wbralick@BLACKBIRD.AFIT.AF.MIL (William A. Bralick) (03/27/89)
From: wbralick@BLACKBIRD.AFIT.AF.MIL (William A. Bralick)
Given the recent (apparent) discovery of fusion technology available
at room temperature (!!!!), how can we apply this to the battlefield?
I have a feeling that loiter times for aircraft might become a non-issue.
Land forces logistics would become similar to the nuclear navy, i.e.
you don't have to worry about running out of gas.
SDI might not have to worry about how to power all those space-based
lasers.
How about armored fighting suits with hydraulic assists.
The question is just how many problems are solved (and what new ones
are created) by potentially unlimited energy available in the field?
Regards,
--
Will Bralick : wbralick@afit-ab.arpa | If we desire to defeat the enemy,
Air Force Institute of Technology, | we must proportion our efforts to
| his powers of resistance.
with disclaimer; use disclaimer; | - Carl von Clauswitzasulaima@udenva.cair.du.edu (SULAIMAN) (03/28/89)
From: asulaima@udenva.cair.du.edu (SULAIMAN) In article <5138@cbnews.ATT.COM> wbralick@BLACKBIRD.AFIT.AF.MIL (William A. Bralick) writes: >Given the recent (apparent) discovery of fusion technology available >at room temperature (!!!!), how can we apply this to the battlefield? Fusion technology!!! When did that occur or did I just miss the news the past couple of days. May be you are confusing room temperature super-conductors with fusion. The Room Temp SuperConductor is believed to help us reach the goal of fusion technology but RTSC is an extremely new technology by itself. However if I have missed the news the effects will be dramatic. The dream of Magnetically accelerated projectile cannons(Gauss guns/Rail guns) would be a reality. Battlefield lasers will be for the first time practical. StarWars may work, assuming they get the coding done before 2100 CE. On the flip side oil would become redundant and thus weapon manufacturing costs may be reduced in the long run... Anyway personally I thought fusion tech. was 10-20 years down the line and even the people trying to create small controlled fusion reactions (berkeley or Caltech) have been using massive amounts of equip. and money with limited results. My 2 cents :) Ameer Z. Sulaiman [mod.note: I have just today rejected a number of postings on this Cold Fusion topic. While I understand the potential military significance, it seems to me that this is still in the "laboratory oddity" stage, and far too speculative for meaningful discussion. I would advise interested parties (and make no mistake, that includes me !) to read sci.misc, where these articles have been crossposted. Further, if you disagree, and feel the topic should be covered here, write me and let me know. I'm flexible to whatever you want to read. - Bill ]
nmm@apss.ab.ca (Neil McCulloch) (03/29/89)
From: nmm@apss.ab.ca (Neil McCulloch) [mod.note: I've received several replies to my position on the Cold Fusion topic. Mostly, the readers seem interested in the concept and it's progress, and especially in military applications, but don't want lots of pie-in-the-sky. Mr. McCulloch sums it up pretty well... - Bill ] Hi! Yup, I'm interested in what the implication of this new technology might be in the military sphere, though the preliminary postings on the matter in sci.military have been disappointingly of the gee whiz what if category and then the imaginations take off. As I see it the sci part of the topic here concerns: Look, it may be fusion and it may work, but it ain't necessarily gonna change anything. What matters is energy density and this is a really big concern. So the point is, try to consider the implications of this *scientifically*. Novel concept! Given that it does work, the implications geopolitically are enormous. Consider, distributed power grids, cheap energy, what happens to oil and so on. A large portion of the world's military posture is concerned with the protection of oil supply routes. Note that this is a civilian "advance" that may have impact on military activity. Somewhat different from the opposite which is what has usually happened. Lot's of interesting side bars to this story, but the gee whiz stuff send to /dev/nul please. BTW, was the transistor a civilian or military development. I suspose the question is, what was the source of funds that Shockley et al used to develop the transistor? Have a nice day, eh! neil
mchamp@wpi.wpi.edu (Marc J. Champagne) (03/29/89)
