Posted on 07/05/2004 6:20:52 PM PDT by KevinDavis
In the late 1990s, spurred on by the crash of a comet into Jupiter, Hollywood embraced the meteor disaster movie. The films were loud, but forgettable, and Hollywood has since found other disasters to worry about. But over thirty years ago, a group of engineers in training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed a far more realistic defense against a doomsday rock. Their plan would have involved a half-dozen Saturn V rockets carrying some really big bombs.
(Excerpt) Read more at thespacereview.com ...
Space Ping! This is the Space Ping List! Let me know if you want on or off this list!
Please add me to the Space Ping list.
What I got out of this article is that gently pushing a pile of peanuts around the table beats the sin of covering Natalie Wood with mud.
Hmmm, TsarBomba was 100 MT ... and carried by a Bear or a Badger bomber IIRC.
The MIT study was a class project. They looked at a few things they could calculate, but ignored private property rights in outer space.
but ignored private property rights in outer space???
Have I missed some colonization news somewhere?
Read the Scientific Anmerican for Dec 2003. An ion propulsion tug could do the job without the massive explosions which turn an asteroid into birdshot which would pepper the Earth!
Spend the money on a better surveillance system to plot the orbits of the Near Earth Asteroids and then calculate their trajectory. If they need movin' then a gentle tug or push solves the problem.
BTW if they contain valuable material, carbonaecious or metalic, then shift them to a LaGrange point and then mine them for all their worth. "High Frontier" anyone. I still have my first edition published in '76!
Actually, the Soviets planned to use their N-1 moon rocket as an ICBM to carry the 100 megaton bomb. However, such a weapon is militarily useless and the N-1 blew up on its only two launch attempts.
Earth first!!!! We can strip mine the other planets later.
The President's Commission report mentions lack of private property rights as being a major impediment to space development. If you want private enterprise in outer space, establish private property rights.
[...]
...nobody was sure how a nuclear bomb would act in space or how it would affect Icarus—and because nuclear testing in space was effectively banned in the 1960s we still do not know.
Does anyone else here think detonating a nuclear weapon near the surface would be almost useless? Most of the damage from these comes from a blast wave, which would be absent in space. The heat, radiation, and EMP would also be useless, leaving only the mass of the bomb to do any damage. It would have been better to model a high velocity impact of cement warheads.
(steely)
Even if it were true, they'd have a heckuva time convincing folks it wasn't a NWO plot to take over the world.
Cool article.
The real weapon was the 50MT tactical version without the U-238 final stage fission jacket.
To be dropped on West German positions in front of advancing Warsaw Pact troops.
The 50 megaton bomb, which was the weapon actually tested, could have been boosted up to 100 megatons with the use of a uranium tamper on the second and tertiary. Of course this would have kicked the fallout up to such a level that it would have been suicidal for the Russians to use it anywhere in Continental Europe.
Whereas there were actually plans to use the 50MT "daisy cutter" version.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.