Th future of armour

[MikeyD]

Thermobaric? Dropping a bomb that requires an aerosol to be released into a 150 mph windstream seem a bit... inefficient.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

I don't think it would matter, the detonation is too quick for dispersal from the wind to stop it.

[c3k]

A sharknado would stop it.

[Wicky]

Nuke or well directed meteor impact should do the trick but the collateral damage may be off-putting... just ask the dinosaurs.

[KL2004]

Can we just not agree on sharknadoes?

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Apparently it's been considered:

https://warisboring.com/the-man-who-wanted-to-nuke-a-hurricane/

[cool breeze]

Yeah, I've read a few pieces now on how the energy output of the storms is too big to be effected by the nuke but its seems like a pretty lazy way to say it wont work and it seems like its kind of ignoring the mechanism for how it is proposed to work.  People keep talking about hourly energy outputs of the whole hurricane.  Doesn't seem all that relevant to me, its not about overpowering the hurricane with an hour long process, its about destroying the structure of the hurricane.  Seems almost like saying "  you cant destroy a tanks engine with a 120mm sabot round because the tank can shoot 30 of those within an hour"

[cool breeze]

Speaking of people getting too scared of nukes, have any of you heard or read about Project Orion?   basically the coolest thing ever and a good reason to not be a big fan of NASA. Before NASA and the space shuttle, we were working on building a huge super heavy, submarine style construction, spaceship that used nuclear explosions for exhaust instead of rocket fuel.  It had a big steel plate on the bottom, mounted to a huge shock absorber, so that you could detonate a bomb right bellow it and the explosion would push up the heavy plate which would push up the space ship.  kind of like a pogo stick into space, doing not a double jump, but 800 jumps, into orbit.  The bombs go off ever 3 seconds or so.  The calculated back then that with their not as clean bombs it would kill 0-1 person world wide via radiation poisoning.  One of the really cool things about it is that the size/weight of the ship doesn't really effect the amount of radiation and nuclear material required.  The bombs have enough energy that basically no matter how much extra mass you put in em, the specific thrust is still going to be Extremely high, so to lift a bigger ship you just put more chemical explosives and plastic filler or whatever filler to make the bombs bigger but not particularly more powerful.  By adding mars or titan rocks to the bombs for the return trip, you can go there and back with 100 people or more and lots of equipment, and back, all with the single stage giant space ship. 

 

It also hold the solution to this whole Ukraine, Russia, US, West, extended cold war thing we have going.  Ukraine used to be the heart of the soviet space program.  Everything's kinda f@#%ed now, but all we need to do is stop fighting and do a joint US, Russia, Ukraine and maybe whoever else modern Project Orion 2.0,  main base Ukraine, and have Russia and US and anyone else turn some or all of their nukes into rocket powering mini bombs.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Project Orion:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/d4q0shfrj9rf0wx/Project Orion.pdf?dl=0

[cool breeze]

Thanks for the upload!  I'm reading it for my first time, I just saw a documentary on it before.  Whuddya think?

[cool breeze]

Turns out I focused on some of the more extreme versions,  they made plans for a smaller one that could ride a Saturn 5 to orbit.  It would detonate a bomb every .86 seconds. 

edit to add.  actually both 10m diameter and 20m diameter designs looked at in this study used a bomb every .86 seconds.  The 20m design was expected to give a thrust to weight ratio of 3 or 4, and an ISP of 10,000 to 20,000.  vs the 400 ISP we are working on approaching with chemical rockets. 

Edited October 5, 2017 by cool breeze

[Sgt.Squarehead]

The primary plan as I understand it was to lift a 10m Orion to orbit as three parts, each aboard (IIRC) a Saturn IIC booster.  The first two payloads comprised the vessel itself; crew compartment and propulsion section.  The third payload was, well, the payload.....Nukes!  This version would not detonate any nukes in the atmosphere at all, which completely lays waste to Freeman Dyson's explanation for the cancellation of the project.

Here's a concept for those with a tendency to tin-foil headgear:  It is theoretically possible that the public Apollo Program might have been fully or partly a cover for the launch of one or more 10m Orion vessels.  These vessels would unquestionably have been able to deliver man to the surface of the moon and bring him back, regardless of the radiation issues, they are very heavily shielded for fairly obvious reasons.

 

Edited October 5, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead

[cool breeze]

I like that theory!  I mean chemical rockets are, like, why would you choose sub 400 ISP over 10,000+ ISP?  As if the brass were really afraid to use nukes...   This idea also explains how super cool Freeman Dyson's explanation is off.  But still gives reason for the guys in the documentary to be disappointed, they wanted to publicly colonize the stars with massive rockets, not do a clandestine exploration mission.  Hmmmmmmm.  Did you come up with that one?  maybe you should write a book

Oh and for those of you who don't know, ISP is about how fast you shoot out the exhaust.  Since rocket engines throw stuff out the back to push themselves forward, their speed is limited by how much stuff they have to throw out the back and how hard/fast they throw it.  Chemical rockets barely throw the stuff out fast enough to get into orbit, almost all of the weight of the vehicle has to be used up as fuel to get there.  Other rockets, like an ion drive, have high ISP, but they have terrible thrust to weight ratios so they can't do anything but send small probes on super long missions.  But these nuclear pogostick ships have huge thrust to weight and huge ISP.  They throw the stuff out over 20 times faster so they can use less than 1/20th the fuel for the same amount of acceleration.  So if you were to use it for example to get to orbit you could get there with most of it still left instead of almost all used up.  But it helps just as much once you are up there.

