From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 03:04:22 +0800
To: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <tallpaul@pipeline.com
Subject: Re: Online Zakat Payment: Religious tithe.
Message-ID: <m0tnr6N-0008zdC@pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 05:56 PM 2/16/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
>
>
>>My, my. For a group of people so uspet at taxes you certainly have faith in
>>the ability of private individuals to generate the capital for things like
>>the Manhattan Project and high-cost nuke delivery systems! 
> 
>	Unfortunately, neither of these would take that much. A university with
>competent physics, engineering, and chemistry departments could do the first;
>smuggling could do the second.
>	-Allen

Actually, I have enough background in all these areas, to the point where I 
think if I were given a plutonium "pit," I could probably implement the bomb 
in about 6 months of part-time tinkering.  The main engineering problem 
would be finding/producing two different homogeneous explosives with 
reliably defined/measured detonation velocities, and calculating the shape 
of the "lenses" required to cover the pit, and then machining or casting the 
parts.  (I'd probably also want to simulate the mechanical "impedance match" 
of the chemical explosive to the (dense) plutonium; and as I understand it 
they use the mechanical equivalent of a transformer to do the matching.  
Sorry, but I think in terms of electronics, not mechanics.  Sue me.)


BTW, I think I've already solved the problem of producing a few dozen 
absolutely simultaneous trigger explosions (+/- 100 nanoseconds) around the 
periphery at the lens foci, without using multiple electronic detonators.  
(in fact, a single blasting cap would do nicely.)  "But the margins of this 
book are too small to contain it"  Heh heh!

Jim Bell

jimbell@pacifier.com

Klaatu Burada Nikto

Something is going to happen.              Something....Wonderful!
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