Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of the MKV-L ballistic missile interceptor tests: simple physics, with impressive engineering implementation [0].

0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMU6l6GsdM (the rapid fire rockets are a little loud)

View on HN

dude, that’s freaking nuts. It’s amazing and terrifying at the same time.

And it looks small, but it's 1.6 meters long (over 5 feet) and fully fueled would weigh ~200kg/~500 lbs!!!

Note that in an actual intercept, this thing is in space and going like 10km/s. It's job is to slam directly into an incoming Ballistic Missile re-entry craft before it can deploy nukes and decoys.

The giant nozzle pointed downwards is simulating 0-gravity, and probably does not exist on live fired craft.

Those thrusters must be extremely precision controlled too. At that flight profile, having a nozzle open an extra millisecond means missing the intercept by hundreds of feet.

And a Nuke hitting DC

Reply on news.ycombinator.com