From: mchamp@wpi.wpi.edu (Marc J. Champagne) I think that this cold-fusion breakthrough has a great deal of potential for destroyer/frigate type powerplants, and should definately be discussed here. Because of the long "charging time" for the type of fusion device just produced in Utah (10 hours are needed to saturate the palladium rod with deuterium before fusion can occur), this technology is probably NOT a good candidate for submarine applications. I can just imagine some poor sub-jockey powering down his reactor for a covert mission....and then having too creep back out for 10 hours on his emergency batteries because the duterium ions flew out of the palladium matrix. And considering the power needs for an aircraft carrier or a large cruiser, you're probably just as well off with a fusion plant. We have proven reactor designs out there, and with just a few CGNs and CVNs uranium fuel isn't too hard to supply. But think about the possibilities if you start dropping fusion plants into destroyers and frigates. We have a little over 50 each of the Knox and Perry class frigates. They don't exactly have a fantastic range at high speeds.....it's hard to fit a large fuel bunker in such a small hull. That poor range places a pretty heavy demand on the Navy's logistics capabilities. Fuel oil and gasoline are pretty plentiful (at least until the next oil crunch), but the fleet isn't exactly teaming with AOs and AOEs. If we can manage to drop a fusion plant into one of our future generations of frigates, we'll be looking at convoy escorts with 1,000,000+ ranges off of one deuterium fueling with horsepower comperable to or better than today's power plants. Both platinum and palladium (the electrode materials in the Utah fusion experiment) have melting points higher than 1000 C...... that translates into some pretty high pressure steam. One other poster to this newsgroup mentioned possible application of the technology to land combat (man portable fusion packs). Although that is completely impossible using this technology (the Utah fusion plant will give you a lethal neutron dose in 20 minutes within 1 meter at 4 watts if unshielded), there may be some eventual application to large aircraft. Anyway, I'd be curious to hear about other people's opinions on the possible military applications of this technology.
mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) (03/30/89)
From: mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) Anyone interested in device geometry might be interested in the paper "Production of High Magnetic Fields By Implosion" by Fowler et al in JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS vol 31 no 3 March 1960. It's a paper by some folks at Los Alamos describing a simple gadget for converting explosives to a powerful magnetic field. The same gadget can be used to created enormous pressure for a few microseconds. Materials, composition, and exact dimensions are all revealed. In summary, a capacitor bank is dumped into a one-turn coil made from a cylinder of pipe with a slit in it. This creates a high initial field. The cylinder is then crushed by a ring-shaped charge of Composition B (64/35/1:RDX/TNT/wax) The slit is closed by the detonation, and then the radius of the pipe is reduced. The flux from the initial field is confined to a smaller and smaller space. This is how its density is increased. If loading deuterium into palladium can produce fusion, conceivably pressure might load more deuterium quicker. Also note that a big pulse of electricity can be obtained by placing a coil in the magnetic field (I believe devices derived from this gadget are used for EMP testing of military equipment). [mod.note: "Sci.military guideline 13B: If it makes a loud enough BANG, it's suitable for sci.military" 8-) - Bill ]
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (03/31/89)
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >But think about the possibilities if you start dropping fusion plants > into destroyers and frigates... >Anyway, I'd be curious to hear about other people's opinions on the > possible military applications of this technology. There is an obvious big one: diesel-electric submarines become totally obsolete, even for the smallest nations. Not only would such fusion plants be easier to build and run, the lack of heat generation from fission products would eliminate the nuclear sub's biggest silencing problem: the need to keep reactor cooling going at all times. Now nuclear subs too could sit on the bottom and shut down *everything*. This won't necessarily make everyone equal underwater. It still takes technological sophistication to make subs really quiet while underway, and quite a lot of sophistication to build really good passive sonars. (One reason why diesel-electric boats are currently much cheaper than nuclear ones is that they are designed for less ambitious missions and don't generally have first-class sonar.) But diesel-electric subs will vanish completely, and it should also be possible to build really small nuclear subs for the first time. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
dmc@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Dave Cole) (04/03/89)
