Nuking Europa, Nukes and other 'futuristic' ideas for exploring Europa Options

[SergeyVLazarev]

Hi all! In my opinion, Europa explorer must be cheap and simple.

It must consist of 5 parts - 2 orbiters, 3 small and robust landers, and 3 nuclear and termonuclear bombs. I think that 10 Kt - 100 kt - 1 Mgt sequence is optimal.


First orbiter is robust, high protected from radioactivity, armed device. On high orbite over Europe
With simple and primitive long focused camera, laser-radar. It must to spectacle and record all nuclear explosion parametres.
has also a radio recever from landers.

second orbiter is orbiting low over the Europe. It must to fly over epicenter of nuke and drop lander to measure and see all.
To defend more complex second orbiter from radioactivity rays of nuclear explosion, we struck and explode a nuke in another side of Europe

Why nukes? Because it reveal all. First one, we"ll have a great quake of Europe. And can record all seismic infomation without landers.
next one. we can to melt ice and see a clear water - just hollow in the crust!!!

at 3 rd.

We dont need a special lander. If we can melt great hollow in crust - we'll have a liquid water to catch our lander! We dont need airbags, rockets. Just an robust "lander" like small susmarine!!

4 th. we ll have great cloud of water vapour and ice to take from there any chemical information.

[SergeyVLazarev]

BTW for the record. The Tsar Bomba was restricted to 50MT from ~100MT by replacing the uranium fast fission third stage in the design with lead in order to reduce fallout, it was not because of fear of a hydrogen fusion reaction.

it was 2 practical causes to reduce yield:
1. Seismic - cause explosion on surface or near could damage poligon
2. Weight of airborne bomb to fit it in bomb bay.
And 1 teoretical - to prevent possible and foreseen thermonuclear burning of water.

OK sergey, we've tried to humor you but you're not getting with the programme. The idea is dramatic and fun to consider for a couple of minutes but any half way serious thinking shows that it is silly and your final comment is heading into woowoo territory.

If you dont like this idea - just dont disscuss it.
If you so great man, dont get low to such silly things.

[ugordan]

it was 2 practical causes to reduce yield:
1. Seismic - cause explosion on surface or near could damage poligon
2. Weight of airborne bomb to fit it in bomb bay.
And 1 teoretical - to prevent possible and foreseen thermonuclear burning of water.

1. The polygon WAS there to be bombed the hell out of in the first place. I fail to see the reason for testing the most powerful bomb EVER and at the same time trying not to hurt the polygon too much.
2. The bomb weighed 27 metric tons regardless of whether it was a full yield, 100 Mt version or a scaled down 50 Mt version. The scaled down version merely had all its uranium in the 2nd and 3rd stage fusion jacket replaced by a jacket of lead which weighed the same, but was for all other purposes inert.

What part of the fact that the bomb was detonated at a 4 kilometers altitude, over land do you not get? Even if it detonated in the middle of the ocean, nothing extraordinary would happen. That is, apart from the fact several million tons of water and ocean bottom would be blown sky-high.