Moscow Airport Bombing

[Swatopluk]

Clancy actually mentions the movie in the book (it is partially the inspiration for the terrorists to go for that target)

[Griffin NoName]

Zono, I love your diagram. It should be adopted at all travel points.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Such expensive contraption would be only as effective as the scanning of each vehicle, if the would be bomber figures out how to fool the sensors/inspection then it wouldn't do much. In the end is impossible to cover all holes and trying to do so should be based in common sense and effectiveness.

[Aggie]

Has the realization been lost even on us that spending massive amounts of money, creating economy-slowing encumbrances and modifying the normal course of life based on the terrifying prospect of a statistically insignificant event occurring -

is the POINT of terrorism?  

Mission accomplished!

_{yes I know who started this thread}

The one that I got a real giggle in was the restriction on passengers carrying printer cartridges on flights to the US, in reaction to the events last October.   Really?  The actual container has any bearing on the danger?  There are hundreds of similarly-sized containers that could be use quite as effectively, and be less conspicuous to boot.   Not much of a restriction, I suppose, but pretty pointless IMHO. I'm sure there's hundreds of terror cells at this moment devastated by the loss their plans to destroy the world by print-cartridge.

[Griffin NoName]

Has the realization been lost even on us that spending massive amounts of money, creating economy-slowing encumbrances and modifying the normal course of life based on the terrifying prospect of a statistically insignificant event occurring -

No, I don't think it has been lost. But the search for statistically insignificant costing security goes on.................

There are hundreds of similarly-sized containers that could be use quite as effectively, and be less conspicuous to boot.  

Perhaps the answer is regulation luggage. One sweater, one tie, one nightdress..................

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

That is the whole thing about security, right now we are dealing with full body scanners and all the ramifications of them. Do I mind if some officials see me naked? No, I in fact wouldn't care as much to go naked into a plane, but I don't like the idea of those same officials watching my wife, or my mother, or my sisters or my son, or if I had any daughters.

My slim chance of dying on a terrorist attack isn't worth all my privacy and the privacy of my family.

[Swatopluk]

Our agency just got a request to judge an appropriation request for the further development of a new type of solid fuel motor (an Israeli invention btw). The proposed fuel was actually some type of guncotton (nitrated cellulose). The polite refusal concentrated on the fact that the environmental performance evaluation of the thing would yield dreadful results (exhaust consisting mainly of CO and likely tons of NO_x). What got only mentioned in passing was that the fuel would probably qualify as a military grade explosive and thus not marketable.
Now imagine cars with this type of engine getting scanned

[Sibling DavidH]

In the old days they used to make cinema films and shirt collars out of it.  But what kind of engine, and how would you feed the stuff in?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I would presume pellets, as in the latest "wood" stoves.

My late great uncle built a house up in Missouri with one of those furnaces.  He purchased the wood pellets-- each about the size of an unshelled peanut (or slightly smaller than styrofoam packing peanuts) in bulk, and backed his vehicle up to the bin for easy dumping-- his property is sloped, and he had a nice double-car garage door at one end of his basement, opening directly into the mechanical room and rough-utility storage.  The remainder of the basement was nicely furnished.  

Anyhow, the bin had a screw-jack at it's bottom (sloped sides) which fed the pellets into the burner-box.  The pellets were made from recycled wood and wood scraps from the local mill, compressed using water and some form of clean-burning binder agent (not traditional glues which release toxic fumes when burned)... starch, I think (the binder).  The ash was all but insignificant, but the furnace took care of that, too-- ejected it into another storage bin, which needed periodic emptying.  He would churn it into his compost pile.   Or he would, when he was still gardening.   He did not have the greatest health towards the end, there... alas.

Anyway, I'd guess that the gun-cotton would be pelletized.  I'd guess smallish round beads would work best, for a vehicle.  You could use simple air pressure to move them along a smooth tube, into the burner area.  I'd also guess an "external" combustion, driving a gas turbine?  That's how I'd do it-- and I'd turn a rare-earth magnet generator, creating electricity.  And use rare-earth wheel-hub electric motors at each wheel, with a modest battery bank, to absorb the braking energy....

But I'd seriously hate to be in a collision in that thing-- imagine a box full of pellets being crushed in an accident... then responding as most explosives would do in that situation.... by pushing back.  All at once..... hard....

.... to paraphrase Niven & Pournelle's Footfall:

"Somebody's put God in a box.  And he wanted out.  Bad."

[Swatopluk]

I don't have all the details but it must be (knowingl yor not) a distant descendant of the gun cotton engine that was proposed in the early days of powered flight. Not a stove but a piston egine. And it's supposed to work without external air supply. Given the highly negative oxygen balance of cellulose nitrate the result would be an exhaust hyper-rich in carbon monoxide and there was no talk about a converter that would turn CO and water into hydrogen and CO₂. Well, that's probably the reason why the inventor claims that the CO₂ emissions are much smaller than with conventional engines.

[Sibling DavidH]

This is what I am trying to get my head round: a piston engine breathing in pellets.    Oh well, back in the 60s when the Japanese were taking over the bike market, their machines were popularly known as 'rice-burners'.  A friend and I often discussed how to build a real rice-burner.

Small amounts of nitrocellulose, or even cordite, won't explode unless confined.  On the range I've often twisted the head off a misfire (stick it in a holding block) and burned the propellant, just for fun.  Fffsssshh!  But I daresay Bob's right when there's a large boxful of it.

[Swatopluk]

To mix small amounts of explosives into normal fuel was discussed as a way to get rid of the old NVA ammo the Bundeswehr had no use for. 1-2% addition would have made the same amount of fuel last longer (=>more miles per gallon). But the proposal was not taken up becasue of the NO_x problem.

[Aggie]

One gasoline chain here (Shell?) is advertising "nitrogen enriched gasoline".   My inner environmental chemist is shuddering at this - isn't this just a good way to bump the NO_x?

[Swatopluk]

I guess a larger catalytic converter could deal with it but it would be rather expensive.
Hey, the Brits to some degree owe their victory in the Battle of Britain to nitrogen based additives to their aviation fuel (while the Germans experimented through all of the war with far more complicated ways to boost the octane number of their fuel. But who cares about the environment when there's a war to win?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Who, indeed.  I've seen the ads Aggie mentioned-- Shell is the brand in my locality.  I always had assumed it was just one of those advertising tricks.

You know:  "Supra-Soft Hand Soap!  Now! Cleans  Feet, too!"   I figured that "nitrogen enriched" was just a gimmick, that they were "advertising" some process or chemical they already did anyhow.

But this discussion of explosive compounds and Aggie's comment makes me re-think that a bit.

I wonder:  were they [Shell] actually taking advantage of the fact that all gasoline cars have cat converters, now?  And depending on those to keep the NOx to acceptable levels?   Stranger things have happened.  

But, as it's in an advert, I'm still skeptical that it's remotely what they claim it is... aside from containing nitrogen...

Swato:  that's interesting about the nitrogen additives during BOB.  History often talks about individuals and groups of people, and whole classes of tech (airplane 'species') but rarely speaks of the little details that binds things together.  And sometimes, the 'win' is actually in those little oft-overlooked details.  Do you have details about which compounds were used?