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I heard that the us wants to do testing of new nuclear weapons for war purposes. Is this true? If it is, what do you think about it and how can it be stopped?
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Yeah, Bush wants to build "tactical" nukes for use against enemy forces and bunkers. Link: http://reuters.com/...storyID=2781399. The ban on such weapons hasn't been lifted yet though. If you want to fight it, write to your congressman/women (or your US ambassador if you are not a US citizen).
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That report said that they plan to research "mini-nucks". How "mini" are they?
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The current SADARM (the semi-mythical "suitcase nuke") has a variable yield from 1-10 Kilotons. The weapons that they are seeking to develop are suposed to be in the .25-1 KT range. They seek to use these as "point of contact" weapons and therefore retain the "nuclear deterant" even when engaged in close combat.
One outgrowth of the technology that they are developing to achieve the sub-critical deonation is a possible defensive weapon capable of detonating nukes at a distance.
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One outgrowth of the technology that they are developing to achieve the sub-critical deonation is a possible defensive weapon capable of detonating nukes at a distance.
Could the method for detonating nukes at a distance be used for the nuclear propulsion that a lot of people in the marssciety are talking about?
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I think so. I was thinking abot it last night and thought of the following design:
The craft would have a sigle "fuel tank" but 2 pellet guns peeking around the edges of the pusher plate. The "weapons" can be mounted around the edge and have a fixed aimpoint where all beams come together. The pellets can be fired into this area at a measured pace to provide continuous thrust. The fuel bunker would have to be designed to prevent the pellets feom setig eachother off but that could be achieved by encaseing each pellet in a thin steel can filled with water. The whole unit would probably not be any larger than a soup can and can be fed into the injector useing a modification of the militaries chain feed systems. The water would not only serve to damd the reaction, it would be vaporised by the thermal pulse of the nuke and convert some otherwise wasted energy into thrust. Another possible wasted resource of the bomb is the EMP. Possibly a tuned coil could tap that and feed the energy into a bank of capacitors as a "buffer that are gradualy drained into either storage bateries or the ships systems.
The "engine" module just described could be a self contained unit with the cargo and crew areas mounted in the front of the fuel bunker. A "tractor" of this design could move a cluster of cargo and crew modules to mars and return for refueling and another consignment of freight.
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