p1t1o

Obviously there is the classification barrier when talking about almost anything along this subject, and even publicly declassified things can be heavily redacted or less than totally accurate, along with nobody wanting to officially admit anything embarrassing. But it does appear in several seperate sources (not counting websites, never count websites), significantly including Eric Schlosser's "Command and Control" which is a fairly well respected source. Im sure if I re-read a bunch of stuff in my "library" I could find at least one other equally reliable source but thats neither here nor there. Combined many other scary stories, some of which are very well documented as real - it isnt so hard to believe. At the very least, its either false or real, its almost certainly not a mis-interpretation of the instructions.

Well, it is moving toward the star at the moment, but its closest approach will be 1.7 light years... Though by that time, the star will be less than half its current distance away from Earth.

I think you still have to do the whole "two keys" thing - whatever that actually entails - but to actually fire the missile, you pull the big red trigger Though the first thing I thought when I read your comment was that you were alluding to this machine:

The Voyager I probe, one of the fastest man-made object ever made, is moving roughly towards a star 10ish light years away at 15ish km/s, That star, Gliese 445, is travelling towards us at 120ish km/s. So at the moment our best bet for interstellar travel, by a long chalk, is to stay still and wait for them to come closer.

FunFactTM: Nuclear detonations produce 2 flashes (first, very brief, produced by prompt effects at detonation. 2nd, can radiate a large portion of total yield energy, is from the fireball itself), this is one of their defining characteristics and how early warning satellites can tell what is or is not a nuclear event. The effect is more pronounced the larger the yield, in hiroshima-sized devices the 2 are very close together. While generally true for all the reasons you mention, in the early days there were some very risky designs where accidental detonation under certain conditions was a real risk, for at least a partial yield. It is hardly surprising that propaganda was produced to play down these risks and in the 60s warheads were definitely a lot less safe. The burning fire one is especially propaganda-ish as uranium is pyrophoric and could cause a major "dirty" event if it itself caught fire, not helped by the fact that the explosives used in older weapons were themselves flammable. But generally yes they are inherently insensitive, and certainly with modern warheads. FunFactTM #2: The US have since admitted that for several years, many of the codes actually at the weapon interface (ie: not in the authorisation process) were set to "00000", partly due to the fear that the code could be inputted incorrectly and partly due to bureaucracy. On the UK side, for several years the weapon-side security was literally a commercially available bike-lock. One hope that the situation has improved somewhat. By all reports, modern safing mechanisms are constructed as much as possible within the mechanism of the warhead itself, so to tamper with it, you would need to dismantle the warhead itself, which may not be easily reversible. Due to the...ahem..."current administration"...this has been examined a lot recently, and it is not entirely black-and-white whether or not a rogue president could be prevented strictly by the machinations of whatever process is in place - though this is uncertain as much of the process is classified. However, a chief of staff or joint chief who disagreed with an order can be legally replaced almost immediately with someone else and there is little legal obstruction to a president giving the order on a whim. The general wisdom is that the military chain of command would not execute an obviously insane nuclear war order. Submarines have buttons This literally fires ICBMs (PewPew):

Oh "the firepower of", well that changes everything. Hardest reasonable target for a 40mm cannon is light armour, APCs that type of thing. You can easily put enough firepower into a drone, todays drones have way more firepower, they are just a little bigger. It is possible, today, to put enough firepower to take out a main battle tank (ie: significantly more firepower than a 40mm round), into the space of a briefcase..or maybe suitcase. Most of those things arent even all that crazy, just really expensive or unnecessary.. The infinitely cool "Project Pluto" was a global range cruise missile, sure it was a couple of Mach's short of "hypersonic" but it was the 60's! It was cancelled for being unecessarily powerful to the point of being a destabilising influence. Then made obsolete by things with a fraction of the performance in terms of range and speed but with much better abilities elsewhere. Smart bullets? We have those, we just call them missiles. No seriously, whats the difference between an AMRAAM and a very long range, guided, intelligent (including IFF & re-attack), semi-to-fully autonomous, bullet? Tanks drones? Still cheaper to train a human operator. Honestly, its a little unimaginative for my taste. I mean if you look at today's most modern weapons, even the simple-sounding ones can be extremely complex. Take the old AGM-45 "Shrike" anti-radar missile from the Vietnam era. Nice and textbook anti-radar weapon, passive sensor homes on emissions, job done right? The modern version, the AGM-88 "HARM" has backup intertial guidance with GPS assist, a far more sophisticated and accurate passive sensor, a backup IR sensor or active millimetre imaging radar, can intelligently divert to a safe area if target is lost, can take IR pictures of the target on approach and beam them home for battle damage assessment, it can even be fired "over the shoulder" at targets that pop-up to your rear. And thats not even going into the nitty-gritty of the electronics - target identification, ECM resistance, compatible frequency, kinetic energy management, datalinks, telemetry & hardened comms etc etc. So to imagine the weapons of the future, first take a closer look at todays cutting edge. Its easy to say "Oh I dunno, a tank with legs and a 250GW laser, oh and its the size of a puppy" its less easy to imagine actual practical weapon advancements. **edit** And just because, here is a real, present-day, briefcase-sized drone armed with 40mm anti-personnel rounds (not cannon rounds but gimme a break Im doing my best!)

