Teflon and re entry

Hello
I;ve seen a docco on SBS that link Teflon with safe re entry for
space craft. I'm not aware of any link. The footage showed the shuttle
launching so does Teflon make it possible to re enter?
The docco also claimed that Teflon was kept secret for decades and that
the atomic bomb would've worked without it. I've never heard of Teflon
in those terms.

Any ideas any one?

Thanks

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 19:44:38 +1000, Julian Bordas wrote:

Hello
I;ve seen a docco on SBS that link Teflon with safe re entry for
space craft. I'm not aware of any link. The footage showed the shuttle
launching so does Teflon make it possible to re enter?

Teflon is one of the materials used in ablative heatshields. I'm not aware
of widespread use in manned spacecraft, other than in the BPC on the
Apollo CM during ascent, which was teflon impregnated fiberglass. I
beleive that it was used more in ballistic missle reentry vehicles.

The Shuttle doesn't use ablation as a primary thermal protection system.
The tiles are primarily silica. I don't know if teflon is involved at all
in the Shuttle TPS.

The docco also claimed that Teflon was kept secret for decades and that
the atomic bomb would've worked without it. I've never heard of Teflon
in those terms.


Teflon was discovered in 1938 by a Dupont chemist, as a serendipitous side
effect of experiments in freezing compressed freon.
http://www.dupont.com/teflon/newsroom/history.html

The main link between teflon and the a-bomb seems to be that it was used
as a pump sealant in the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant used to enrich
Uranium:
http://www.hcc.mnscu.edu/programs/de..._id_35050.html

I don't know of a use of teflon IN the original a-bombs. Lacking such a
direct use, saying the bomb wouldn't work without teflon is a little like
saying a car engine wouldn't work without a metal foundry to cast the
block.

Dupont trademarked teflon in 1945 when they first put it on the market for
industrial use. So it came out commercially very close to the first use of
the A-bombs. If it were such a key to the bomb, I think it would have been
kept 'secret' much longer than that. I don't think that it's unusual to
see 7 years between the discovery of a new chemical and first commercial
use.

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 19:44:38 +1000, Julian Bordas
wrote:

The docco also claimed that Teflon was kept secret for decades and that
the atomic bomb would've worked without it. I've never heard of Teflon
in those terms.

....Teflon was important because it lined the insides of the bomb
casing. That way, if the bomb was a dud and the uranium core was
simply splattered inside the casing, it wouldn't stick to the inside
and could simply be wiped into a container by an expendable maid and a
damp washcloth.


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

OM wrote:
On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 19:44:38 +1000, Julian Bordas
wrote:


The docco also claimed that Teflon was kept secret for decades and that
the atomic bomb would've worked without it. I've never heard of Teflon
in those terms.


...Teflon was important because it lined the insides of the bomb
casing. That way, if the bomb was a dud and the uranium core was
simply splattered inside the casing, it wouldn't stick to the inside
and could simply be wiped into a container by an expendable maid and a
damp washcloth.


OM

Hmmm Not sure about that OM. How you say in America Go tell it to the
naval infantry?

Cheers

Julian

OM wrote:

...Teflon was important because it lined the insides of the bomb
casing. That way, if the bomb was a dud and the uranium core was
simply splattered inside the casing, it wouldn't stick to the inside
and could simply be wiped into a container by an expendable maid and a
damp washcloth.

Someone fed you a line on that one, OM. The conventional explosives
in an implosion bomb are more than enough to fragment the entire thing,
and a fizzle yield in any nuclear bomb would be more than enough to
vaporize it.

Paul

In article ,
"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

OM wrote:

...Teflon was important because it lined the insides of the bomb
casing. That way, if the bomb was a dud and the uranium core was
simply splattered inside the casing, it wouldn't stick to the inside
and could simply be wiped into a container by an expendable maid and a
damp washcloth.

Someone fed you a line on that one, OM. The conventional explosives
in an implosion bomb are more than enough to fragment the entire thing,
and a fizzle yield in any nuclear bomb would be more than enough to
vaporize it.

Paul


I think you missed OM's invisible [/sarcasm] [/end sarcasm] tags.

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
"Heisenberg might have been here."
~ Anonymous

Herb Schaltegger wrote:

I think you missed OM's invisible [/sarcasm] [/end sarcasm] tags.

Ah well.

Paul

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 19:58:51 -0500, Herb Schaltegger
wrote:

I think you missed OM's invisible [/sarcasm] [/end sarcasm] tags.

....He did. As penance, he has to read all of Maxson's bound volume of
used toilet paper. *Without* safety gloves.


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 07:36:38 +1000, Julian Bordas
wrote:

Hmmm Not sure about that OM. How you say in America Go tell it to the
naval infantry?

....Guys, having all the Maxson trash around here has killed your sense
of humor. I mean, seriously. The clue that I was being humorous should
have been obvious when I mentioned that the mess could be cleaned up
with a damp washcloth.

After all, Army maids *are* expendable...

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

In message , "Greg D. Moore
(Strider)" writes

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...
OM wrote:

...Teflon was important because it lined the insides of the bomb
casing. That way, if the bomb was a dud and the uranium core was
simply splattered inside the casing, it wouldn't stick to the inside
and could simply be wiped into a container by an expendable maid and a
damp washcloth.

Someone fed you a line on that one, OM. The conventional explosives
in an implosion bomb are more than enough to fragment the entire thing,
and a fizzle yield in any nuclear bomb would be more than enough to
vaporize it.

Umm, Paul, I think you bit this one hook, line and sinker.

But seriously, what happened to the big steel container that was
supposedly built for the first atom bomb tests, so if it didn't work
they wouldn't lose all that U235?
--
"Forty millions of miles it was from us, more than forty millions of miles of
void"