August 2nd 1939
Albert Einstein’s Letters to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
.....In the course of the last four months it has been made probable -
through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in
America - that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction
in a large mass of uranium,by which vast amounts of power and large quant-
ities of new radium-like elements would be generated...This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs,
and it is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely power-
ful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this
type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy
the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However,
such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by
air.
http://hypertextbook.com/eworld/einstein.shtml
The difference between Roosevelt and Obama is that Roosevelt took action!
Too heavy to be transported by air....
And during the peak of the “biggest bang for the lightest weight/smallest size”, in the early-mid 1960’s— the US built and fielded the B-41 thermonuclear bomb. It weighed a bit over 5 tons—and produced 25 MEGATONS of yield. The B-52 would have NO problem carrinyg this bomb—which was capable of pretty much “removing” about 30 miles radius from the blast point of “real estate”—and all else— in total.
And the US wanted to ‘go farther” and produce a 35MT warhead for the Titan II—that would have weighed LESS than 4 tons!!
“Too big for transport”—indeed. A “harbor blaster”, such as a W-54, of less than a KT yield, and less than 100 pounds..weight, could be delivered by a remote—controlled MODEL boat!!
That is American ingenuity for ‘ya. At one time..this country could do ANYTHING it wanted to.... No doubt...had the “science bug” had stayed with us—as it was 40-60 years ago, we COULD have had fusion power, fuel—cell auto power plants of reasonable price, and even maybe matter—transfer technology..(IOW—”beam me up, Scotty”) but now..it seems like the “best and the brightest”—and the money for them— are a thing of the past, and people just want to watch American idol, and fund worthless things like environmental junk .