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RE: [PSUBS-MAILIST] nuclear psub?

On reporting...well, it was mostly a bad joke... I've been fighting all day with some open source applications that don't handle encryption very well... lack of standards, I guess, and am tired and not thinking straight.

I certainly am not duty bound to report anything here...unless I should notice somebody mentioning that he has enough plutonium to fire up a mini-atomic pile, or somebody planning to sneak into a harbor and blow up a US ship with a spar torpedo mounted on his submarine.  Such individuals would be classed as "enemies foreign and domestic"... and anyone is duty bound to report such shenanigans. 

You might think that terrorists would not be stupid enough to mention their plans on a list like this, but you'd be amazed.  Most of them are not rocket scientists, or in this case marine scientists.  I once had someone ask me how to build a bomb with gunpowder once.  I didn't tell him... hopefully, he blew himself up trying.

Practical fission reactors are probably not for most of us, though.  Now, cold fusion, or microtechnology applied to tiny little gas turbines that run on diesel fuel and some kind of oxidizer coupled with a generator... these could be interesting air-indepent propulsion ideas... and they'll probably be built on somebody's Unimat in the basement.

You know, this is by far the most interesting mail list I have ever run across!  You guys have come up with some of the most ingenious and outlandish things I have ever heard of... and you never bicker with each other.

How long has this been going on?

On Sun, 2003-01-05 at 16:45, Mike Orsay wrote: 
i think he means that since he suggested he might be doing something that 
requires using WEAPONS GRADE URANIUM that might possibly be a threat to 
national security... you know he might try to blow up chicago for all the 
C.O. knows.  or if terrorists got their hands on that... i doubt you would 
want that to happen.






>From: "Gregory Snyder" <gsnyder@mn.rr.com>
>Reply-To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
>To: <personal_submersibles@psubs.org>
>Subject: RE: [PSUBS-MAILIST] nuclear psub?
>Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 16:35:26 -0600
>
>Hi Dale - Interesting Post.
>Just so I understand, you are a non-commissioned officer in the Army
>reserves and you have to report to your commander that you participate
>in a web page dedicated to discussing submarines for personal use, and
>one of the members commented that it is "disturbingly simple" to make a
>reactor.
>
>Am I to understand correctly that in your opinion ( and by inference,
>that of the Army), you now have to report Nero's comment to your C.O.?
>If this is the case, then two comments. 1> I join Nero in commenting
>that yes, given the amount of literature available in our public
>libraries and on the internet, It would be relatively easy to build a
>reactor in theory.  And 2> As a republican voting, flag flying, NRA
>member, eagle scout - I think that your feeling a need to report these
>statements and your C.O.'s pretense to care would be a waste of  our
>militaries time in a period when resources are limited enough, not to
>mention making me a little uncomfortable about infringements on our
>first amendment right to free speech and assembly (i.e. Virtual
>assembly).
>
>I hope that I misunderstood your comments.
>
>For the record, The only person I ever have to report to is my wife, who
>is convinced that the fiberglass hull in the garage will someday become
>a stylish flower planted.  I show her pictures of Carsten's sub when she
>complains that it is hard for her to get her car in the garage next to
>the sub hull. Thanks Carsten!
>
>Best wishes for a New Year to all.
>Greg Snyder
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-personal_submersibles@psubs.org
>[mailto:owner-personal_submersibles@psubs.org] On Behalf Of Dale A. Raby
>Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 3:56 PM
>To: PSUBS.org mailing list
>Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] nuclear psub?
>
>Hey, now.... wouldn't that be cool.  The reactors on board some of those
>old space probes launched in the sixties are still producing current
>from their thermocouples in atomic piles... tiny ones at that...after
>all these years.
>
>Here's the problem... such little reactors generally use weapons grade
>reaction mass... and even when they don't they are still carefully
>controlled by various government agencies. There is radiation shielding
>and all the danger from not containing the reaction properly.
>
>Then there is the problem with people like Saddam wanting to grab your
>sub for a source of fissionable material... oh, and did I mention this?
>I am a US Army Reserve NCO, and bound to report such things to my
>commander... though I suspect he'd get a good laugh out of this one.
>
>I find it interesting though that in the 40 odd years since the
>Nautilus, that there are still military submersibles being made with
>diesel/electric propulsion.  Economies of scale, I'd guess.
>
>On Sun, 2003-01-05 at 14:59, Nero Wolfe wrote:
>I was at the University of Chicago today and i saw the monument to
>enrico firmi's CP-1.  Chicago Pile 1 was a big pile of graphite and
>unenriched uranium...  Litterally a pile.  This got me thinking...   A
>reactor is disturbingly simple.  I think you know where I'm going on
>this....  The technology is simpler than cartsens boat...
>
>
>Dale A. Raby
>Editor/Publisher
>The Green Bay Web
>http://www.thegreenbayweb.com
>


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Dale A. Raby

Editor/Publisher

The Green Bay Web

http://www.thegreenbayweb.com

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