A Very Scary Fireworks Show: Exploding H-Bombs In Space | Hacker News Reader

A Very Scary Fireworks Show: Exploding H-Bombs In Space

npr.org

43 pointsrpledge24 comments

One of the purposes for detonating the H-bomb was to determine the effect of the explosion on the Van Allen Belts.

Typical of Robert Krulwich, and NPR in general, is to find some arcane piece of interesting news, ask some insightful questions, then only use and report on the facts that ultimately align with their opinion.

We never do find out if it was harmful to the belts, the atmosphere, or anything else. How many tests were performed by both sides, or what the effect of a missile malfunction might have been. No matter, he proffered his opinion. And that's what really counts.

For the record, the blast was harmful to orbiting satellites, since the belt of high-energy electrons it released fried their electronics. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime#After_effects

That's how media in general works: columnists and special correspondents are mini-celebrities, so everyone expects a statement about where they 'stand' on the issue, and of course such statements are largely tailored to the prevailing views among the audience. I think this trend is a bit more pronounced in the US, but not by much.

It's a terrible paradigm. I want information and really am not interested in the views or artificial pieties of the person who is delivering it. One reason I look forward to the Economist every week is the lack of bylines - one does become familiar with the voices of particular writers, but as they're anonymous they have no incentive to honor readers' shibboleths.

A lot of the time, NPR (let alone other media) seem to miss the crucial points of a story, as if they didn't notice.

Maybe you should do more than just skim the article:

>When the bomb burst, people told of blackouts and strange electrical malfunctions, like garage doors opening and closing on their own. But the big show was in the sky.

They're a little lighter on details vis-a-vis the heady scientific mumbo jumbo (that most people won't get anyway) but they did provide some evidence that the detonation was not a benign event.

"The plan was [...] to see: a) If a bomb's radiation would make it harder to see what was up there (like incoming Russian missiles!); b) If an explosion would do any damage to objects nearby; c) If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the bands to an earthly target (Moscow! for example); and — most peculiar — d) if a man-made explosion might "alter" the natural shape of the belts."

Well... what did they learn then? I find it very insatisfactory when articles only state an hypothesis or the how of an experiment. Surely people are interested in the results too?

Discussion from a few days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1478114

One of the scientists from this adventure spoke at my school.

Apparently, one rocket fell, and the plutonium came crashing back down and landed a few feet from the island in the water.

water = absorb radiation

Or something like that.

Krulwich concludes "...that we never want to see again." but I'd much rather those nuclear weapons making awesome fireworks shows than destroying the earth. Or am I missing something?

Nope, just standard NPR ingroup assumptions. ("Nuclear weapons are bad, mmkay?")

Are nuclear weapons good?

Nuclear bombs are neither good nor bad, they're just a tool. Since they're so powerful you should carefully consider the consequences before you use them, but that applies to any powerful tool.

That's a strange kind of doublespeak. A forklift is "just a tool", a knife is "just a tool", even a hunting rifle is "just a tool". A nuclear bomb is a weapon of mass destruction, designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. I don't know about you, but I think that's bad. You might argue that it's a necessary evil to stockpile nuclear weapons and maintain the plausible threat that you're going to use them. I can't really argue against that. But calling them "just a tool" is in my opinion trivializing mass murder.

They're not always used to kill people. There are many uses for that kind of massive power and its multiple effects.

They're a tool. The "mass murder" thing is a human decision.

That seems a strange way to put it, as if these grow on trees or something. They are expressly designed for mass murder.

The wikipedia article for peaceful nuclear explosions didn't show many other successful uses. Are there others I may not be aware of?

Haven't you heard of nuclear fish'n? That's where you detonate a nuke under the ocean and then gather up the dead fish that float to the top.

>A nuclear bomb is a weapon of mass destruction, designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible.

Nuclear weapons have a few niche civilian uses. Sealing an underwater oil leak is one such use that is particularly relevant today.

See: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6611RF20100702

Also: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/yourfriendatom/

It is certainly easy to see why the US and Soviets wanted to investigate using nukes for peaceful uses. But claiming that the 250 or so peaceful nuclear explosions (out of a total of more than 2000 nuclear tests over-all) makes the nuclear bomb something other than a weapon of mass destruction seems to me more than a little intellectually dishonest.

If the Orion project had not been killed for political reasons, by now the vast majority of all exploded nuclear devices would likely have been used for transportation.

...the Orion design would have worked by dropping small shaped charge fission or thermonuclear explosives out the rear of a vehicle, detonating them 200 feet (60 m) out, and catching the blast with a thick steel or aluminum pusher plate. [...] The 'base design' consisted of a 4000 ton model planned for ground launch from Jackass Flats, Nevada. Each 0.15 kt of TNT (600 MJ) (sea-level yield) blast would add 30 mph (50 km/h, 13 m/s) to the craft's velocity. A graphite based oil would be sprayed on the pusher plate before each explosion to prevent ablation of the surface. To reach low Earth orbit (300 mi), this sequence would have to be repeated about 800 times, like an atomic pogo stick.

What could possibly go wrong?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...

I imagine similar light shows would be seen when a really big spaceship leaves orbit, firing its engines to propel it into deep space.

It's definitely something I would love to see.

I'd like to see it in my rear-view mirror!

The question was not: "Would you prefer the nuclear bombs be blown up in space or here on earth?" There is no "rather", just the question of whether we want to be blowing up nuclear weapons in space.

A nuclear blast is never an awesome fireworks show. This detonation created serious electromagnetic interference that would likely fry a lot of consumer electronics if done today.

If you want fireworks, use fireworks. And even then, don't. They shoot up a ton of smog and can easily start fires. Cool? I guess. But really dangerous. Especially when you're intentionally setting off a bomb that you know will cause major destructive electromagnetic interference across a sizable chunk of the Earth's surface.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com