426
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
426 points (95.5% liked)
NonCredibleDefense
6591 readers
571 users here now
A community for your defence shitposting needs
Rules
1. Be nice
Do not make personal attacks against each other, call for violence against anyone, or intentionally antagonize people in the comment sections.
2. Explain incorrect defense articles and takes
If you want to post a non-credible take, it must be from a "credible" source (news article, politician, or military leader) and must have a comment laying out exactly why it's non-credible. Low-hanging fruit such as random Twitter and YouTube comments belong in the Matrix chat.
3. Content must be relevant
Posts must be about military hardware or international security/defense. This is not the page to fawn over Youtube personalities, simp over political leaders, or discuss other areas of international policy.
4. No racism / hatespeech
No slurs. No advocating for the killing of people or insulting them based on physical, religious, or ideological traits.
5. No politics
We don't care if you're Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Stalinist, Baathist, or some other hot mess. Leave it at the door. This applies to comments as well.
6. No seriousposting
We don't want your uncut war footage, fundraisers, credible news articles, or other such things. The world is already serious enough as it is.
7. No classified material
Classified ‘western’ information is off limits regardless of how "open source" and "easy to find" it is.
8. Source artwork
If you use somebody's art in your post or as your post, the OP must provide a direct link to the art's source in the comment section, or a good reason why this was not possible (such as the artist deleting their account). The source should be a place that the artist themselves uploaded the art. A booru is not a source. A watermark is not a source.
9. No low-effort posts
No egregiously low effort posts. E.g. screenshots, recent reposts, simple reaction & template memes, and images with the punchline in the title. Put these in weekly Matrix chat instead.
10. Don't get us banned
No brigading or harassing other communities. Do not post memes with a "haha people that I hate died… haha" punchline or violating the sh.itjust.works rules (below). This includes content illegal in Canada.
11. No misinformation
NCD exists to make fun of misinformation, not to spread it. Make outlandish claims, but if your take doesn’t show signs of satire or exaggeration it will be removed. Misleading content may result in a ban. Regardless of source, don’t post obvious propaganda or fake news. Double-check facts and don't be an idiot.
Join our Matrix chatroom
Other communities you may be interested in
- !militaryporn@lemmy.world
- !forgottenweapons@lemmy.world
- !combatvideos@sh.itjust.works
- !militarymoe@ani.social
Banner made by u/Fertility18
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Oh, I apologise, I suffered some curse of knowledge there, the answer is time.
A blast is a release of energy over a short time, the whole point of building weapons is to store and handle energy in safe amounts over time.
Global electric energy consumption is about 200 PJ a day, approximately the same as the Tsar Bomba, but there's no risk for a huge explosion neither when you incinerate trash or turn off the AC.
Because time.
Although we could explode a nuke and propel things ballistically, it turns out it's a lot easier to use rockets. A rocket, although carrying frightening amounts of fuel and exploding spectacularly when it fires wrong, has several safeguards to not expend all that fuel at once. And also gives the opportunity to correct course along the way.
Now imagine that the same amount of energy has been expended many many many times over the course of the space era, and almost any mass in orbit has serious potential for damage.
For example, the MIR was 130 tons, orbiting at about 7,8 km/s, for a kinetic energy of 4 TJ, and another 235 GJ of potential energy. Totalling about a tenth of Little Boy that levelled Hiroshima.
Edit: Specifying and correcting the global energy consumption.
Right, and tungsten rods are dangerous because they don’t slow down and burn up in the atmosphere like most spacecraft do (like you said, spreading out that energy over time and space). As long as you can deorbit them accurately, they are devastating since they convert the entire orbital potential energy into surface kinetic energy all at once. (Oddly, orbital potential energy and surface kinetic energy are the same thing, just from different points of reference.)
Agreed. On all points.
Moreover, the Tungsten rods are quite dense and thus small, and thus very hard to spot on radar or hit with countermeasures.
I'm not sure countermeasures would even work. Even if you could blast it with a half dozen CWIS for the entire duration it's in the atmosphere, hitting every shot, you might change the impact zone by a few hundred meters. A high-angle trajectory would be completely unaffected.
One of the things that's stuck with me during my time on Lemmy is someone remarking that the only difference between a battery and a bomb is how controlled the release of energy is. Having seen what happens when you puncture a LiPo battery, I believe it 😰
There is another factor here which is the base energy level of a battery. LiPo batteries still have a relatively high base level, so even when discharged can still burn/explode. There are other battery chemistries that have a lower base and are therefore safer when fully discharged.
Wait this can't be right or I am missing something. Are you saying that the Tsar Bomba released 10 PetaJoule of energy more than our current world uses in a year?
It's.... definitely not right. Most estimates I found from a quick Google search put global energy consumption at a bit under 600,000 PJ per year, so even if they meant to say daily energy consumption or something they'd still be off by an order of magnitude.
The closest I can get to the number they gave is that global daily electricity consumption is a little over 200 PJ, so right on par with estimates for the Tsar Bomba.
Daily electricity is right, I'll edit
Tsar Bomba released 210–240 PJ of energy according to Wikipedia. Not sure about global energy consumption.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
Still you need that much energy. And it all needs to be on that rocket. So if anything goes wrong with that rocket, it will burn and release the energy of a nuclear explosion. It will be less devastating than a nuke, because it is burning fuel as opposed to a huge shockwave and temperature, but still it would insanely dangerous.
And i've yet to come across a space program that didn't include catastrophic failure rocket launches.
Isn’t this system a rather normal payload? We had really large rockets with the Apollo program.
We've seen this already. Starship should be capable of at least 100t to orbit, which is about 40TJ of energy on orbit. The Little Boy was 63TJ, so accounting for losses, Starship flight test 1 was exactly what that would look like.
Do note that much of the energy was lost because most of the fuel didn't burn, it just evaporated. The Beirut fertilizer explosion was 1/30th the energy, but all released at once.