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Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
I don't have a lot of time so it may be tomorrow before I can get back to you on this post in detail. Yes, you can use it in a fission device but it's incredibly crappy. Not only do you have a lot of issues with that self-heating thing making it physically unstable, but it has a really high spontaneous fission rate which tends to make it fizzle. I think I mentioned that part of it a couple of posts back. Oh, and it's uncool to have your physics package putting out 5kW of heat wrapped up by precision explosives charges - they tend to melt, deform, separate chemically or become "touchy".
So your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to go and find several cites for the bare sphere critical mass for 238Pu.
(peeks)
Ah, yes, amazing, found one first shot.
Originally posted by diablomonic I would completely discount the whole thing if it weren't for the black spot that appeared (which is not hard proof either way, just a big coincidence)
I guess Ill just wait and see next year
Originally posted by WorldShadow
Are there 2 Lucifer projects. I looked it up and it tells a tale of cassini smashing into Saturn, with this thread stating Galileo smashing into Jupiter?
"Another option is to identify one of Saturn's icy moons as an acceptable candidate and impact the spacecraft onto it," Mitchell said. Yet this option also holds an inherent risk arising from the three plutonium-bearing radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, that Cassini uses as a power source.
"The issue is the heat that would be generated by the RTGs and the environment that would be created (melted ice) that could be conducive to the viability of any Earth organisms that might have survived on the spacecraft to that point," says Mitchell.
Mission planners make great effort not to contaminate alien worlds with terrestrial life.