-5outerspace.
He notes the elevated costs and decreased rate of data gathering
in the underground and outerspace regime.
Finally, he feels that the “magnitude
and rate of specific programatic weapon developments and corresponding requirements
upon the lab may therefore be expected to decrease.'"'
His estimates of the gains
that can be made in large, medium and small yield weapons with and without testing
are the same as in the past.
He makes some general statements about what the lab is doing and plans to do in
the event that testing is resumed as follows:
"With specific reference to the
next 12 to 24 months, we would plan to be able to conduct with minimum but as
adequate diagnostic as the subterranean testing technique permits tests beginning
in spring 1960, however. we do not plan to devote extensive research to the
problem of elaborate physical diagnostics (as differentiated from concern about
methods of hydrodynamic or radio chemical yield) until it is clear that such a
test series will exist and that such research (or its application) will have a
good probability of yielding important and essential diagnostic information.
We hope to make extensive use of the capabilities of Sandia with respect to
diagnostic and yield observations of shots at missile altitudes in the event that
testing of this type is undertaken, and to seek their assistance in preparation of
detection and measuring instruments for their package and in the analysis of the
data.
We also propose to continue to fulfill as long as necessary the requirements
of being able to discuss hypothetical test operations practically anywhere on the
terrestjal globe or in the accessible universe."
Going on to the general situation
of how to keep the people at the lab occupied and gainfully employed, he notes that
"without testing,
there may be a definite drift of the more imapinative and
ingenious people away from nuclear weapons work.
This is already clear in weapon
test activities during the course of the present moratorium.
moratorium there were indications that thoughtful
Even before this
and senior scientific personnel
were concerned with both the technical and political future of atomic weapons and