From: dmc@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Dave Cole) In article <5269@cbnews.ATT.COM> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > >There is an obvious big one: diesel-electric submarines become totally >obsolete, even for the smallest nations. Not only would such fusion >plants be easier to build and run, the lack of heat generation from >fission products would eliminate the nuclear sub's biggest silencing >problem: the need to keep reactor cooling going at all times. Now >nuclear subs too could sit on the bottom and shut down *everything*. > Just why do you think that fusion plants would run without generating heat as a fission plant does? The reason fission plants create heat & require reactor pumps is that that's how one gets the energy out of the reaction! It would seem to me that the energy created by fusion, in the form of gamma rays and neutrons, can only effectively be harnessed in the same way, by making it heat up some working fluid and run a turbine. Then there would be no advantage over fission, at least in terms of heat generation. Now if the fusion plants can be made much smaller than existing fission plants, we definitely have the option of making much smaller subs, which could take the place of diesel-electric. Running at slow speeds with the reactor cooled via convection they'd be just about as silent as a sub running on electric, with a much improved ability to stay on station, just like our current nuke boats. -- --------- Dave Cole Yerkes Observatory, Univ of Chicago dmc@oddjob.uchicago.edu
gunzler@CS.UCLA.EDU (Mitch Gunzler) (04/05/89)
From: gunzler@CS.UCLA.EDU (Mitch Gunzler) In article <5197@cbnews.ATT.COM> mchamp@wpi.wpi.edu (Marc J. Champagne) writes: > >One other poster to this newsgroup mentioned possible application of > the technology to land combat (man portable fusion packs). > Although that is completely impossible using this technology (the > Utah fusion plant will give you a lethal neutron dose in 20 minutes > within 1 meter at 4 watts if unshielded), there may be some > eventual application to large aircraft. What about carrying batteries and recharging them at the Armored Transport or other resupply point? This requires a certain level of battery technology, which I know nothing about. The power problem becomes like the ammo problem; how much does it (in batteries) weigh and how do we resupply - not cost. Comments always appreciated.
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (04/05/89)
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >>There is an obvious big one: diesel-electric submarines become totally >>obsolete, even for the smallest nations. Not only would such fusion >>plants be easier to build and run, the lack of heat generation from >>fission products would eliminate the nuclear sub's biggest silencing >>problem: the need to keep reactor cooling going at all times... > >Just why do you think that fusion plants would run without generating >heat as a fission plant does? The reason fission plants create heat & >require reactor pumps is that that's how one gets the energy out of the >reaction! You've missed the point entirely, I'm afraid. When the power plant is running, yes, the two are quite similar. But fission plants cannot ever be completely shut down, which was my point. The trouble is that after they've been running for a while, they accumulate substantial amounts of radioactive fission products, which continue to generate quite a bit of heat even if the reactor is nominally switched off. So cooling must be kept going even if no fission is taking place. This is a significant noise problem for submarines. The problem can be dealt with moderately well, if you're willing to make enough compromises, but it cannot be eliminated. Fusion plants (probably) would not face this. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (04/07/89)
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >What about carrying batteries and recharging them at the Armored Transport >or other resupply point? This requires a certain level of battery technology, >which I know nothing about. The power problem becomes like the ammo problem; >how much does it (in batteries) weigh and how do we resupply - not cost. Battery technology is best described as neolithic. And that's being generous. Batteries are huge and immensely heavy for their energy content. There are various experimental designs that improve on this somewhat, but the word is "somewhat", not "greatly". (Case in point: a diesel-electric sub devotes a considerable fraction of its weight and volume to batteries, and in return gets an underwater endurance of a day or two at a speed of maybe two knots. I trust it's clear to everyone why nuclear subs were such a radical advance...) Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu