Platystemon posted:

From the spaceflight thread: billowing clouds of dinitrogen tetroxide:

Commenter posted:

If a rocket falls down in a forest, apparently everyone hears it fall

One Swell Foop posted:

I think part of it is that you use some form of (possibly disposable) aerodynamics to translate some of the upward velocity into orbital velocity during the atmospheric portion of the flight, and maybe use atmospheric skimming to further alter the flight path and prevent re-entry.

Syd Midnight posted:

I've seen one in action in KSP, I cannot find the video anymore but it was a proof-of-concept Orion aircraft with tiny wings that gave it a small amount of pitch and allowed it to roll really well, which was enough to take off from a runway, maintain relatively controlled flight, and crash land within a few km of target. The little cockpit cam of the terrified crew really added to the experience. So I guess if ground-launched nuclear pulse rockets WERE made, airfoils would be an important part of getting them into orbit.

Zopotantor posted:

Not sure whether to post this here or in the pseudoscience thread.

The Doomsday Scam

quote:

There are other variants of [Red Mercury's origin] story, including one in which Washington and Moscow collaborated in circulating red-mercury stories to flush out nuclear smugglers and to waste terrorists’ time

Icon Of Sin posted:

I come from a biology background (pre-med major), so the phrase "acetylcholinesterase inhibitor" inspires pure terror in me (even after having been mortared and having my base strafed with machine guns at one point). Even more so because I made the mistake of asking an army chemical warfare officer about her job one day. I heard more about nerve agents than I ever wanted to, and learned exactly how expendable most soldiers are to the army

Nostalgia4ColdWar posted:

Cost Analysis Warfare was how it was put to some of us who asked questions. Apparently somewhere in the Pentagon is exactly how much a soldier is worth. From training to equipment. Our equipment was more valuable then we were, so that was factored into the analysis. Whether we could take on the Soviet Union or not was entirely decided on weird algorithms and poo poo, all based on 'cost effectiveness' and poo poo like that. Rumor around the unit was that our lives were worth exactly $4.50. Rumors were around that the M1A1 was so tough that the crew could die of radiation poisoning or blast wave overpressure and they could just throw another crew into it to keep getting their money's worth. This led to a lot of pseudo-depression in our unit as we knew that we were written off.

Our life expectancy got leaked: -92 hours. Almost four days before any hostilities we'd be all killed. Should we survive that, our life expectancy was at 19 minutes. The time it would take to load, prep, and strike package us while we were still mobilizing. We'd vanish in a ball of nuclear fire as one of the opening tactical strikes of the war. This caused more drinking, because, well, gently caress it.

And the officers and senior NCO's let that leak into how they treated us enlisted. We were expendable as far as the DoD and DoA and ChemCorps were concerned so they treated us as expendable, which means our leadership was absolutely crappy. They didn't give a poo poo about us, and all that mattered was the Holy Mission. We were told, trained, and reminded on a constant basis that we were not important, the mission was important, and if we had to die to accomplish that mission, then that was it

[...]

We also found out, despite command trying to keep it from us, that everyone in Europe was only supposed to do their best to hold back the Red Steamroller for 72 hours, time enough to get units from Stateside to reinforce us and evacuate the non-combatants. Total unit mortality for my unit by that 72 hour mark was a whopping 90%. That meant that the survivors would be rolled into whatever unit survived to reach us. To top it off, when the ammo was offloaded the Group would be broken into "Warfare Elements" depending on who survived. My crew would break into a mix of infantry and "NBC Advisors" which meant I'd be planning strike packages for the last unit that left the site. This meant that I had to be cross-trained, all my crew had to be cross-trained to advise the units we ended up attached to. Which meant we'd be attached to a unit that did not give a gently caress about us which meant that more than likely we'd be handed a rifle, our real job ignored, while barely intelligent morons threw around the NBC weaponry like retarded gibbons throwing rocks and all the understanding of a monkey doing math.

[I wasn't kidding about this being a long post, by the way]

Then we were read in on the total war planning once we were at 90%. How we'd try to interlock with the rest of MAD, which meant we were read in on the horribly fascinating tactics of MAD. Our unit had its part to play in completely wiping out as many people as possible and poisoning the ground for decades and centuries. Looking back at it, this had a strange effect on us. See, we grew up under the shadow of nuclear war. Nuclear was not if it was when and it was an impossibility that NATO and the Warsaw Pact wouldn't eventually come to blows. Proxy wars, clandestine operations, dirty deals in the shadows, the CIA and the KGB and the DIA and the GRU all hitting each other in the dark with fallout casualties that nobody gave a gently caress about. So we knew it was going to happen, and you had a choice, you could either drink the horror away or you could throw yourself gleefully into the planning, or both. So we'd drunkenly talk about how we'd maximize casualties. Both civilian and military. Which looped back around to the First Commandment. Thou Shalt Not Go To Mental Health. So we had to self-medicate and develop coping mechanism. Usually drinking and fighting and other high risk entertainment.

