McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
an engineering problem which I need to solve for a story
Quantus:
--- Quote from: knnn on June 29, 2012, 01:32:50 PM ---What if the Bullet itself was set to explode prior to impact? Could you argue that the effect of having 90% debris is better for mining/gathering operations than having a 50% debris and 50% buried deep in the ground? This way, a secondary explosion might not be noticed.
--- End quote ---
From the Mining operation standpoint that would make a lot of sense, it would do a lot to spread out the impact force. Makes a larger recovery zone, but it might be worth it.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on June 29, 2012, 01:19:17 PM ---All of these eminently practical suggestions, alas, fall foul of the "hidden" requirement. The package needs basically to have been sneaked into the bullet by a local intelligence type. Shooting a couple of workers who get in the way is an option, but some sort of recovery mechanism that anyone involved in the project could have seen, or that could have been noticed en route, is not. It needs not to have been obvious that the thing was there; it needs not to show up on a reasonably thorough examination of the landing site that does not know there's an Object to look for. Indeed, it needs not to show that the Object's been retrieved until a forensic team who find out about it by other means confirm it.
--- End quote ---
I was thinking something that they could bore a hole in the tail end, stash it in a cavity, then lodge a plug in the top of the hole to hold it securely and hid it. The force of the launch will be pushing it forward, so it will be pressed further in instead of coming out. IT would be the force of the impact (or the separation charge) that pushes it back out once its over the moon.
--- Quote ---Something like, yes, though I am not sure I would be convinced of a dislocation pattern surviving the stresses of transit. Or maybe it could be patterns of which isotope of carbon is at which position in the crystal.
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Ooh, I like that. Assume they could customize a graphene sheet to place individual atoms as they choose, then stack it up into a Hyper-diamond matrix for structural hardness.
--- Quote ---That is the direction I am thinking is most likely to work. So what's a good candidate for the relevant materials that could have been machined in 1948 - or as I said, in 1960 if you can do it without technology that implies a bunch of other stuff that was around in 1960 but not 1948 ?
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For the Inner Shell, more of the same diamond could make sense for hardness, or maybe a ceramic carbide of some kind, Id have to dig into the materials. Titanium is strong for its weight, but only as strong as some low-grade steels, and its difficult and expensive to produce (still possible with 1940's tech i think). Memory Metal (a Nickle-Titanium Alloy) is head and shoulders above all other metals for resisting permananent deformation. For the outer... Im not sure, we are talking pretty far outside the normal range of materials. Something a durable as possible in a collapsible foam structure that will absorb as much energy as possible as if deforms. How specific do you want to get on its description?
Snowleopard:
I'm not an engineer or scientist but just to let you know.
Diamond is the hardest stone but if you hit or just tap it in the wrong place you
can reduce it to diamond dust.
Jade is the toughest stone and can take punishment that would reduce a diamond to dust.
That's why the Chinese used it in wind chimes so to speak.
You want your ginormous payload to hit the moon in more or less a certain position, yes?
What if there were tunnels inside the payload filled with fluid and a giant rough kind
of gyroscope to keep it 'level and/or upright'. Venting or shifting fluid into different
tunnels to adjust trajectory.
Perhaps your 'special package' could be disguised as flotsam floating in this fluid.
Along with other junk.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: Snowleopard on July 03, 2012, 07:53:19 AM ---I'm not an engineer or scientist but just to let you know.
Diamond is the hardest stone but if you hit or just tap it in the wrong place you
can reduce it to diamond dust.
Jade is the toughest stone and can take punishment that would reduce a diamond to dust.
That's why the Chinese used it in wind chimes so to speak.
--- Quote ---True, which is why a super-special Hyperdiamond sounds better. The simple fact is that ANYTHING would be destroyed by what we are talking about, so a touch of X-factor has to be added.
Jade is durable in earth terms because its soft (as opposed to brittle) and so can deform easier. It it also proous enough to be impregnated with resin to stabilize it, which is where the really durable pieces come from. But it wouldnt survive impact without complete deformation. in this instance it would be better for it to shard off but maintain its relative shape than deform overly much, which would corrupt the internal patterning that it would be using for data storage.
--- End quote ---
You want your ginormous payload to hit the moon in more or less a certain position, yes?
What if there were tunnels inside the payload filled with fluid and a giant rough kind
of gyroscope to keep it 'level and/or upright'. Venting or shifting fluid into different
tunnels to adjust trajectory.
Perhaps your 'special package' could be disguised as flotsam floating in this fluid.
Along with other junk.
--- End quote ---
"More or less the same position" seems to be more of a "Within a hundred miles or so of the target" but not a a bullseye by any means.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Quantus on June 29, 2012, 01:59:33 PM --- Ooh, I like that. Assume they could customize a graphene sheet to place individual atoms as they choose, then stack it up into a Hyper-diamond matrix for structural hardness.For the Inner Shell, more of the same diamond could make sense for hardness, or maybe a ceramic carbide of some kind, Id have to dig into the materials. Titanium is strong for its weight, but only as strong as some low-grade steels, and its difficult and expensive to produce (still possible with 1940's tech i think).
--- End quote ---
This is precisely where my own knowledge is at its weakest.
--- Quote ---How specific do you want to get on its description?
--- End quote ---
Specific enough that nobody reading the text can fill in plausible assumptions based on details I've not given, do the sums and conclude that I have in fact broken physics.
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