Mars and Island One

I can't agree with that statement about a single nuke not being able to destroy the moon, there are too many factors that play into the equation. Of course if you hurl a nuke at the surface you are only going to have a big new crater on the surface. *but* if you drill down into the center of the moon send the nuke down there and seal up the hole then you are going to be in for a surprise.

Take this example: light a fire craker, put it in the palm of your hand and keep your hand open, when it goes off you are going to be in quite a bit of pain and going to have at least some interesting burn marks.

Now, if you take that same fire craker and light it. But little variation you close you hand around it. Let's just say that you are going to have to get yourself a hook to replace the hand, nothing's going to be left.

Why? Allow me to explain:

It's the same principle that allows sound to travel farther in water (and you can hear very faint ones as well) when you are in an environment that has very dense molecules (and high pressure) then the "ripple effect" is going to be much stronger and the molecules which are closer to one-another will pump into each other much like when you throw a stone into water you can see the ripple, however throwing a stone next to someone's head will not cause then to feel any wind (unless it's really close).

Now, on the moon you are in a void - in a void there aren't a lot of molecules to move around, so your assessment of a surface detonation is bang on. However if you put the nuke in a closed environment the force will have nowhere to go, it will *create* the minimum space that it needs therefore to the very least weakening the entire surroundings but also possible pushing everything out of the way as well.

Hope this makes sense,
No, I didn't borrow the theory from Armageddon (movie) however I did use a part of their simplistic explannation, I just left he ketchup bottle out of it.

Karell Ste-Marie
C.I.O. - BrainBank Inc.
From: Lucio de Souza Coelho [mailto:lucio@...]
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2004 2:14 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Mars and Island One

Em Qui 25 Mar 2004 14:56, Karell Ste-Marie escreveu:
> Hmmm, take out the move "The Time Machine" and see what Mr Wells think
> may happen to the/a moon when you drill it out too much...
(...)

First, that stuff about the "Fall of the Moon" in the newest movie version was
never imagined by H.G. Wells. In the book, civilization decayed in a gradual
way over the 800,000 years period.

Second, although I liked the movie (and the rest of the group will probably
burn me at the stake because of that :-), it is as scientifically sound as a
Superfriends cartoon. The energies required to move the Moon are so big that
we would probably need a Dyson sphere or systematic cometary bombardment to
do that - over a timespan of centuries. Nuking the Moon (like in the movie),
even with all our nuke stockpile, would do nothing except create an
unimpressive additional crater. (As a comparison, the impacts that created
the larger craters and presumably some of the Maria were zillions of times
intenser and the Moon kept its orbit.)