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An astonishing amount of fissionable material would be fashioned into bombs a concession by Calhoun and plastic factories make an astonishing number of plastic sag-suits. And large shipments of heavy metals in ingots would be made to the planet's capital city and there would be some guns and minor items....
An astonishing amount of fissionable material would be fashioned into bombs a concession by Calhoun and plastic factories would make an astonishing number of plastic sag-suits. And large shipments of heavy metals in ingots would be made to the planet's capital city and there would be some guns and minor items.
Rip asked huskily, "Any more of those things?" The importance of the job was becoming increasingly clear to him. Nuclear explosives were not used without good reason. The fissionable material was too valuable for other purposes. The sides came off the remaining cases. Some of them held fat tubes of conventional rocket fuel in solid form, the detonators carefully packed separately.
This latter method had proved highly satisfactory back on Earth, where it was separating out fissionable materials in large quantities and high purities from closely similar isotopes; and would now be tested for efficiency versus weight in some of the new problems being encountered in space.
All the ancient experiments have been duplicated time and again, and the deadly radiation effect has never been observed. Some say that it is a mere old-wives' terror tale; some say that the deaths were caused by fear of atomic energy, when it was still unfamiliar; others contend that the fundamental nature of atomic energy has altered by the degeneration of the fissionable matter.
It had to be complicated to keep the pieces of the fissionable material apart until a chemical explosion drove them together fast and hard enough to create a fission explosion. If the pieces weren’t brought together rapidly enough, the mass would fission in a slow chain reaction and no explosion would result. Rip was trained in scientific analysis.
Rip added it to the front of the plutonium wedge along with a piece of beryllium from the bomb, and Kemp welded it in place. They put the thorium block which contained the plutonium into the hole, the plutonium facing outward. Trudeau rammed it to the bottom with his pole. The neutron source, the neutron reflector, and one piece of fissionable material were in place.
A nuclear bomb was actually pretty complicated. It had to be complicated to keep the pieces of the fissionable material apart until a chemical explosion drove them together fast and hard enough to create a fission explosion. If the pieces weren't brought together rapidly enough, the mass would fission in a slow chain reaction with no explosion. Rip was trained in scientific analysis.
It contained, in robot hulls anchored to its sides, enough fissionable material to conduct a deadly war which was only stored for transfer to the Moon base when that should be established. And it had communication with Earth of high quality. So far the actual mail was only a one-way service, but even entertainment came up, and news. Once there was a television shot of the interior of the Shed.
Guatt Kirbey made a microjump that brought the ships within practical communicating distance, and they began making plans in an intership screen conference. "There are, or were, three chief sources of fissionable ores," Harkaman said. "The last ship to raid here and get away was Stefan Kintour's Princess of Lyonesse, sixty years ago.
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