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Old April 28th 10, 08:26 AM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default OT, but a spooky concept

On 4/27/2010 7:33 PM, David Spain wrote:
As opposed to what? Thermonuclear weapons shipped around the world in standard
shipping containers? Why go to all the complexity of a cruise missle when most
high value targets have harbors, rail lines or roads?

And let us not forget this concept has its genesis in our own MX, before we
went to that asinine "densepack" deployment. After all, wasn't 'mobile'
the original reason for the "M" in MX? The trick of course, was to make sure
the carrier trailers could fit "under" interstate highway overpasses.


The ones that were going to travel around the US would have been on
trains, not trucks.
It was a rerun of an old Minuteman basing scheme.
The truck-mounted ones would have just driven around in a big desert
area, moving from shelter to shelter randomly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44zyt...eature=related
The wild scheme was the ones that would have rolled around inside
underground concrete tunnels that they could break through the roof of
for launching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7t6JLdaNC0
Kudos for whoever came up with the concept of solid-fueled pneumatic
cylinders.
Unfortunately for that scheme, it was found out that a nuclear warhead
blowing up at any point on a individual tunnel would drive the missile
inside of it into the end of the tunnel at several hundred mph, like it
was a bullet inside of the barrel of a gun.

There is *one* item about this video I *LOVE*.

Any company out there that can call itself DONGNAMA has got balls!


I get a kick out of the music for it, particularly the red-bordered
Worker's Paradise shown at the beginning to the music from "Born Free".

Pat