-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 05:56 PM 2/16/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:

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My, my. For a group of people so uspet at taxes you certainly have faith in the ability of private individuals to generate the capital for things like the Manhattan Project and high-cost nuke delivery systems!

Unfortunately, neither of these would take that much. A university with competent physics, engineering, and chemistry departments could do the first; smuggling could do the second. -Allen

Actually, I have enough background in all these areas, to the point where I think if I were given a plutonium "pit," I could probably implement the bomb in about 6 months of part-time tinkering. The main engineering problem would be finding/producing two different homogeneous explosives with reliably defined/measured detonation velocities, and calculating the shape of the "lenses" required to cover the pit, and then machining or casting the parts. (I'd probably also want to simulate the mechanical "impedance match" of the chemical explosive to the (dense) plutonium; and as I understand it they use the mechanical equivalent of a transformer to do the matching. Sorry, but I think in terms of electronics, not mechanics. Sue me.) BTW, I think I've already solved the problem of producing a few dozen absolutely simultaneous trigger explosions (+/- 100 nanoseconds) around the periphery at the lens foci, without using multiple electronic detonators. (in fact, a single blasting cap would do nicely.) "But the margins of this book are too small to contain it" Heh heh! Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com Klaatu Burada Nikto Something is going to happen. Something....Wonderful! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMSYVWfqHVDBboB2dAQH8KAP+PBsKYf6J94hU1FLMn/vny1IU827srMPz Hvr7CRuHwPmGKc6VkKwIRBHRZ9adRd9c75HNhi4T+JA/qO1sZX8Qxk+xQUy6Z0pS fx2HoPBQvEXjqkKpCfWWBKg/sXzu1J0XCmyqM3HXt8Cw0upYsHemQD/x+llDfYRM GDV+B/Wt8pw= =vyDu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----