Pentagon wants to test space based particle beam weapon in 2023 - Page 2

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Pentagon wants to test space based particle beam weapon in 2023 (Page 2 of 2)

Posted: 3/18/2019 1:03:04 PM EDT

[#1]

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Hell, they can't even figure out how acronyms work.

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BEam Accelerator aboard a Rocket

Posted: 3/18/2019 5:12:43 PM EDT

[#2]

This is a fascinating discussion for a guy who has spent decades in biology but has a Sesame Street level grasp on particle physics.

Posted: 3/18/2019 10:29:26 PM EDT

[#3]

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This thing, is called an RFQ accelerator, (RadioFrequency Quadrapole, which is a special antenna that accelerates charged particles at Mega-volt/meter gradients). This one was supposed to do ... who knows what. Test bed? Target/Decoy discrimination via neutron adsorption gamma spectroscopy? fizzling physics packages in flight? Scare the vodka out of Gorbachev?

who knows? The cold war ended, SDI lost a lot of public funding and projects that didn't sink beneath the surface went hunting for a new purpose.

This little fella was repurposed to create radiotherapy drugs. It didn't work out owing to the amount of shielding that would have been required at the hospital when it was turned on.

A true relic of the Reagan Era. Built with 80s-era machining tech, this RFQ is woefullly primitive, inadaquate and obsolete. Modern accelerator tech is profoundly more powerful, efficient and compact. (Look up PIP-II)

This is the real deal.

Here's the Ion Source. The gas bottle on the right is full of 3He. Very expensive.
http://vms.fnal.gov/stillphotos/1996/1800/96-1818-12.hr.jpg

Here's the accelerator, stuck inside of a very heavy steel tube that wouldn't have been needed in space. The big black cables are the RF-drive for the RFQ.
There are three modules in this pic, 12 vanes. 10.5 mev beam power.

We created the neutron beam by running the 3He through a thin graphite foil that basically stripped off the extra neutron.
http://vms.fnal.gov/stillphotos/1997/0600/97-0609.hr.jpg

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Jeez @lowbeta that's some expensive "fuel" using "spoiled tritium"

I'm not following the neutron generation from 3He? I tend to think of it as a neutron absorber. Can you explain? And how collimated was the beam?

Posted: 3/18/2019 10:53:59 PM EDT

[#4]

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There's an excellent documentary about how the 'Ace Tomato Company' fielded and tested just such a weapon. The target was a SS-50 source programable mobile Nuclear missile launched from the Pamir mountains of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic.

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So then what is to stop a country from just developing land based weapons to shoot down the satellites?

I know nothing about this, genuinely asking.

Because, correct me if I am wrong, but I can generate substantially more powerful ground based weapons than any satellite and just zap them.

There's an excellent documentary about how the 'Ace Tomato Company' fielded and tested just such a weapon. The target was a SS-50 source programable mobile Nuclear missile launched from the Pamir mountains of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic.

I always wanted to be a GLG20!

Posted: 3/19/2019 7:47:01 AM EDT

[#5]

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Jeez @lowbeta that's some expensive "fuel" using "spoiled tritium"

I'm not following the neutron generation from 3He? I tend to think of it as a neutron absorber. Can you explain? And how collimated was the beam?

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When 3He interacts w/ a target, the result is "stuff" + a free neutron. 3He is used because it has 2 protons + a neutron. That means both of its electrons can be removed, for an electric charge of ++, and 50% more acceleration capacity compared to Deuterium. This means a shorter acceleration section and a smaller/lighter launch payload . 3He is special in that regard; it has the highest charge/neutron payload available in a gas atom.

It the context of the PET, the accelerator's official name, the output was not collimated after it came out of the acceleration section. Neutron beam collimation or focusing was not part of the project.

disclaimer: coffee.

@TheAvatar9265ft

Posted: 3/19/2019 8:07:33 AM EDT

[#6]

Um, if the particles are neutrally charged, how does one plan on accelerating them to high energies?

Posted: 3/19/2019 8:51:35 AM EDT

[#7]

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Um, if the particles are neutrally charged, how does one plan on accelerating them to high energies?

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Strip the electrons from helium. Accelerate +2 charged nuclei. Screen + protons with graphite mesh. Neutrons continue on as the negatively charged graphite mesh doesn’t affect them.

Posted: 3/19/2019 9:30:56 AM EDT

[#8]

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I can't talk about this specifically, only very general questions about accelerators.

I'll be standing by with popcorn though

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A NEUTRAL particle-beam weapon? A neutron cannon? Straight outa-Babylon 5 yo!

Seriously, a collimated neutral particle beam has huge advantages, in vacuum the particles in the beam won't repel each other causing dispersal over distance, you can't tune defensive measures to frequency like you can with a known laser, much better penetration than lasers which can be stymied by their own effects on the target.

We were going to use grazing mirrors with nuclear bomb pumped X-ray lasers back in the Star Wars program, but that was largely theoretical. That's high-ish energy photons. But neutral particle beams? But how the fuck do you efficiently generate and collimate a neutral particle beam? You cannot steer neutral particles like we can charged particles in accelerators (which is good, avoids beam deflection in space), nor is there a stimulated emission, amplification, and reflection/optics that created the collimated beams in lasers.

