The Off Topic Topic

[Capetan Mihali]

Most contemporary men under 50 in hats shouldn't be, IMO.

[jimmy olsen]

You know that was always a dumb statement.  When you are orbit around something, using a nuke a waste of resources.  You can just chuck large chunks of iron at something and you'll get a megaton size explosion when they hit the surface.

Those would need to be very large chunks of iron to get to megaton levels.  The tungsten rods the Air Force planned to use (20ft long and 1ft diameter) would only have an explosive yield equivalent of 11.5 tons.

That's it?  I would have thought a 20ft tungeston hittiing something at mach 10 would make a much bigger boom.

[jimmy olsen]

Presumably accelerating is not a problem since they fly from star system to star system.

Yes, but a nuclear weapon is a far smaller and cheaper alternative to turning an asteroid into a kamikaze spaceship.  With nuclear weapons, a single spaceship the size of the Nimitz could carry enough firepower to level everything on the surface of a planet.

Maybe I wasn't being clear earlier.  I'm not saying it isn't possible, I'm saying it isn't cost-effective given the existence of nuclear weapons.

Kinetic bombardment has the large benifit of not spewing radioactive fallout everywhere.

[Liep]

Today the top talking points in the papers are Hillary Clinton saying she loves Denmark, Princess Marie's breasts and Holland's complete failure overshadowing our own. Also, it stopped raining. It is a good day.

[Valmy]

Today the top talking points in the papers are Hillary Clinton saying she loves Denmark, Princess Marie's breasts and Holland's complete failure overshadowing our own. Also, it stopped raining. It is a good day.

[mongers]

E.gad actually came across something amusing on the BBC have your say page, in an item about Stephen Fry being replaced as the host of QI:

Absolutely! The big story of the day is that Stephen Fry has quit QI and the BBC has given his role to Sandy Toksvig, an Immigrant from Europe. I immediately phoned Nigel Farage so he could object that a key role had been given to a foreigner but he wasn't there, so I left a message with his German PA.

me mildly amused. 

[Liep]

E.gad actually came across something amusing on the BBC have your say page, in an item about Stephen Fry being replaced as the host of QI:

Absolutely! The big story of the day is that Stephen Fry has quit QI and the BBC has given his role to Sandy Toksvig, an Immigrant from Europe. I immediately phoned Nigel Farage so he could object that a key role had been given to a foreigner but he wasn't there, so I left a message with his German PA.

me mildly amused. 

A Dane takes over from Stephen Fry! Rejoice!

[Liep]

Today the top talking points in the papers are Hillary Clinton saying she loves Denmark, Princess Marie's breasts and Holland's complete failure overshadowing our own. Also, it stopped raining. It is a good day.

She had a breast enlargement operation in Kaunas according to a tabloid, the Royal House denied it saying that the Princess had never been to Lithuania. It was the first time in recorded history that they had denied a tabloid story of which there have been many. That became an in for the serious newspapers to also write about Princess boobies.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

That's it?  I would have thought a 20ft tungeston hittiing something at mach 10 would make a much bigger boom.

The rods would have weighed 9 tons (about 8165kg) and be travelling at mach 10 (about 3403 m/s).  Plugging those into the formula for kinetic energy (0.5*m*v*v) gives a total impact energy of about 47.3GJ.  One ton of TNT has an explosive yield of 4.184GJ.  47.3 / 4.184 ~= 11.5.

Addendum:

To get a megaton yield out of one of these rods would require accelerating it to 3.2*10^6 m/s.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Kinetic bombardment has the large benifit of not spewing radioactive fallout everywhere.

It does, however, kick up a whole lot more particulate matter.

[Valmy]

She had a breast enlargement operation in Kaunas according to a tabloid, the Royal House denied it saying that the Princess had never been to Lithuania. It was the first time in recorded history that they had denied a tabloid story of which there have been many. That became an in for the serious newspapers to also write about Princess boobies.

Desecrating the sacred body that God has selected to pretend to rule over Denmark? Sacrilege.

[Syt]

Cutting a 100 mph fastball with a samurai sword: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSvrIZKI8mk

[Admiral Yi]

That's pretty badass.

[The Brain]

Yes, but the explosive yield of the ball is actually fairly limited.

[Syt]

Totalbiscuit got rid of his bowel cancer, but now this.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1snlj3r

Well, I don't know if there is really a right way to tell people this, so I guess here goes. The CT did not come back negative. The cancer in the bowel is gone, but spots have appeared in my liver. They're not operable and there's no cure. Average life expectancy is 2-3 years, though there are outliers that live much longer. I'll be back on chemo in a few weeks, with the goal of pushing it back and keeping it there for as long as possible. I fully intend to be the outlier, the average is this way because most people that get this are old and not strong anymore. Who knows what they'll come up with in the next decade? I intend to beat it for as long as possible. Gonna need some time to process all of this. I don't really feel anything right now. Thanks.