Coyote & Road Runner Star Wars strike again!

[guest]

I just touched base with one of my friends still in the dark side. It seems that the test ban treaty is at odds with more than just missile testing. It seems that an exchange of data with our former foe the Russian Republic has peeked the interest of the gommers in the defense establishment. The item of particular interest? The installation at Semapolanst. For people not in a defense area, this area in the Siberian plains
had excessive gamma emmisions that were spotted by the Vela Sattelites in orbit during the eighties. It turns out that this particular installation was a part of the Russian star wars program. Their nifty Idea was something like the ion cannon in "The Empire Strikes Back" of the Star Wars saga. A proton gun of stuppendous size that was to sit on three rail cars . The plan had the power supply worked out and ion cannon logistics worked out. The first phase of the project was completed as the Soviet Union fell to pieces. A few test firings had occurred then the work was shelved. It was those test firings that the sattelites saw. What's the big deal? WELLLLL. It seems to get extremely large bursts of ionized protons at speeds large enough to knock down missiles took a billion watts of power for a duration of at least a minute to do the trick. What to do Comrade?
Oh I know.. build a very large steel room with 3 foot thick walls and set off nuclear weapons inside. How to get power out ? Simply take a very heavy block of granite wrap it with coils, put it on rollers and let the nuke blast push it at high speed through a group of magnets. There you go .
Exhaust to the outside air... push the generator block back in place ... ready to go again.
Shades of the coyote with a firework on his back wearing roller skates.
The technology to weld those extremely thick steel plates has been bought by the US. All test data is in US hands. It is the only generator capable of really doing star wars stuff. President Bush now proposes to resume testing nuclear arms.

At one time in the dark past the US had contemplated setting off hydrogen bombs underground to generate fusion power. Thank the maker that Ted Tailor and the General Atomics in San Diego nixed the loony idea before it gained a head of steam. But now with hardened robotics, this scheme could be shown to work. No matter how inefficient it would be if the fission triggers could be recovered .... You get the idea.

Write your own nightmare senerio.

Larry Leins
Physics Teacher