Early concepts of X-Ray Laser ABM systems developed for the Strategic Defense Initiative worked similar to this, in which an atomic bomb would provide the light to feed a laser directed at enemy ballistic missiles. Since we didnât want to send nukes up into orbit (which would break treaties against OWPs) weâd have to pop them up via a launch vehicle, probably as large as ICBMs themselves. (Wikipedia)
And then, three weeks later, boom, dead.
Works everytime, cannot fail.
Totally non credible, whereâs the sight?
My favorite thing about this is that the safest person⊠would be the one the barrel is pointing at.
Is it? How would the physics work here?
I mean, the trigger mechanism could use some foolproofing, but wouldnât the radiation go out the only opening it has?
It would explode generally, and disperse bits of the core all about. Congrats! You have a dirty bomb, and all the physicists in other countries will laugh at you. (See the DPRK tests in the aughts)
This is why we invented the fat man configuration, which then powers the Teller-Ulam configuration in most hydrogen bombs.
Remember that the demon core and reflectors were lab bits used for the development of the atomic bomb configurations. Little Boy was named in the convention of the Tallboy earthquake bomb, and was a gun design that shot the core with enough force to prevent dispersal before complete fission, and Fat Man evenly compressed the core in all directions, again with enough force to prevent dispersal before complete fission.
The demon core wouldnât explode. It just emits a bright light, fatal amounts of radiation, and would melt if kept closed for more than a few moments.
At least thatâs based on the info I found digging around.
The demon coreâs shell isnât shielding, itâs reflective and is what causes the fission material to go supercritical. The only shielding on this gun is the lead barrel. Once the two halves are closed, the entire sphere would go supercritical. Importantly, this wouldnât cause an explosion but would instead bathe everything around it in fatal levels of radiation as the sphere rapidly heats up and starts melting. Since the lead barrel is the only shielding, anything directly behind the barrel would receive less (though probably still a fatal amount) of radiation.
I think they are implying that when it is nearly fully enclosed it would go super criticalâŠand kaboom.
