A workable Hydrogen Fuel Cell?

the cancellation or at least a delay in the development does not surprise me. i would have to think that other agendas might need more attention than developing cooler weapons even if the collateral damage was guaranteed to be less.

another news blurb that Obama is taking a look at current credit card practices. if that is the case, i would gladly have made the same decision

 

Business & Technology | Boeing would be hit hard by defense budget cuts | Seattle Times Newspaper

Home | Airborne Laser

The current plane will still undergo testing, the planned series of planes are cut. As the budget approved the current planned rounds of tests, they continue.

I'm hoping the aircraft isn't chopped up into little pieces and lost forever. Consider how many Convair B-36 Peacemakers were built, there are only a small handful on display, like the one at Wright Patterson in Dayton, Ohio

 

I'm not sure how collateral damage will be less. History has proven that for every defensive measure, new offensive platforms are developed that quickly render the defensive measure impotent

Eg: the Pinetree Line and Mid Canada Line radar stations scattered all over Canada, along with DEW line sites in the arctic. A single high altitude nuclear detonation would easily have blinded all the radar stations, and since the only way they had to relay information back to NORAD was troposcatter and GATR, the stations would have been mute as well

Initial airborne defense systems, such as Nike-Zeus (Detonate nuclear bomb in flight path of inbound ICBM) were also rendered obsolete by the development of MIRV

Still, there is a lot of cool technology out there, and you never know what teeny fraction of it may prove useful to us in civillian life

 

i caught a Sci-Fri on NPR on the technology. its supposed to be able to line up multiple targets with an area of a few inches from waaay off (dont remember but something like 50 miles or so i think). they pretty much said that you could take a room of 25 people mingling around, target 10 of them and guarantee "fried well done" of the 10 targets without a scratch on the other 15 in the room

this "cherry-picking" approach was supposed to be the main justification for the cost of the program since no one is realistically within a decade of what we have now.

 

Yes, the system has a *very* impressive Circular Error Probability

The problem with these sort of systems is that, as time marches on, the incremental cost of developing such systems (Pinetree Line, Mid Canada Line, DEW line, Nike Zeus, Safeguard, airborne laser, etc) is almost orders of magnitude higher for each system: eg hundreds of millions, to billions, to hundreds of billions, as the sophistication of the defensive system is increased

As you may be aware, Safeguard was only operational around half a year. It protected the northern-most Minuteman silos in ND. A common problem with the phased array radar at the Safeguard site was that, just like the radar sites in Northern Canada, a single high altitude thermonuclear detonation would blind it to incoming reentry vehicles

The Safeguard system utilized a Spartan 5 MT warhead designed for "enhanced" radiation output. The proof concept of the Spartan was tested underneath the Aleutian island of Amchitka, as the Cannikin test.

The restored high speed film of the recording trailer park is very informative. As a direct result of this highly contested nuclear test, various environmental groups merged to become Greenpeace

I'm sure you can see an immediate problem to using high yield thermonuclear warheads to stop inbound reentry vehicles: the cure is just as bad as the problem. These intercept warheads were purposely designed to generate copious amounts of prompt radiation, to have maximum Compton Effect.

The HAEMP from even one such detonation would have utterly decimated most of the electrical and telecommunications grid in the US and Canada.

So if there had been a limited strike in the timeframe Safeguard was operational, and the Spartan warheads had successfully destroyed all incoming reentry vehicles, the HAEMP from multiple Spartan thermonuclear detonations would have completely destroyed our electrical and telecommunications infrastructure

Additionally, in that time frame, most new model (1975-1976) cars and light duty trucks, were already being equipped with some form of solid state ignition, eg the GM HEI, that would have been fried by the HAEMP

 

well i wondered what the big deal was with reducing collateral damage... isn't the standard to pay family survivors 2 million and call it good? gotta be better than funding a multi-billion dollar project

now i heard for larger families they may go as high as 10 million, but then again that might have been for bin laden...as least that would make sense. targeting him sure as hell didnt work

 

Now it makes sense, the laser plane fleet is being cancelled to purchase a bunch of C-17s loaded with Navy Seals.

 

Much more than decimated. I know the term is often used this way now-a-days, but decimated literally means killing one in ten. It's easy to see when you look at the root words: deci-mate. People now often use it as a synonym for destroyed or obliterated, which it is not.

Just one of my nick picking little things, much like the difference between careened and careered.

Tom

 

Tom, if you take it from a military standpoint... 10% casualties means that the combat effectiveness of a military unit is pretty much destroyed, or at least severely degraded.

 

Good point, or from a brain cell standpoint, if Jayman were decimated he would only have nine left.

Tom

 

the paratroopers divisions in WW2, one of which were made popular by Band of Brothers commonly had a 25% casualty rate. if using the graduating class from their advanced training as a base figure, many had as much as 70%.

 

The evidence of actual fusion IS present.

'Cold fusion' rebirth? New evidence for existence of controversial energy source

 

:mmph:

Let me guess, you skipped your drink last night?

Substitute "decimate" for "obliterate" then

And mix yourself a stiff drink!

 

I have wondered too. The simple fact is that the mere *act* of attempting to reduce collateral damage, tends to increase damage elsewhere.

Eg: using thermonuclear warheads to stop incoming thermonuclear warheads. You may no longer be vaporized, but your infrastructure is fried by HAEMP

 

I'm really looking forward to visiting with you, and absolutely drinking you under the table

 

I think we covered this angle in the Cold Fusion thread, at least until it ran off the rails and I developed an obsession for robot sheep

To be sure, LENR is probably happening. Whether the LENR is a promising new energy source, or to be a neat science trick, is debatable

 

No, it is not. I've read enough to realize that. All we get are bits and pieces that are short by several orders of magnitude in accounting for the claims.

Haven't seen any discussion of the controls either...notable for their absence.

I'm still waiting for a coherent explanation with some energy balances, adequate controls, neutron & gamma ray generation rates and energy levels of each, plus reaction products: you know, something that actually looks like an honest-to-goodness proof rather than a snippet in one experiment, a snippet in another and nothing resembling good, solid research.

 

Yeah this thread did seem to go off into a day dream....What was I doing again?

 

It doesn't take much. Ask the folks that were with me in Detroit.

Tom

 

Oh, well then, that's no fun for me.