Notes on Mtg, 25 Aug ‘51
and the odds on drone failure have been~/ 20%.
Since this would have to
be an entirely new control system in a plane modified for the purpose,
one mist expect it to be even less reliable. Largely for these reasons,
the idea of such an operation was dropped.
Be
Ship at Sea
A combination of ships might be used, one with the bomb in it,
another one for the instrumentation. (The idea of having the ship ina
lagoon or beaching it alongside an island is regarded as essentially a
land operation; it is therefore discussed in Par. 3, below.)
.
Again the advantage would appear to be operational, in that the
bomb could be assembled on the Pacific coast, detonated almost wherever
one chose. However, it is not quite that simple, since the shot must
take place fairly close to land which has an air strip because of the
sampling planes. It is also believed that the advantages of assembly in
a West Coast navy yard have been overestimated, since this is a small
part of the over-all job of conducting a test.
Again, Table 3 points up
the fact that most of the experiments are seriously jeopardized by such
an operation. Anything which requires collimation is particularly unfortunate because of the ocean swell, and cables between the zero and
instrumeotation ships would present a real problem.
It is thought that the fall-out situation would not be
materially changed, since the particle sizes resulting from land and
ship material are probably not greatly different. One point is that an
island might be saved by blowing up m ship instead, but this is not clear.
The group agreed that the advantages of a ship at sea did not
outveigh the disadvantages.
C.
Jand-Based Operation
The idea of a beached ship vs a land shot was discussed at length.
It would appear to be largely a matter of whether one wanted the shot at
,the edge of aland mass or further inland. f
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Deck oF
vos Curtiss handled Rosen's collimator, which weighed 28 tons, so there
appears to be no problem there.
From discussions with Potts, Burriss
did not think there would be additional cryogeny problems one way or
another.
The
planned is 9 m>
total amount of hydrogen for which transport capacity is
(weight ~ 1 ton) about & or5 m9 of thie the maximm
which will probably be used (including that for cooling), the rest
essentially for safety.
,
' elTe
5