jgzman

jgzman t1_j616u8h wrote

> Conventional ICBM launches . . . could be destroyed before reaching target

Source, please?

> They put dirty bombs in vans not airplanes.

It takes a while to get vans to the target, unless you've pre-positioned them. Plus, a ground-burst is not gonna do the kind of city-obliterating damage an airburst does.

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jgzman t1_j6167gp wrote

> But it shouldn't be taken as an accurate gauge of how close we are to nuclear war.

I mean, we are, at any moment, about five minutes away from a nuclear war.

Any other measure is just someone trying to figure out how likely someone is to push the proverbial button.

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jgzman t1_j1wz4ud wrote

Having played KSP, I'll tell you the answer: it takes a lot of fuel to get a little fuel to orbit. If we could find a way of generating fuel outside the gravity well, like the H2 they claim to have found in the Lunar regolith, that would be so much easier.

But whatever we launch has to be dragged out of our gravity well, weather we do it in bulk, or IKEA style. And doing it in multiple launches is multiple opportunities for accidents to happen.

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