- Solidus Sharp
- Spokane, WA
- United States
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Ask yourself if you care about aging nuclear weapons and if the people you care about give a damn to do more then debate?
I did a consensus for shot attention spans on this topic guess what you dont care you forget to remember and its not you concern or job to find a solution. my opinion you should understand this bombs dont care if they go off . get online and do some work get some answers from policymakers they are the issue and problem.
Ken brown 30+
Would it not be logical to strip aging warheads down and send them into space as extra payload with every launch of a sat or spacestation mission,then collected and well gently nudged onto a trajectory with our sun?
Rick Ryan 10+
We have tens of thousands of "warheads". Losing one in every 500 launches would put quite a bit of residual fallout into the atmosphere.
We just don't have the "rocket" technology safe enough yet to start launching excess warheads into spce to get rid of them that way.
Plus, as I mentioned in a reply earlier, the warheads are relatively HEAVY compared to other forms of payloads, due to their material mass. It is very expensive for every additional pound of payload you want to launch into space. Unless you are willing to remove the equivalent payload weight from a space station resupply mission for the added weight of the warhead during the launch, you need more powerful launch vehicles. Or you will have to launch more resupply missions in the future. There is no free lunch.
Ken brown 30+
Could we get that sense back? it would be great to see.
How would you store them Rick?
Rick Ryan 10+
Why do people rally around the argument that what we are doing right now is "wrong"? Because they are short-sighted. Just because we bury them somewhere TODAY doesn't mean they will HAVE TO STAY buried for the thousands of years of their half-life decay process. I would assume that once we found a way to make them "harmless" in the future (which is what everybody seems to want to happen..."FIX IT !!!"), we would also have a "safe" way to dig 'em up again to "fix" the problem, wouldn't you think?
And why does everybody always jump on the bandwagon about "protecting our future children" like we are all a bunch of bad parents? Yes, legacies can be good or bad, but are we so afraid our future children will be so inept that they won't be able to solve any problems of their own if/when they encounter them? These "nukes" were decided upon and actually began being built over ten years before I was born. Yes, I inherited the "problem" from my ancestors. But somehow the "children" of my generation decided not to shoot them all over the planet, and now we are dealing with the problem of what to do with them, too. Nobody's home town glows in the dark yet because any of them "went off" by themselves, or are leaking radiation in yor next door neighbor's yard.
Seems the children of our generation have managed to get past the "instant gratification" need, at least when it comes to problems that don't have an instant gratification solution and require more long-term thinking to find a viable solution.
John Smith 30+
Even if there was world peace under a global government humanity would be wise to keep a few nukes around, just in case an asteroid gets on a collision course with Earth or that evil invading alien mothership turns out to be vulnerable to nukes.
Rick Ryan 10+
We've had "nuclear" weapons since the mid 1940's. Two of them have been used. Since then, there have been tens of thousands of them produced, and nobody has used one since. But they most likely PREVENTED anyone from wanting to use them for fear of mass retaliation and total destruction...the MAD concept.
You want to get rid of them? That's a noble cause, but only if you can guarantee that ALL of them will be eliminated. That's a tall order to accomplish. Take away the fear of being retaliated against if you use a "rougue" one that may still exist, and the risk that one WILL then be used raises dramatically.
We're doing OK. We've had plenty of opportunities (conflicts) since the end of WW2 to use nuclear weapons...but nobody has. Seems to me the people controlling them are doing a pretty good job of it.
Guarantee me that you can get rid of ALL of them...with NO exception so fundamentalist groups wouldn't be able to use a leftover one somewhere...and I'll jump on the bandwagon with you. Until then, I'm comfy with the current situation.
We opened the Genie bottle in the 1940's. Our bad. But it may not be a good time in our own Human history with the continual conflicts occuring in the world to try and close it yet.
Solidus Sharp
Rick Ryan 10+
Yes, we don't have a permanant solution yet...which is probaly why it wouldn't be a good idea to just dismantle them all right now and bury them somewhere, hoping it works for a long time.
But your topic implies the nobody is looking for a solution and nobody cares about the problem. Wrong. Plenty of people are already looking for the solution. Scientists and physicists, for instance, who haven't come up with a plausible solution to it yet because we haven't discovered the science and physics to make sure any recommended solution today WOULD work.
You want the "regular public" to band together and insist a solution be found? Just getting enough people to say "FIX IT!" doesn't mean the discovery process will be accelerated.
If you have a novel solution that none of the experts have thought of yet, by all means TELL us and everybody will evaluate the solution for it's feasability. But until a realistic and feasable solutionn is found, it's like you said....
"...you should understand, these bombs don't care if they go off."
Uh...they aren't going to "go off" by themselves at all. What type of science and physics makes you believe they can or will?
Solidus Sharp
Rick Ryan 10+
There are current technical and logistical problems with your proposed solution. The first one is an understanding of the "Yield to Weight Ratio" of nuclear materials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield
There currently are not enough rockets existing on the entire planet of the capability you would need to implement your solution. We would have to build them...a LOT of them. The rockets most of the nuclear warheads are sitting on today are designed for sub-orbital flight and may not be able to achieve escape velocity to leave the Earth's gravitational field even with the warheads on them now (although some of them could).
The total weight of all existing nuclear warheads (weapons) could not be shot away from the Earth using all the rockets in existance today. Do some reasearch (I won't give you the figures here, but they are available if you want to search for them) and you will find the total weight of the warheads (weapons) far, far exceeds the lifting capability of all rockets in existance, not to mention accelerating the payloads fast enough to get them to escape velocity from the Earth's gravitational field.
And where is that black hole we would shoot them at? And how long would it take for the payloads to get there with our current rocket propulsion technology? I guess we could just shoot them "out there" somewhere though, just to get rid of them...if we had the capability to do that. But currently, we don't.
Solidus Sharp
Rick Ryan 10+
In the meantime, have a little faith in those of us who are trying to manage the present so nothing happens that will destroy the entire Human Race.
chen xin
Rick Ryan 10+
And even then, the "technical knowledge" to make replacement ones exists. There would have to be international agreement for ALL contries to agree to random inspections within their own borders from outside agencies to make sure everybody was still playing by the rules. Historically, that has proven to be rather difficult to achieve.
chen xin