Edited October 5, 2017 by cool breeze

[c3k]

Hurricanes. How to stop them. I'll share this, since I've patented it. A nuke won't work. However, by cutting off a big chunk of ice shelf from Antarctica, affixing tow hooks (using water to cement them in place) then using a fleet of helicopters to tow it into position, you can shut down a hurricane. The hurricane needs warm water to create the uplift and rotation. Now, the helicopters, straining and tilting forward, will be able to get some air under the ice shelf. It'll be big, so it's important to get an air cushion under it. That reduces drag. They can then tow it at speeds of 80 knots to a location just in front of the hurricane. (At first I thought they should fly OVER the hurricane and drop it on top, like a lid, but there were issues which showed up when I was testing it with subscale models. I used a straw and ice cubes and couldn't lift them up.)

Sometimes it's the less obvious solution which provides a seemingly simple solution.

OT: Russia has access to ice shelves.

[sburke]

2 hours ago, c3k said:

Hurricanes. How to stop them. I'll share this, since I've patented it. A nuke won't work. However, by cutting off a big chunk of ice shelf from Antarctica, affixing tow hooks (using water to cement them in place) then using a fleet of helicopters to tow it into position, you can shut down a hurricane. The hurricane needs warm water to create the uplift and rotation. Now, the helicopters, straining and tilting forward, will be able to get some air under the ice shelf. It'll be big, so it's important to get an air cushion under it. That reduces drag. They can then tow it at speeds of 80 knots to a location just in front of the hurricane. (At first I thought they should fly OVER the hurricane and drop it on top, like a lid, but there were issues which showed up when I was testing it with subscale models. I used a straw and ice cubes and couldn't lift them up.)

Sometimes it's the less obvious solution which provides a seemingly simple solution.

OT: Russia has access to ice shelves.

pffft simpler than that, why chase the hurricanes?  Follow the trail, they originate as tropical storms off the coast of west Africa.  So all we need to do is pull the entire antarctic ice shelf to west Africa.  Cool the ocean there and voila! problem solved and no way there will be any other knock on effect!   in my test simply putting the ice cube in the glass cooled my drink appropriately proving this as a viable option.  I then repeated the test a few dozen times.  when I woke up in my neighbor's yard wearing a giraffe costume I knew I had succeeded.  I was not under arrest or in a wreck off the side of the road proving that cooling my drink had no deleterious effect.

You over complicated the solution Ken and that should have been apparent as soon as you put a straw in your drink.

[A Canadian Cat]

LOL moving large ice shelves is a much more viable solution than trying to nuke a hurricane out of existence. 

Even if the force of a nuclear explosion could do the job we should *not* be detonating those things in our atmosphere for any reason these days. We know the radiation would result in countless downstream problems and effects - none of which are good.

[sburke]

6 hours ago, IanL said:

LOL moving large ice shelves is a much more viable solution than trying to nuke a hurricane out of existence. 

Even if the force of a nuclear explosion could do the job we should *not* be detonating those things in our atmosphere for any reason these days. We know the radiation would result in countless downstream problems and effects - none of which are good.

Exactly what I found in my next test.  After nuking my drink I found the glow disturbing while trying to sit by the fireside.  That green glow just changes the mood into some weird cult like effect.  And to make matters worse the drink was now uncomfortably warm. 

Edited October 6, 2017 by sburke

[Wicky]

Get the UN to subcontract out to North Korea to test a Hydrogen bomb into a hurricane just off Florida... Everyone's happy! especially Kim who simultaneously wins Nobel prizes for peace and science, and the Darwin Award.

[Kinophile]

The fuel consumption for the helicopters would be ridiculous. How do you propose refueling the 400+ we'd need? That kind of aerial  tanker demand would shut down every US air campaign, everywhere; and as a publicly funded make-work program for hyper-educated electrical engineers with a fatal desire to fall from a great height,, we all know that will never happen. 

Far more sensible to use a wide scale micro solution - float about, oh,  ten million aluminum-clad styrofoam panels into the storms path. They will bounce light and heat Back and the hurricane, profundly fuddling (technical term, but bear with me) the weather system's internal air currents. With the right conditions we might even reverse the hurricanes revolutions, literally sending back where it came from - Venezuela! 

Take that, communists! 

[Michael Emrys]

11 hours ago, IanL said:

LOL moving large ice shelves is a much more viable solution...

Except that cooling the tropical Atlantic would disrupt the circulation of the Gulf Stream with truly major consequences for the European climate. Sorry to inject a note of realism into this fey indulgence of a thread; I just couldn't help myself.

Michael

[sburke]

34 minutes ago, Michael Emrys said:

Except that cooling the tropical Atlantic would disrupt the circulation of the Gulf Stream with truly major consequences for the European climate. Sorry to inject a note of realism into this fey indulgence of a thread; I just couldn't help myself.

Michael

you could, but you didn't.  If this were the peng thread I'd go bug my wife for some witty retort.  As it isn't.  pffffttt

[Michael Emrys]

7 hours ago, sburke said:

If this were the peng thread I'd go bug my wife for some witty retort.

For god's sake, leave your wife in peace. Heaven knows she's suffered enough already.

Michael

[sburke]

6 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

For god's sake, leave your wife in peace. Heaven knows she's suffered enough already.

Michael

suffering builds character... I do it all for her.  If I were a better person it would deny her the opportunity to grow.  I am so unselfish at times it amazes even me.

[Michael Emrys]

7 hours ago, sburke said:

I am so unselfish at times it amazes even me.

No, that is just the result of all those decades of putting intoxicating agents in your body.

Michael