Need Help Organizing my Nuclear Warheads

[circle-5]

The large attachment shows an old display model by Avco for some of their ICBM reentry vehicles. The base is clearly marked, but the devices are not. Mounting pins are all the same size, and other examples I've seen are always mixed up in a different order (see small attachment). The model maker probably assumed everybody would be intimately familiar with Avco's product line.

I tried to match them up the best I could. If you see some errors, please advise. Thank you.

 

[Orionblamblam]

I believe the first (big) image has 'em lined up right.

 

[OM]

...Oh cool! A version of "Towers of Hanoi" for the Space Historians! I love it!

:OM:

 

[circle-5]

I believe the first (big) image has 'em lined up right.

OK thank you. I trust your opinion because you are a true atomic bomb enthusiast.

 

[bobbymike]

I believe the first (big) image has 'em lined up right.

OK thank you. I trust your opinion because you are a true atomic bomb enthusiast.

This might be a silly question but is the 'Advanced Design' hidden in the box as in its classified? If so that is really cool IMHO

 

[circle-5]

I believe the first (big) image has 'em lined up right.

OK thank you. I trust your opinion because you are a true atomic bomb enthusiast.

This might be a silly question but is the 'Advanced Design' hidden in the box as in its classified? If so that is really cool IMHO

That's the idea... Maybe I should try to open the box.

 

[blackstar]

I believe the first (big) image has 'em lined up right.

OK thank you. I trust your opinion because you are a true atomic bomb enthusiast.

This might be a silly question but is the 'Advanced Design' hidden in the box as in its classified? If so that is really cool IMHO

That's the idea... Maybe I should try to open the box.

No, that's clearly intended to be a joke--the advanced design is something they cannot show you yet.

Don't break your model.

 

[Anderman]

When i read the topoc title first i thought circle-5 has his own nuclear warheads ???? ;D B)

 

[Orionblamblam]

That's the idea... Maybe I should try to open the box.

No, that's clearly intended to be a joke--the advanced design is something they cannot show you yet.

Don't break your model.

 

[Orionblamblam]

When i read the topoc title first i thought circle-5 has his own nuclear warheads ??? ? ;D B)

A beautiful dream I'm sure many of us share.

 

[Byeman]

Them there's RV's, Clark. The warheads are in the RV's.

 

[blackstar]

Them there's RV's, Clark. The warheads are in the RV's.

There's an interesting story that is told by the change in shapes you see there. Early warhead designs were either a sphere or a cylinder--spheres once they went entirely to plutonium designs. As you can see, the RV's on the left are mostly cylinders. But then they went to the long, pointy shape for the later Minuteman and then MX/Peacekeeper and Trident RVs. It's not easy to fit a sphere inside a long pointy shape, but that's what most independent nuclear weapons observers assumed they did.

It was not until (I think) the late 1990s that somebody leaked the fact that US warheads had adopted more of an egg shape, probably by the early 1970s. If you know how a warhead implodes, you can imagine the soccer ball shape of a sphere with all the explosives evenly spaced around the plutonium core. But with an egg shape, some of the explosives are closer to the core than the others (the explosives at the farthest edges of the egg). Somehow they found a way to model the explosion so that when they detonate, they create an even distribution of force around the plutonium core.

 

[Orionblamblam]

There's an interesting story that is told by the change in shapes you see there.

Several interesting stories, in fact. The shape of the RV tells the story of materials development. The earliest RV, the blunt "capsule," was little more than a massive slab of copper: it simply absorbed the heat of re-entry. It worked, but was intensely heavy and decelerated at high altitude (thus was slow near impact, and thus interceptable). Then ablative materials came on the scene and lead to slimmer, more aerodynamic nukes; and finally rugged high-temp materials such as RCC that allowed pointy designs that could just dart right on in at high speed.

See, isn't that interesting? And then this one time, at nuke camp, I zzzzzZZZZsnorkzzzzzzzzzZZZzzzz.....

 

[Yellow Palace]

Interesting to see that the Mk 17 is a big sucker, on a par with the Mk 4 for size. I had the Mk 17 down as similar in size to a Mk 11 - or at least being replaced by a Mk 11C RV, whatever one of those is.

Yeah, my list of RVs is basically defined by the gaps in the list.

 

[OM]

That's the idea... Maybe I should try to open the box.

...Which begs the question of whether or not the nuke goes off and kills the cat inside the box. As long as the box stays closed, the nuke and the cat don't explode when the wave implodes.


"Oppenheimer's Cat", anyone? B)