March 1960:
P }
—_
In the area of Villa Hotel, P-Division reports plans for 27 sensors aboard
16 rockets to be launched in calaboration with Sandia and AFSWC over the next
six months from Canaveral, Point Arguello, Wallops Island, Fort Churchill
Tonopha.
and
Specifically, one of these is to carry scintillation x-ray and gamma
ray detectors aboard a journeyman B rocket during the latter half of June to investigate simplified versions of instrumentation which could detect nuclear tests
at high aititudes.
The section in test evaluation on "consealment of underground explosions' states
“an apparant paradox in the Latter hold concept is its prediction of seismic wave
amplitudes which are even less than those observed from past airbursts.
However,
when it recognized that the shock wave from a typical air burst has a velocity
parallel to the earth which is comparable to the velocity to seismic surface
waves, it is clear that considerable energy may be fed into the earth as a result
of resonance effects."
After briefly describing the method of addressing
this paradox, "it is found that the present calculation does predict a surface
wave which is larger than that obtained from an
same energy.
analysis."
underground explosion of the
The resonance effect is clearly exhibited in the results of the