Nostalgia4ColdWar posted:

Sure, I had a nervous breakdown and challenged a Brigadier General to a fight for the 'total mastery of the universe' from on top of a stack of MRLS rounds, but I knew my poo poo. My assistant squad leader could step into my shoes if I got downed, I could pick up the slack for about half of my crew, and the whole bunch of us had guts and ingenuity.

One question that gets asked to me by people is if I would have authorized and armed certain weapons and taken part in pasting Europe. For some reason the movies like War Games made everyone think that if the balloon went up people would refuse to use NBC weapons.

Sorry to disappoint them, but I sure as poo poo would have used them and turned Eastern Europe into a loving hellscape.

And this is where some real idiocy comes into play.

They gave an 18 year old that kind of authority. Kill Shop would have given me my initial orders before they got wiped out, I'd have modified it according to how things changed on the ground, and then I would have advised the unit I was attached to as well as handed out kill packets to units going through, on how to maximize casualties and break the USSR's will to carry out the fight. The stupidity is that they gave that to an 18 year old. This wasn't "oh, you'll kill 250 people in this village with a napalm drop just to be a dick and demoralize their government and keep anyone from using the Autobahn intersection right there", this was "turn this city of 125,000 into a blasted wasteland to deny the enemy the use of anything there, even loving Twinkies, for 1,000 years because gently caress YOU!"

[...]

One of my favorite things is that I read somewhere that only about 3K chemical weapons were pulled from Europe in 1991. Hell, I had 3K chemical rounds in one loving bunker. Hell, I had 3K nuclear munitions in like 2 bunkers total.

Of course, it does suck that when I talk about poo poo like 'nuclear proof areas' and nuclear land mines or shoulder fired nuclear weapons people look at me like I'm stupid.

But you want some idiocy. How about when I had my nervous breakdown?

[...]

I got in a fight with a 5-ton. IT STARTED IT! I was walking in front of it, pissed off anyway, and for some reason it rolled forward slightly and knocked me down and into the mud. I started tearing it apart with my bare hands, right there in the motorpool, screaming at the top of my lungs at it. My crew drug me off it, threw me in the front of the Gypsy Wagon, and took me out to the site. I kicked that trucks rear end.

I choked out an Air Force officer because I thought he was a werewolf. He kept following me around asking stupid questions and the second night I suddenly jumped on his and started choking him screaming that he'd never convert us all. Then I put on his softcap, stole his weapon, climbed up on top of his car and fired off his pistol into the air shouting that at my whims and desires all Air Force personnel were hereby restricted from entering the site. Weird thing was, when I recovered, I found a V Corps memo restricting Air Force personnel from the site.

[...]

I got caught break-dancing on top of stacks of MRLS rounds by a General (Still having my nervous break-down), who yelled at me to "GET THE gently caress DOWN, YOU MANIAC!" and challenged him to come up and make me. He took off his top, climbed up on the stack, and fought me in glorious hand to hand combat for the right to be "GOD-KING OF THE SITE!" while all of the privates I'd been given stared in shock and the long time members of the crew laughed and cheered. (He beat me and threw me bodily off the top of the 3-high stack and proclaimed himself the "Undisputed Overlord of All Officers Everywhere EVER" at the top of his lungs) I think he may have been crazy too.

[...]

I got sent to 5th Floor Wurzburg and my intake got hosed up. Before I'd been seen by the doctor they took us out for a smoke break outside I jumped the orderly screaming "YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!", ran away, stole a car, and got arrested in the Class VI at Fulda just standing there guzzling down booze in the aisle. They took me back, this time doped me up with enough sedative to drop a loving horse, I slept for 3 days straight. My bloodwork showed I had high levels of chemicals (including PCP for no goddamn reason except we were burning pallets) so they kept me doped up and under lockdown for 2 weeks and my head cleared up and I was fine.

When I went up for my Field Grade Article 15 the Colonel read everything, looked at the psych report, and just gave me a suspended bust, 30 days restriction, and 30 days pay.

So they sent me back out to the site.

Because sending the maniac back out to handle nuclear weapons makes sense.

Nostalgia4ColdWar posted:

Except I never consciously took PCP in my life.

I mentioned in another thread that for like a year all us mag-rats kept popping hot for PCP on blood work and piss tests and someone pointed out that apparently the Vietnam Era pallets were sprayed with it to keep down the insects and mold. I looked it up and supposedly it isn't supposed to act like regular PCP or some bullshit that made it safe. I guess the Army figured none of us would eat the loving pallets or anything, and we know that the Army didn't give a gently caress about toxicity back then. So they sprayed pallets with PCP, left them in bunkers for 20 years, then told us to replace every single pallet. We couldn't ship them off for destruction and had to destroy them on site.

And we were burning tens of thousands of them over the course of that year and working in the smoke.

