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More Bounce to the Ounce

mceglowski.substack.com

11–20 of 66 posts

Re: More Bounce to the Ounce

#12
post #2

Wild cowboy ideas of yore. Will we ever be able to make it safer to use on earth or would we save that for a moon base -get to the moon and from there blast away with these atomic fahrting machines…

With hindsight being 20/20 and all, it always makes me laugh at how 1950s pro-atomics a lot of things seemed to be. Yes, it was the new, like AI is today so everyone was all about it. Yet there never seemed to be any concerns of the downsides of things like the pesky nuclear waste or fallout. Looking back at films and magazines, the feel of TFA and Fallout are not out of place which is part of what makes them good.

Re: More Bounce to the Ounce

#14
post #4

This is a really enjoyable read. Majiec is a great writer and speaker. A breath of fresh air compared much of modern blog/essay content.

Where modern is post 2000 not 2020!

https://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day....

https://idlewords.com/2014/07/sana_a.htm

Re: More Bounce to the Ounce

#17
A version of this idea was mentioned in one of the Three Body Problem books. There, the bombs were pre-positioned along a path and detonated sequentially like dominos, with a vehicle riding the blast waves.

Re: More Bounce to the Ounce

#18
post #4

This is a really enjoyable read. Majiec is a great writer and speaker. A breath of fresh air compared much of modern blog/essay content.

“Pez dispenser for Armageddon” is incredible imagery

The Zapp & Roger shout-out in the title is gold too.

Re: More Bounce to the Ounce

#19
post #17

A version of this idea was mentioned in one of the Three Body Problem books. There, the bombs were pre-positioned along a path and detonated sequentially like dominos, with a vehicle riding the blast waves.

It is more similar to the Medusa method. Lots of ideas have been proposed. One problem is getting the nukes prepositioned (and they won't easily stay in one spot!) with chemical rockets is quite challenging (rather than carrying them and launching them along the way) and also they would actually need to be set in groups of 3 to provide balanced forces along an axis, or alternately along a parabolic helix to compensate for directional errors.

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2024/04/17/medusa-deep-space...

Re: More Bounce to the Ounce

#20
post #8

I've thought that if this idea is picked up it would have to be in space. Testing the rocket on the surface of the moon (point the plate straight up) would probably have been necessary anyway. Ordinary chemical rockets can be tested on the Earth's surface, this concept, not so much. This is among the reason I've thought nuclear waste should be disposed of in space. Send the stuff onto the moon; if future lunar inhabi…

> This is among the reason I've thought nuclear waste should be disposed of in space. Send the stuff onto the moon

Congrats; you have come up with a way to make nuclear waste disposal 100x more dangerous and 1000x more expensive!

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