On Sun, 18 Feb 1996, jim bell wrote:

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At 10:25 PM 2/18/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:

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I've been kind of busy recently (the reason I haven't responded to the more recent Assasination Politics stuff), but I'm curious what your method is for achieving simultaneous explosions.

"Multiple very thin flexible hollow tubes (1 mm ID? teflon?) filled with a homogenous liquid explosive (for example, pure nitromethane), length accurately cut to produce the exactly desired delay. Kept separated from each other by foam spacers to avoid inter-fiber detonations. Detonated from a single cap, with an intermediary chamber of liquid explosive to stabilize the shock front, the detonation wave travels along each tube simultaneously at (presumably) identical velocity."

This method is so dependent on the uniformity of the initiator (the cap in this instance) as to be nearly useless. Normal blasting caps do not detonate with the uniformity required to initiate each of the tube paths at the same time. In the off chance that you contemplated surrounding the cap with liquid explosive of a sufficent type, (which still wouldn't assure proper uniformity with any certainty as the liquid explosive is as likely to detonate slightly off left to right as up to down) you still have extremely difficult problems to overcome. 1> Interference from the milling shape and accuracy of the openings to the tubes containing the liquid explosive. 2> Mild to obscure impurities in the liquid explosives causing differences in velocity with respect to other tubes. Even small changes in pressures within the tubes might cause enough timing problems to make uniform initiation of the primary high explosive assembly impossible. 3> Interference from the milling shape and accuracy of the terminus of the tubes containing the liquid explosive. 4> Overpressure in the device causing premature detonation of the near portion of the high explosive assembly. All of these might cause enough timing error to prevent uniform pressure and thus prevent uniform compression and make supercriticality impossible. Remember, kryonic switiches are necessary even when dealing with the speeds of electric conductivity. The velocities of even hydrazine based explosives are signigicantly lower. The margin for error is similarly lower. Plutonium gun is still the easiest method for the home grown nuclear device, even if it requires more fissile material.

It's a race, designed so that the detonation waves reach their targets (the foci) at the same time. If the detonation velocity was, say, 5,000 meters per second, an accuracy of 0.5 millimeter in length would produce a delay accuracy of 100 nanoseconds.

Whatcha think?

Now where did I put that pit... <G>

Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com

Klaatu Burada Nikto

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