IF you read the research out there on collimated neutron particle beams for research purposes, the don't collimate the beam in efficient ways. They simply absorb anything with an off axis trajectory... hugely inefficient, which is fine if you have a big ass nuclear reactor for a neutron source and only need a small output beam for neutron radiography research, not good if you need a high power high efficiency low weight system that you can launch to break other people's shit.

so paging @MrHiggs and @L_JE

I can't talk about this specifically, only very general questions about accelerators.

I'll be standing by with popcorn though

Ahh. The unspoken question and answer neatly wrapped up,
I like it.

Posted: 3/19/2019 10:47:43 AM EDT

[#9]

So ... if you miss (probably unlikely), how far down range does that beam become an issue? I vaguely remember something about an equation with "to the fourth power", maybe energy dropping by ^4 as distance doubles?

Sorry, college physics was 20 years ago.

Posted: 3/19/2019 10:54:40 AM EDT

[#10]

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Strip the electrons from helium. Accelerate +2 charged nuclei. Screen + protons with graphite mesh. Neutrons continue on as the negatively charged graphite mesh doesn’t affect them.

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What energies have been achieved with this method?

Posted: 3/19/2019 11:41:17 AM EDT

[#11]

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What energies have been achieved with this method?

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Good luck getting anyone to talk about that

Posted: 3/19/2019 12:14:32 PM EDT

[#12]

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What energies have been achieved with this method?

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Strip the electrons from helium. Accelerate +2 charged nuclei. Screen + protons with graphite mesh. Neutrons continue on as the negatively charged graphite mesh doesn’t affect them.

What energies have been achieved with this method?

The real question to ask, from my understanding, is efficiency and beam quality.

Posted: 3/19/2019 12:47:45 PM EDT

[#13]

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How much ablative cover on roof of house for space based particle beam?

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It depends on the beam duration and energy.

Posted: 3/19/2019 1:13:38 PM EDT

[#14]

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Atmosphere would attenuate and disperse a neutral particle beam through interactions with the air.

An efficient orbital beam weapon system built with sufficient hardness and with a high firing rate would provide a cheap and hard-to-counter, hard to decoy, thus highly reliable exo-atmospheric interception against ballistic threats. You could even intercept before decoys/RVs separate from the bus.

That breaks the "interceptors are more expensive than countermeasures" problem of ground based missile defense.

It forces the enemy to use traditional or hypersonic cruise missiles for deterrence instead of BMs, or have a ground based ASAT laser than can fry your orbital defenses before they can intercept RVs.

It also could force an enemy to consider a first strike before your orbital beam system is capable of neutering their deterrent capability, leaving them totally vulnerable to a first strike.

Of course, building an orbiting particle beam weapon is a gross violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

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Seems like this would only be effective for ballistic missiles which leave the atmosphere. For targets on the surface or on a low trajectory (like short-range missiles or planes), the beam would interact with the atmosphere before it got to the target.

Interesting stuff...

Atmosphere would attenuate and disperse a neutral particle beam through interactions with the air.

An efficient orbital beam weapon system built with sufficient hardness and with a high firing rate would provide a cheap and hard-to-counter, hard to decoy, thus highly reliable exo-atmospheric interception against ballistic threats. You could even intercept before decoys/RVs separate from the bus.

That breaks the "interceptors are more expensive than countermeasures" problem of ground based missile defense.

It forces the enemy to use traditional or hypersonic cruise missiles for deterrence instead of BMs, or have a ground based ASAT laser than can fry your orbital defenses before they can intercept RVs.

It also could force an enemy to consider a first strike before your orbital beam system is capable of neutering their deterrent capability, leaving them totally vulnerable to a first strike.

Of course, building an orbiting particle beam weapon is a gross violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

The Outer Space Treaty prohibits weapons of mass destruction. Neither kinetic bombardment not a particle beam are currently classified as a "weapon of mass destruction"

Posted: 3/19/2019 1:35:19 PM EDT

[#15]

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The Outer Space Treaty prohibits weapons of mass destruction. Neither kinetic bombardment not a particle beam are currently classified as a "weapon of mass destruction"

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And if the Air Force is publicly asking for money for this, it's probably already deployed by a "failed" launch.

Posted: 3/19/2019 1:37:12 PM EDT

[#16]

If particle-beam weapons are outlawed, only outlaws will have particle-beam weapons.

Posted: 3/19/2019 7:02:42 PM EDT

[#17]

I should mention that PET accelerator I mentioned is only one (1) method of making a neutral particle beam, and was built on 1980s tech.

There are better ways.

Posted: 3/19/2019 8:45:25 PM EDT

[#18]

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So ... if you miss (probably unlikely), how far down range does that beam become an issue? I vaguely remember something about an equation with "to the fourth power", maybe energy dropping by ^4 as distance doubles?

Sorry, college physics was 20 years ago.

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Current/flux goes like the inverse of distance squared. It follows the inverse square law. That makes certain assumptions but is valid for just about everything related to point sources.