From: Randall R Randall (rrandall6@juno.com)
Date: Tue Mar 03 1998 - 18:16:24 MST
On Mon, 2 Mar 1998 22:55:17 -0800 (PST) John K Clark <johnkc@well.com>
writes:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>On Mon, 2 Mar 1998 Eugene Leitl <eugene@liposome.genebee.msu.su>
>Wrote:
> >>Me:
> >>the foam further from the fission trigger must receive weaker X
rays
> >>and explode with less power, this would compress the fusion
cylinder
> >>unevenly making a dud.
>
> >Maybe that's why they took polymer foam instead of polymer
solid,
> >and adjusted the geometry accordingly to compensate for that.
>
>Maybe, but then the design would be inefficient because if the foam
>was that ephemeral then most of the X rays energy would pass
>through all the foam and be wasted, it would not be available to
>compress the fusion cylinder.
>Why not use radiation pressure?
Because they had no good way to make high-energy X-rays
turn a right angle? The geometry of the device seems to
forbid anything except good X-ray mirrors, which would have
been used, I'm sure, if any had been available. If I understand
it correctly, the major reason we don't have X-ray lasers now
is that no mirrors exist for X-rays, so you need an extremely
high intensity source...a nuke, for instance.
> >There's a reason thermonuclear devices are so difficult to
build.
>
>
>I wonder, are they difficult to build? Over 100,000 of the damn things
>have
>been made and several hundred have exploded in tests, some with very
>unusual
>designs, and yet there has not been one dud and most turned out to be
>more
>powerful than expected.
Well, none we *know* about, anyway...:)
Wolfkin.
rrandall6@juno.com | ICQ: 3043097
On a visible but distant shore a new image of man,
The shape of his own future, now in his own hands.
| Johnny Clegg
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