Add in we were getting exposed to trace amounts of chemical weapons the whole goddamn times, popping Pyridostigmine Bromide as well as other meds all the time, lack of sleep, alcoholism, deprivation, and just plain job stress, and you have a recipe for the fact we kept getting psychotic breaks all the time. When I worked in the training office for 2 months while I healed up and the entire site was offline due to high contamination levels I found out that at any time we had at least 5-10 people down for psychosis. Mostly it was mag-rats who were down.

We were advised that we couldn't donate blood or plasma.

MisterOblivious posted:

Nostalgia4ColdWar is 50 Foot Ant

Code Jockey posted:

The "Intranasal Cocaine Administration" sounds like a fun place to work

Bhodi posted:

Any sufficiently advanced propulsion system is also a weapons system.

ullerrm posted:

At least it's easy to convert meth to pseudoephedrine if you have a source of MoOPH!

http://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf

quote:

While N-methylamphetamine itself is a powerful decongestant, it is less desirable in a medical setting because of its severe side effects and addictive properties. Such side effects may include insomnia, agitation, irritability, dry mouth, sweating, and heart palpitations. Other side effects may include violent urges or, similarly, the urge to be successful in business or finance.

Islam is the Lite Rock FM posted:

Cesium: melt in your hand and not in your mouth.

Tunicate posted:

If your beryllium-8 splits, which is which???

GWBBQ posted:

The Lone Badger posted:

I don't think anyone's manufacturing a weapon in 23mm RHNB, even if it would be pretty cool.

Buff Skeleton posted:

This sounded familiar to the alum block I use as an aftershave, so I went to google a bit more info and found this... uh, thing: http://science.jrank.org/pages/5422/Potassium-Aluminum-Sulfate.html

The information seems fairly innocuous, but as you get to the "Citing this material" section and below, it quickly becomes pretty hilarious.

quote:

You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.

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Phanatic posted:

But that's a geomagnetic phenomenon: the plasma interacts with Earth's magnetic field and as that field moves around in response to the plasma it drives geomagnetically induced currents. If Earth had no magnetic field, the things observed during the Carrington Event wouldn't have happened. Solar plasma itself is a neutral plasma, it's not going to generate an EMP all on its own out in space somewhere.

Solar flares and CMEs can absolutely wreck spacecraft electronics, but they do it by just being a bunch of high-energy protons and electrons that wind up where they shouldn't be. It's not a matter of EMP. The answer to that is hardening of the components to withstand radiation, and redundancy. We build spacecraft that have withstood intense radiation for considerable periods of time, and while there are occasional current leaks and latch-ups and transitions to safe mode, it's something that's generally survivable. Galileo took a "whole body" dose of well in excess of 6,000 grays, including a hit from a massive (X5+) solar flare in 2000, and while it experienced degradation (including its camera completely whiting out, despite being protected by a centimeter of tantalum), that spacecraft survived far longer than its design lifetime.

For stopping protons, you want something with a lot of protons in it per unit mass. Polystyrene is good. Hydrocarbon fuels are good. One thing that any interplanetary traveler would need a lot of is water, which is also good. And since you have to carry all that water mass along with you anyway, it'd be a good idea to design your ship so that your water tanks are also your radiation shielding, at least for a storm shelter.

Bogatyr posted:

It sounds like the sludge is the White Phosphorous. So it's water and plastic balls on top of the sludge. I put this here since I am the furthest thing from a chemist. I am inclined to believe the potential worst case possibility. I am also open to possibility that this stuff has been sitting out in the weather for so long that it's contaminated with enough dirt and whatnot that it might just be a toxic hellhole and not a flammable toxic hellhole.

quote:

Just sampling the concrete tank's contents started fires that couldn't be extinguished with water until the phosphorus in the sludge samples burned up.

DirtRoadJunglist posted:

Typical Butte. Recognized the newspaper before I even clicked the link. The whole town is a giant Superfund site, and most of the bodies of standing water have to have bird deterents because it's not unusual for a flock of migrating geese or whatever to dissolve en masse in the Berkeley Pit every few seasons.

But don't worry if you visit. They pump the drinking water in from an aquifer on the other side of the mountains. Also, get the fried pork chop sandwich. Just trust me on that. Goddamn, now I wanna go to Butte, and I totally could have last week. Missed opportunity for a casually racist fried meat sammich and some quality OSHA.txt pics for my Instagram.

Cichlidae posted:

If anyone is interested in the terminology of nuclear weapon incidents, here is a relevant Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology

It has a list of Broken Arrow incidents, including the ones discussed here, as well as some code words you never want to hear, like Empty Quiver.

Computer viking posted:

I wonder how many nuclear weapons Russia/USSR lost in similar ways? Probably a few, but they seem less forthcoming about the incidents.

atomicthumbs posted:

casaba howitzer to carve something obscene into the moon

Dirt Road Junglist posted:

Do the experiments IN orbit, transmit the data planetside, then nuke the orbital research station.