-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <m0tpV8K-00091iC@pacifier.com>, jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> wrote:
At 11:00 PM 2/21/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 1996, Brian Davis wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 1996, jim bell wrote:
it just didn't occur to me that you'd object to this. "Nettiquette" is new to me. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > ^^^^^^
No shit.
So, it would seem, is nuclear weapons design.
I wrote this just a few hours ago. Let's have a vote: Who thinks I have some idea about the subject?
[snip]
I forgot about the beryllium. Beryllium, I understand, is described as a "neutron reflector". Now how GOOD a neutron reflector it is I don't know, but if you're trying to make a bomb with the smallest amount of material at the primary's core it would help a great deal to have a neutron reflector. Presumably, it would be used to coat the inside of the "hammer." If beryllium were a "perfect" neutron reflector, you could use arbitrarily low amounts of plutonium or U-235 as the core (analogy: If you were in a room with walls which were perfect mirrors, and "you" were invisible, you would see "forever" and the volume of space you were in would appear to be infinite), and you could make the core as small as you want. (But it isn't, so the improvement effected by beryllium is limited.)
It might also help to make the "pit" hollow, but I don't know about that. This might assist in the mechanical impedance match, too. If you could get the chemical implosion timed "just right" you might be able to get away with using a really THIN layer of plutonium that crashes together at the core. This might provide optimum densification because you would be able to accelerate the hollow plutonium sphere centrally at near-detonation-velocity speeds, which would result in very effective density increases.
I vote that you don't know jack shit about bomb design. If you don't have a properly-designed initiator at the core, an implosion device is just a mess of high explosives surrounding a dense metal object. Stick to a gun device; it's tried-and-true. The yield is lower, but at least it works. - -- Alan Bostick | "If I am to be held in contempt of court, Seeking opportunity to | your honor, it can only be because the court develop multimedia content. | has acted contemptibly!" Finger abostick@netcom.com for more info and PGP public key -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMSzAt+VevBgtmhnpAQEX1gL+MOIeJF/0BpM0nUn+Rv8AQoMsS8DdXsOn jhU8ABxWz4mKhhKH+QA6iq7RIPz56DItnZ4hrAwmGS8NQ2q+f2LpgRnBhG+3kDK+ jJ29JJ7uJIuQBzQdn/BNFpGQzYD4UrLu =Oubq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----