Ah so easy preaching from the Anon C. pulpit. "THEY" as you so adroitly put it fits in with 99+% of "US". You are aware
of something called the "Miller Experiments"? No? Try looking it up....
"They were so motivated to cancel the launch that they never performed the engineering analysis that would have given the launch controllers the safe parameters for launches (i.e. do not lauch if colder than 20 F)."
I don't know where your 20 degree F figure comes from, but Roger Boisjoly had been pratically begging his management to fund fully an engineering analysis on the O-Rings and the Joint seals MONTHS before Challenger.
"And the information was never transmitted to the people who were in charge of the program."
Untrue. The people in charge were at the telecon. The NASA Administrators in charge of launch decisions were there, present
and accounted for. The process is called delegation. Launch commit decisions were their responsibility, no one elses. You really think someone calling the White House at 2am insisting they are God Almighty Engineer trying to prevent a murder would have gotten/achieved what, exactly?
Dr. Slotin's job at the Manhattin Project during the war (WWII) was to determine the exact mass of plutonium needed to achieve criticality for the implosion (Fat Man) bomb. This experiment was key for reasons beyond just what were required for a bomb. This knowledge was necessary to make sure that the plutonium seperation process in use at Hanford, Washington did not accidently separate Pu in too great a quantity running the risk of spontaneous fission during processing.
As I recall the story, Dr. Slotin had retired his risky experiment at the end of the war. But in the year following was asked to repeat it for a visting scientist (the fellow who you say was assisting, more like observing I'd say).
Following this incident the experiment was banned
at Los Alamos. Subsequent studies we performed using remote controlled tele-operated robotics.
I've always wondered if a gravity table would have been the far safer way to conduct this experiment. The fail safe would have been if the operator released the wheel that would have been lifting the lower hemisphere closer to the upper one a weight on the axle would have forced the lower one away.
Dr. Slotin received a fatal dose in the affair because he made a conscious and heroic snap descision to manually separate the beryllium reflectors stopping the reaction. Saving the lives of everyone there except his own.
I find it ironic and more than sad that no mention of Dr. Slotin (or Harry Daghlian) was made at the Bradbury Museum in Los Alamos when I visited there back in 1997. True he ran a risky experiment, but also true he has been asked to do it after he'd stopped. Also true his heroic action that day saved many lives.
I hope in the time since my last visit this oversight has been corrected.
-The gun and implosion types of bombs aren't tied to the fissile type. You could use either type with either plutonium or uranium.
Untrue.
It would be very hard to build a working gun design with plutonium. The reaction rate for plutonium is too high vs the speed of insertion.
If the plutonium even triggered it would tend to blow itself apart thermally before you got any significant yield. You need uniform compression
in all dimensions to hold the assembly together
long enough.
That's why they went to the tremendous complexity of an implosion design for Fat Man in the first place.
Even this design requires an initiator at the center or an abundance of available neutrons provided by a neutron source (aka a "zipper")
during supercritical assembly to guarantee an adequate trigger.
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Not "Miller Experiment" but "Milgram Experiment" my bad....
Ah so easy preaching from the Anon C. pulpit. "THEY" as you so adroitly put it fits in with 99+% of "US". You are aware of something called the "Miller Experiments"? No? Try looking it up.... "They were so motivated to cancel the launch that they never performed the engineering analysis that would have given the launch controllers the safe parameters for launches (i.e. do not lauch if colder than 20 F)." I don't know where your 20 degree F figure comes from, but Roger Boisjoly had been pratically begging his management to fund fully an engineering analysis on the O-Rings and the Joint seals MONTHS before Challenger. "And the information was never transmitted to the people who were in charge of the program." Untrue. The people in charge were at the telecon. The NASA Administrators in charge of launch decisions were there, present and accounted for. The process is called delegation. Launch commit decisions were their responsibility, no one elses. You really think someone calling the White House at 2am insisting they are God Almighty Engineer trying to prevent a murder would have gotten/achieved what, exactly?
Dr. Slotin's job at the Manhattin Project during the war (WWII) was to determine the exact mass of plutonium needed to achieve criticality for the implosion (Fat Man) bomb. This experiment was key for reasons beyond just what were required for a bomb. This knowledge was necessary to make sure that the plutonium seperation process in use at Hanford, Washington did not accidently separate Pu in too great a quantity running the risk of spontaneous fission during processing.
As I recall the story, Dr. Slotin had retired his risky experiment at the end of the war. But in the year following was asked to repeat it for a visting scientist (the fellow who you say was assisting, more like observing I'd say).
Following this incident the experiment was banned at Los Alamos. Subsequent studies we performed using remote controlled tele-operated robotics.
I've always wondered if a gravity table would have been the far safer way to conduct this experiment. The fail safe would have been if the operator released the wheel that would have been lifting the lower hemisphere closer to the upper one a weight on the axle would have forced the lower one away.
Dr. Slotin received a fatal dose in the affair because he made a conscious and heroic snap descision to manually separate the beryllium reflectors stopping the reaction. Saving the lives of everyone there except his own.
I find it ironic and more than sad that no mention of Dr. Slotin (or Harry Daghlian) was made at the Bradbury Museum in Los Alamos when I visited there back in 1997. True he ran a risky experiment, but also true he has been asked to do it after he'd stopped. Also true his heroic action that day saved many lives.
I hope in the time since my last visit this oversight has been corrected.
Untrue.
It would be very hard to build a working gun design with plutonium. The reaction rate for plutonium is too high vs the speed of insertion. If the plutonium even triggered it would tend to blow itself apart thermally before you got any significant yield. You need uniform compression in all dimensions to hold the assembly together long enough. That's why they went to the tremendous complexity of an implosion design for Fat Man in the first place. Even this design requires an initiator at the center or an abundance of available neutrons provided by a neutron source (aka a "zipper") during supercritical assembly to guarantee an adequate trigger.
Already covered long, long ago... See "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes.