[ExI] big dumb booster question

[spike]

> ...On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
> ...
> > 
> > Have you any ideas?  Present them to DARPA forthwith, me lad!
> 
> How well, and how long, would they last on Venus?

Hmmm, don't know about that.

> What about sundiving - let a probe send back telemetry as 
> long as possible?...

That is a good possibility.  The outer layer chars to pretty much pure
carbon, which is really good for high temperatures.
 
> Do they stand up to volcanoes well?

Drop it in thru the ash?  Of course it wouldn't survive any impact, but I
think you had in mind having it send chemical composition and temperature
data before impact?  That's an idea.

What we finally proposed is a re-entry body designed specifically to take
out electric power line towers.  It has no actual explosives aboard, but
they use the accuracy infrastructure already in place with the Trident
missile, then uses enhancements and GPS to guide it to still greater
accuracy.  Then it whacks the tower without causing collateral damage.

The problem we never could solve is that it would look to the commies like a
nuclear attack.  So we put in the Disadvantage column "might trigger
unlimited nuclear war" with the parenthetical comment: (bad).  We had all
seen Ghost Busters.  So it was tested but never put into production.

I saw an article recently in which another design team had come up with
pretty much the same idea, and had come up against the same problem.

spike