Well then in that case the answer to your initial question is "Yes, it is definitely overkill." How many 40mm rounds, no matter what the other dimensions are, could you fit in a briefcase-sized drone anyway? Unless for some reason the usual convention for describing weapon calibre has been ignored and the rounds are 40mm long or something. Or perhaps its supposed to be 4mm? The below is an example of a round in this range designed specifically to be compact and anti-infantry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HK_4.6×30mm What is this from? A movie?

Are we absolutely sure that what is being referred to as a "machine gun" is not an "automatic grenade launcher" that fires 40mm anti-personell grenades? Because unless you are fighting Space Marines, nobody is shooting 40mm cannon rounds at infantry. If anything, just the expense of using 40mm cannon rounds is reason enough to make it ludicrous.

I think that this is a deceptively simple question. You are not only asking how a very long flexible strand (describing how long flexible strands act under various forces can actually get very complicated due to the sheer number of degrees of freedom - think of a chain with infinitely small links) will act whilst within the influence of two dissimilar gravity wells, but also how the attachment of both ends effects the dynamics. And thats ignoring the complexity of having the Earth rotate very much faster than the Moon orbits and that you cant attach the rope to the geometric centre of either body. Very simple, very quick top-of-my-head impression? Well its hard to imagine that the rope would not be under tension, so there will be some extra attractive force between the bodies, meaning that the two bodies will adopt some other equilibrium than that which they are in now. I assume that the Moon's orbital altitude would be reduced, taking up some of the tension with centri-fugal/petal force. And that the rope will eventually adopt some stable/standing conformation other than a straight line, probably a smooth curve, possibly some kind of standing wave. Shortening the rope to decrease curvature will increase tension, which in turn will pull the Moon closer, producing more "slack". An equilibrium will be sought. On the other hand, I cannot say for certain that it would be stable - that the equilibrium would ever reach a "steady state". And even all of that assumes zero-point-zero friction at all points and some perfect way of having the Earthside attachment point run smoothly along the Earths surface (at no point will the circular "track" be perfectly circular due to the Earth's axis, equator and Moon orbit not being perfectly lined up.) Its probably worth noting that the magnitude of the forces here (which will be on a similar order to that of the mass of the rope) will be very small compared to the masses of the two bodies, so the effects will be hard to see with the naked eye, so its not like the tides will start washing away continents, but there could be detectable effects.

As someone who works in chemical safety, Im just wondering where he got the idea that "1,1 Difluoroethane 75-37-6 which is supposedly not flammable" I mean, he's got the CAS number there, meaning he must have looked it up... Maybe he misunderstood the word "inflammable".... I mean, its not the most flammable thing in the world, but this still gives me a pretty good case of the heeby-jeebies. *** PS: If anyone was thinking of testing this, Fluorocarbons produce Hydrogen Fluoride (HF) when burned guys, do not mess around with it. HF is extremely dangerous even in small quantities. (that might sound over-bearing but its all fun and games until your corneas turn white. Man, fluorine makes for the best chemistry conversations...)

Did a little googling to back this up, and apparently both cases (for combustion or dispersion) are relevant depending on the fuels used (emphasis mine). From: Eastern and Western Range (EWR) 127-1 Range Safety Requirements - published jointly by the 45th Space Wing (Cape Canaveral Air Station, FL) and the 30th Space Wing (Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA) 4.6 FLIGHT TERMINATION ACTION REQUIREMENTS 4.6.1 Liquid Propellant Vehicles a. For vehicles consisting of all liquid propellant stages, both engine shutdown and destruct capability are required for each stage of the vehicle. b. The Range transmitted ARM command shall be used as a preterminate logic function in the FTS receiver and shall cause nondestructive engine shutdown of all thrusting stages and inhibit ignition of all other liquid stages. c. The subsequent Range transmitted DESTRUCT command or activation of the Automatic Destruct System (ADS) shall cause the following actions to occur: 1. For liquid propellant stages using toxic propellants, the destruct charges shall cause penetration of the propellant tanks and initiate rapid burning of the propellants so that as much propellant as possible is consumed or dispersed. 2. For liquid propellant stages using non-toxic propellants, the destruct charges shall cause penetration of the fuel and oxidizer propellant tanks to the extent necessary for rapid dispersion of the propellants. d. The destruct charge shall not detonate the liquid propellants. Full documentation provided here: https://snebulos.mit.edu/projects/reference/NASA-Generic/EWR/EWR-127-1.html Heres another interesting document that refers to the one above: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19770018296.pdf *** PS: Oooooh OOooooh I just reached 2000 rep!

