

If somebody made Trump crater out of Trump tower with a chunk of metal or a big rock. I have  a hard time imagining the President saying, "I would love to nuke the bejeezus out of them, but we have that treaty."  How many nukes are already in space as insurance do you think?

[Nnicolette]

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

1 hour ago, NicoletteS said:

I admire how they all shaved their legs.

[acidhead]

3 minutes ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

I admire how they all shaved their legs.

Why??

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

1 hour ago, acidhead said:

Why??

Shows they’re dedicated to their cosplay.

also hairy legs make me gag.

[aztek]

7 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

If somebody made Trump crater out of Trump tower with a chunk of metal or a big rock. I have  a hard time imagining the President saying, "I would love to nuke the bejeezus out of them, but we have that treaty."  How many nukes are already in space as insurance do you think?

you've got to see a professional about your TDS

[Tatetopa]

9 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

If somebody made Trump crater out of Trump tower with a chunk of metal or a big rock. I have  a hard time imagining the President saying, "I would love to nuke the bejeezus out of them, but we have that treaty."  How many nukes are already in space as insurance do you think?

Well let me rephrase it then.  If somebody dropped a rock on Dallas or Houston or Topeka or Seattle or any other American city, do you think the military and our government  would be restrained by a treaty?  I think a counter strike would likely have huge popular support.   One of the most common ends of a treaty is a war.  Dropping a space rock on a city is an act of war.   Would you suspect if we had the power to prevent it, we would engage in a game of checkers with an  adversary and keep dropping rocks on each other's cities or try to end the war in a decisive way? I was not really denigrating President Trump, but I think his response is pretty predictable.  Heck, even President Hillary Clinton would have done the same, or Obama or Bush etc.

[Tatetopa]

1 hour ago, aztek said:

you've got to see a professional about your TDS

Always good advice.  Maybe we should all enroll in a preventative course.

[DarkHunter]

On 8/20/2018 at 3:56 PM, Gromdor said:

The energy/cost per shot basically.  A plain old nuke is cheaper.

Not necessarily.

The issue is the rod and nuclear weapon would be used to target drastically different things.  

Nuclear weapons are essentially super massive air burst weapons that do little to no damage to hardened targets or stuff built underground unless you get a direct hit at the target but the ground/hardened target ends up absorbing a lot of the energy and drastically reduces the effect of the nuclear weapon.

The rods though would work more as a massive armor penatration round and would be able to deliver massive amount of damage to a hardened or underground structure with limited damage to the surrounding area by impact tremors.

While a single nuke may be cheaper then a single rod what a single rod could accomplish would almost certainly require multiple nukes.

[AnchorSteam]

11 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

Always good advice.  Maybe we should all enroll in a preventative course.

Maybe just blow off the blogs for a week or so, go out and see a movie or just hang out at a bar for the night instead of here.

In fact, that last one sounds pretty good... see ya!

[AnchorSteam]

9 hours ago, DarkHunter said:

...

While a single nuke may be cheaper then a single rod what a single rod could accomplish would almost certainly require multiple nukes.

You are thinking of subterranean targets, like nuke production facilities in Iran and North Korea, right?

 

Sounds good, and one reason for avoiding the use of nukes is all the radiation lingering in an environment that isn't very healthy in the first place.

(I'm talking about the difference between temperate & deciduous vs. 'Mediterranean' and arid)

However, isn't there a radiological component to this, or am I thinking wrong there? I'm not even sure what metal they would use, D.U. and some Tungsten alloy would seem the best bets. 

[+OverSword]

On 8/19/2018 at 6:08 PM, Occams Razor said:

Have you calculated the terminal velocity of a falling rod?

Someone did earlier I’m this thread if memory serves. Not that I doubt that the researchers working on this project are mistaken in their assumptions.

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

a 6.1 m × 0.3 mtungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10 has a kinetic energy equivalent to approximately 11.5 tons of TNT (or 7.2 tons of dynamite) according to  the wiki on the concept.

[DarkHunter]

3 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

You are thinking of subterranean targets, like nuke production facilities in Iran and North Korea, right?

 

Sounds good, and one reason for avoiding the use of nukes is all the radiation lingering in an environment that isn't very healthy in the first place.

(I'm talking about the difference between temperate & deciduous vs. 'Mediterranean' and arid)

However, isn't there a radiological component to this, or am I thinking wrong there? I'm not even sure what metal they would use, D.U. and some Tungsten alloy would seem the best bets. 

The nuclear production facilities would be ideal weapons for such a weapon system but so would nuclear missile launch sites of any nation.  The rods would be near impossible to intercept and unlike with nuclear warheads where you would almost certainly need multiple warheads scoring direct hits to knock out a launch site a single rod would probably be enough if aimed right.

Tungsten would probably be better then depleted uranium but either would work.  The only thing is tungsten is easier to work with then depleted uranium, which is largely why Russia uses tungsten anti armor rounds instead of depleted uranium.  The USSR did do test with depleted uranium rounds but lacked the technological ability to create high enough quality rounds in high enough numbers to be useful and Russia still lacks that ability despite having tons of depleted uranium sitting around.

As of fear of radiation it is essentially zero with most of the fear coming from severe misunderstanding of radiation.  Depleted uranium is slightly radioactive and it will be radioactive for an insanely long time but it mostly releases alpha radiation which can be blocked by a single piece of paper or a few inches of open air, alpha radiation cant even penetrate the first layer of skin.  Consuming something that emits alpha radiation is generally really bad but the heavy metal toxicity of depleted uranium would kill you way before radiation could mess you up.

As for nukes and lingering radiation the radiation doesnt really linger that long assuming it's not a ground level detonation.  Assuming the nuclear weapon detonates at the right height, which it should to maximize damage, the radiation rather quickly falls back to safe levels.  Radioactive decay is really fast, a decent approximation the military created was the 7 10 rule which was for every factor of 7 hours after detonation radiation decreased by another factor of 10 so 7 hours after detonation radiation is only 10% its initial level, after 49 hours its 1%, after 343 hours it's about 0.1% its initial level and so on.  After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki people moved back in and rebuilt those areas pretty soon after the blast and were essentially fine.

Ground detonation is extremely bad and completely breaks the 7 10 rule as a lot more material gets exposed to radiation and transmuted to some really nasty radioactive material that can last insanely long periods of time.