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You may have heard that if we were to throw away an airplane every time we fly on one, then air travel would be horrendously expensive. The fact that we re-use airplanes after using them, helps keeps costs down.
This thinking has recently been extended to reusable rockets. By making rockets reusable,
they are now much less expensive to launch than before.
Likewise, if we throw away an ICBM every time we use one, then it makes WW3 much more expensive from an arms budget standpoint. What's needed are reusable ICBMs.
The idea is that the ICBM is composed of a rocket booster which lofts the warhead up high in the sky, separating and releasing the warhead payload which then reaches apogee before coming down on its target. The separated rocket booster can then retropropulsively land back on the ground, and be readied for re-use.
This can help lower the costs of WW3.
(We won't worry about how to make WW4 cheaper, since that war will only be fought with sticks and stones.)
[link]
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So much better for the environment too [+] |
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Maybe it would be more environmentally friendly if aeroplanes were made single-use. That way people would think twice before hopping on a flight to some dreary destination. |
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I think Elon is already working with the next US administration to ensure we will be able to reuse the lift stages of our nuclear (only one U in nuclear) bombs. |
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What the lift stages will return to is still up in the air. Literally. |
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Enthusiastic bun for this [+]. |
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Extra points for retropropulsively; it runs right off the Scrabble board and hits 3 Triple Word Scores. |
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Rather than using retropropulsion, wouldn't it use less fuel to have the booster keep flying in roughly the same direction and land at a base in some allied territory? (Assuming that base hasn't already been blown up by the opposing nuclear weapons.) |
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Seems to waste a lot of fuel flying our bombs to Over There, and them flying their bombs to here. |
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Would be more efficient for us to detonate our bombs here and them to detonate their bombs over there. |
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So, thinking almost seriously here: this idea isn't practical because I think the idea is to launch all the warheads at once because each side doesn't know where the enemy warheads are going and they will probably destroy most of the launch sites. Therefore making the rocket reusable is pointless since both sides need one for each warhead anyway. |
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However... Assuming rockets on both sides have an abort mechanism (not sure about that), the abort mechanism is unlikely to get used because if the missile strike is aborted, all missiles in the air are lost. But if one side has reusable rockets, they would have the advantage that they could abort a strike without loosing the ability to use the warheads again shortly after landing. So, say these reusable rockets are viewed as an unacceptable escalation and the country without them launches a pre-emptive strike. A counterstrike is obviously performed by the country with reusable rockets. Once the rockets are in the air and the selected targets are apparent from satellite tracking, the aggressor will see that there is a nuclear bunker buster headered straight for his previously presumed secret bunker location and will get on the red telephone to negotiate. Both sides agree to abort the attack, but the one with reusable rockets can do so without loosing its arsenal, thereby gaining a huge advantage. |
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Once both sides have reusable rockets, we can take brinksmanship to the next level with daily nuclear launches and only occasional contamination with nuclear material when a rocket fails to land successfully. [+] |
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// Would be more efficient for us to detonate our bombs here and them to detonate their bombs over there // |
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Definitely. That would be a huge cost savings and be much better for the environment. |
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We could use a computer simulation of the rocket flights to determine when and where they should be detonated. We could even add reusable ICBMs to the simulation for whichever nations can do a public demonstration of the actual technology. |
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I think I saw this taken to its logical conclusion on Star Trek. |
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So there were two nearby countries, or possibly worlds fighting each other. But rather than actually blowing stuff up, they'd just run a simulation of the attack, and figure out who would have been a casualty. These people would then obediently head to the nearest execution chamber. |
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This was so efficient and economical that they'd been at war for many years. |
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// Star Trek // ST:TOS S1 E23 |
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Their obvious flaw was in dutifully executing those deemed "casualties" by their war computers. Operating the execution chambers but without the occupants would have satisfied the programming and the planet population could then go about their business while being merely presumed dead. |
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//Operating the execution chambers but without the occupants would have satisfied the programming// |
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Actually I believe there was some verification procedure; failure to execute the appropriate people would result in use of actual weapons next time. |
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mobile launch systems are in use by all nuclear powers. With the exception of traditional bombers, their locations are not known once deployed. Therefore it's not easy to hit and destroy them. This is what enables credible second-strike capability. |
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Therefore the same would apply even for reusable launch vehicles, which could easily divert to any number of undisclosed locations for landing and recycling for re-use. |
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// Would be more efficient for us to detonate our bombs here and them to detonate their bombs over there // |
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Maybe a multi-national agreement could be negotiated, like Carbon Credits. |
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Each side can agree to use its nukes in-country, for efficiency purposes, with any net balance being subjected to a random draw. |
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