Apparently, there are cadets at Colorado Springs who take the engineering track, and those who take the history track. He was a pretty smart guy and was on an important technical advisory committee, but he seemed to think a weapon laser had a power draw comparable to a radar set: no big deal. The more one looks into it, integrating a laser weapon could involve some significant internal changes in component location and space, thermal management, power management, and airframe isolation from the pointer-tracker. I really have my doubts that so much modification would be tolerated for something as tightly designed as the F-47.
Yes. And I remember every area was stealing a little bit of the F-22’s weapons bay in the design. They had a big crack down and it took practically an act of God to get another cubic inch out of the weapons bay. It was the incentive for me to come up with the Small Powerful Bomb. My energetics efforts faded though and we got the Small Diameter Bomb. Which turned out to be a hit. I really like the ground launched version too.
When I went to Lawrence Livermore in CA, I was being shown around by the head guy. He told a joke: How do you tell an Explosives Engineer? Then he held up his hand with 3 of his 4 fingers showing. It was only a minute or two when I was greeted by an Engineer with 3 fingers. Static electricity is a big deal when dealing with open explosives. They were working on insensitive explosives that were nearly twice as powerful as TNT. I gave them one that was safe and 5 times as powerful as TNT but they needed to figure out how to manufacture it efficiently. It looks like they are migrating to BOM, which is 1.5 x TNT and safe.
Rockets: What is your opinion on taking liquid methane, super heating it with a small nuclear reactor and then added to oxygen. Not sure how this would work out, but super heated oxygen creates an energetic plasma. But keeping it from reacting with the pipelines would be a challenge.
Excellent evaluation!! I guess your colonel slep through Thermo class.
Apparently, there are cadets at Colorado Springs who take the engineering track, and those who take the history track. He was a pretty smart guy and was on an important technical advisory committee, but he seemed to think a weapon laser had a power draw comparable to a radar set: no big deal. The more one looks into it, integrating a laser weapon could involve some significant internal changes in component location and space, thermal management, power management, and airframe isolation from the pointer-tracker. I really have my doubts that so much modification would be tolerated for something as tightly designed as the F-47.
Yes. And I remember every area was stealing a little bit of the F-22’s weapons bay in the design. They had a big crack down and it took practically an act of God to get another cubic inch out of the weapons bay. It was the incentive for me to come up with the Small Powerful Bomb. My energetics efforts faded though and we got the Small Diameter Bomb. Which turned out to be a hit. I really like the ground launched version too.
Good for you! I like energetics, though my interest was in more powerful rocket fuels.
When I went to Lawrence Livermore in CA, I was being shown around by the head guy. He told a joke: How do you tell an Explosives Engineer? Then he held up his hand with 3 of his 4 fingers showing. It was only a minute or two when I was greeted by an Engineer with 3 fingers. Static electricity is a big deal when dealing with open explosives. They were working on insensitive explosives that were nearly twice as powerful as TNT. I gave them one that was safe and 5 times as powerful as TNT but they needed to figure out how to manufacture it efficiently. It looks like they are migrating to BOM, which is 1.5 x TNT and safe.
Rockets: What is your opinion on taking liquid methane, super heating it with a small nuclear reactor and then added to oxygen. Not sure how this would work out, but super heated oxygen creates an energetic plasma. But keeping it from reacting with the pipelines would be a challenge.
I would like to see the Isp on that one.
You’re quite welcome. 😎