atmospheric heave as an ASAT weapon

On Nov 1, 7:31*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
Larrison wrote:

So what happens if a satellite comes orbiting along over where a 1 MT
blast had taken place -- for grins, lets just say ita at 500 km and
the blast took place at 100 km while the satellite was on the other
side of the globe. * Probably not much -- the mushroom cloud is going
to be 490+ km below where there is some atmosphere. *In orbit, it
might see a small fractional change in drag (minor heating due to X-
ray absorption in the hundreds of cubic kilometers between the device
and this orbit, let us say), but in a couple of minutes its going to
be past, and its next orbit will most likely not take it over the same
spot, possibly for weeks to come.

Impact? *nill....

I think the concept being described here is to do something like the
heating of the ionosphere like occurs naturally by a solar flare, but in
only one small area via a nuclear detonation.
Although total added air drag on a satellite in LEO would be
infinitesimal as it passed through the heated air bump atop the
atmosphere, other effects, such as the Argus Effect of having electrons
damaging its solar arrays could still manifest themselves and harm it.
Unlike the orbital field of charged electrons that were generated in the
Starfish Prime/Fishbowl exoatmospheric nuclear detonations, these would
decay back into the atmosphere rather rapidly and might be capable of
being aimed at a *particular satellite without doing harm to all
satellites in LEO.
Shooting them up above a RV would be fascinating; as the RV hits the
atmosphere it generates a conductive plasma tail above itself... and if
you could basically "short-circuit" *the huge electrical energy
potential of the inner magnetosphere into that *plasma tail behind the
RV, you could possibly fry its internal electronics like hitting it in
the rear with a huge lightning bolt.

Pat

No check the levels of magnitude between a solar flare and a nuclear
device.

If you want to kill a satellite, cheaper to do a KKV. HOE worked.
Cheaper than a nuclear device also.

What kills electronics is the immediate prompt EMP. You can harden
against that. Which is why all those people played in the tunnels in
Nevada. Maybe DOE has the photos on line by now. Much less sensitive
stuff has been put up.