The replication of that scene from Dambusters will reach a theoretical maximum. Obviously something will be blown up by space fighters flying down a trench. People in conversation will approach each other in a slow crouch whilst targetting graphic popup over their target. I wouldnt be surprised if they actually blew up a dam at some point. And I think its even plausible that the next "space bomber" will have 4 wing-mounted engines with space-propellers.

Except that wouldnt happen, the tool would not end the experiment made of the same material it started out as. By the time your tool reached the neutronium surface, it too would be neutronium, and would just *merge* with the tested object. Like testing the "hardness" of water by stabbing it with some water. If you think about it, this would technically create a depression in the "original" surface material, to make way for the new neutronium introduced, so in effect the testing "probe" IS "piercing" the "surface". I wont accept any "hypothetical" "meta-stable" "naked" (wow thats a lot of quotation marks) neutronium without some very substantial documentation on its possibility. So yes, neutronium will effectively destroy any testing probe, but Im not sure if it is "hardness" that is being measured there. I dont think "hardness" is relevant in this context, just as tensile strength is not really relevant to gases. The strength of the local gravity field renders it moot as by definition the gravity field vastly overcomes any inter-atomic interaction which is where "hardness" comes from. Just as the kinetic energy of gaseous atoms vastly overcomes their inter-atomic attraction, rendering "tensile strength" meaningless. Any material exposed to this environment becomes neutronium, so the very experiment itself is corrupted.

Thanks! Learned a lot just then And if we stack them just right we can build a shed!

Its difficult to parse "hardness" when it has to be under such colossal pressure to remain in its state. For example, lets say I want to try and "scratch" some neutronium with some, say, tungsten carbide. Oops my tungsten carbide blade was compressed on contact to neutronium by the gravitational environment. So which is harder? Or, oops the neutronium just exploded into a trillion cubic metres of hydrogen (Im sure the decomposition is more complex than that, but y'know), so which is harder? But I think the whole thing is moot seeing as the core materials (there is a solid iron "crust") that form neutron stars are fluid in nature, so "hardness" does not really apply?

I believe that the charges are positioned in such a way as to minimise propellant/oxidiser mixing (eg: by blowing one tank a split second before the next) once the tanks are ruptured the airflow takes care of the rest.

Well would you look at that, a snow day! *** In other news, heres a picture I saw recently: Kinda puts this guy to shame:

About 20 years ago you played Quake and pressed "Y" to quit, and it summoned Satan all over your harddrive. Now you pay the price.

Was in the "Combined Cadet Force" at school. As part of a summer camp, we went on one of these "survival" courses. We were all very excited, we were even searched for any food we might be taking with us. We were shown how to build several types of trap, how to skin rabbits, brew nettle tea, which tree bark you could eat etc. We built bivouacs in the forest. And then they wheeled out containers of hot chicken for everyone! What?! Talk about disappointing! We all wanted to see how well we could survive! I *suppose* there might have been some "health+safety" issue with leaving a group of teens alone in the woods and expecting them to eat the local wildlife. I mean, what could go wrong?

Congrats on finishing the tutorial, its useless. Welcome to the beginning Dont get a credit card. EVER. Wear Sunscreen.

True, true. Which also causes another major sci-fi thing that I hate - space helmets with internal lights that illuminate the wearers face.

One of my favorite aviation errors are fighter jet cockpits. Often they are huge, big enough to get an office desk in there, the pilot reaching around for distant consoles (especially that one that he...just...cant...reach).

Heat is a problem in a regular Dyson Sphere. But anyway, the whole point of a Dyson Sphere is that you use the energy captured from the sun - Habitable area is not the main driver for building Dyson Spheres.

About as possible as a regular Dyson Sphere, give or take. Once you reach a level of tech where the challenges presented by a Dyson Sphere are surmountable, then you probably have the ability to modify the design however you please.

Well this is getting a bit much, racial profiling, ITAR, cruise missiles....like people here are bubbling over with sensitive military secrets. You know how I know that there is little risk of any secrecy acts being breached? People who hold that kind of information dont talk about it, they dont say things like "Woah there I cant talk about this it might be illegal", they just wont touch this thread. Not to mention the fact that it would be quite difficult to breach ITAR or the Official Secrets Act merely by typing a few paragraphs on a forum thread. I think its getting a bit over-dramatic. @Sammyhasan, I think what is freaking people out is the fact that your request is so ambitious. The level of experience and expertice necessary to properly build your aircraft borders on that of a team of professionals. Not only that but it would require significant resource to answer properly. Building an aircraft from scratch with your given capabilities, its a serious challenge probably requiring prototypes, wind tunnel time, computer simulations...that is the sort of thing you need to do to really answer your questions. Its weird to be asked these things, especially when you say you have little experience. Its weird to be asked these things - and to be told you have little experience - when you say you have built working table-top pulse-jets and ramjets - that already very far along in the "build an aircraft from scratch" regime, relatively speaking, Id be very surprised if there was anyone here who has gotten further. And its weird that you have applied for licenses and things whilst apparently now knowing how to build the thing. So TL:DR - its a weird question that is practically impossible to answer. Its not the most suspicious thing I have ever seen.