Re: 100 megaton bombs atop Saturn V rockets

From: Pat Flannery (flanner_at_daktel.com)
Date: 07/08/04 

Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 21:35:43 -0500

BitBanger wrote:

>
>What is it with this f*cking infatuation with nuclear bombs!!!
>

They are basically a American Totem Object; their is absolutely no
problem that can't be solved via a nuclear weapon or two.
Hurricane approaching? An H-bomb or so will take care of that. Asteroid
threatening? We're ready. Need to excavate a reservoir inside of five
minutes? Just push the red button. Things not going well in Vietnam?
Well, if you had just taken MacArthur's advice back in Korea.... Martian
War Machines threatening Los Angles? Okay....they may not work on
everything.
Radiation is sort of like magic...you can't see the stuff, but it can
help you....or croak you pronto.
At least no one ever did that idea I read about of putting nuclear
isotopes into the concrete of highways so that the heat of nuclear decay
would keep them warm and ice-free in winter. And the Atomic Powered Tank
was also stillborn; which is a pity, as it probably wouldn't have even
needed armor, due to the fact that no one in their right mind would dare
shoot anything at it, for fear of what might happen if they actually hit
it. :-)

> Why do they
>keep wanting to blow up things when it has been shown many times before that
>this is the wrong kind of solution. In fact, it could make things even
>worse!
>

Especially given the fact that at the time we knew hardly anything about
what asteroids were made from or how solidly they were put together; so
that trying this stunt might have resulted with a whole pile of
subasteroids being generated from the fracturing of Icarus' into large
pieces by the blasts, and the odds of one of those fragments hitting
Earth actually increase the danger to us over time as their trajectories
spread apart.
We discussed the effectiveness of nuclear weapons against asteroids
her on sci.space.history a while back; they are a lot less impressive in
space than they are in an atmosphere; you basically end up generating
thrust against the asteroid by vaporizing its outer surface with their
radiation flux. About the only way you could really damage a asteroid is
get the bomb down near the core of the asteroid, and let the blast
generate explosive gas pressure from the vaporized rock...and that would
pretty much guarantee that you end up with a cloud of larger and
smaller fragments.
About as smart as hitting a beehive with a baseball bat. ;-)

Pat