Posted on 08/03/2002 6:02:52 PM PDT by gcruse
---max
Read: MORE liberal than Carter.
Wooo Boy. Time to turn in. G'Nite!
Agreed.
The scheme referred to here was to make the ICBM as shiny as possible and spin the upper sections so as to spread the heat of the laser as much as possible.
Another possible countermeasure is to release a metallic cloud or fog from the nose of the missile so as to reflect as much of the beam as possible.
We are, it is the Israeli THEL system. It has passed ground tests and is being built in Israel as we speak. Starwars is alive and well... in Isreal. The Israeli Arrow anti-missile system that is a generation in advance of our patriot system has been approved by congress to deploy around American Cities too. (But that is off thread)
The inovative part is only America can build a big enough plane to put one of these in the sky. Pretty awsome. If it can blow a speeding skud out of the air, imagine how it will do against fighterplanes.
I know that, but it is easy enough to go back to spinning, if desired. At what point in the boost cycle it would be best to impart the spin is an engineering problem. I would guess that the easiest would be to put on the "spin" just at the end of the boost phase, when the warhead "goes ballistic".
And spinning an ICBM during boost is much more difficult now than it was in the early days.
Trying to spin missiles not designed to be spun would cause mucho problems with the new forces now exerted on the vehicle, flame flow thru the nozzles, etc.
It would probably be necessary to redesign the vehicle from scratch.
The key point is that doing a design that allows spin works from KNOWN TECHNOLOGY. Nothing new has to be developed or invented.
Flight vehicles are designed to handle certain forces from certain directions, and only those forces.
Over-design adds weight, and weight is bad.
If a vehicle is not designed to spin, it probably won't stay together if you spin it.
Nuclear reactors are NOT compact.
Nuclear Reactors can be built very compact.
It's all that shielding that's bulky. ;-)
You are being deliberately obtuse. The POINT I am trying to make, and that you seem unable to grasp, is that WE KNOW HOW TO BUILD THIS KIND OF STUFF ALREADY--I AM NOT SAYING THAT YOU CAN DO IT WITH EXISTING HARDWARE--IS! THAT! CLEAR! ENOUGH! FOR! YOU!
In reading back over your posts, it sure seems like you were saying that the enemy would just start spinning their boosters. And they can't.
If you're talking about them completely redesigning all their boosters, you're looking at an 8-10 year timeframe.
By that time our lasers will be so powerful that, spin or no spin, we'll punch right thru.
Soon they will know the POWER of this FULLY OPERATIONAL DEATH STAR . . .
It's all that shielding that's bulky. ;-)
How many minutes have you spent studying the physics of nuclear powered lasers? Try calculating how much energy could be created in the gas tube that would be output as a laser beam using your expertise in gas pressures, neutron fluxes, isotope cross-sections, heat removal, etc.
I was merely joking about "compact nuclear reactors"
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