Re:The Soviet Union’s Flawed Rival to Concorde
by btilly on Thursday October 19, 2017 @02:03AM
(#15505766)
I think that there are some decimal places missing. But that said, I'd expect a chemical explosion to deliver itself mostly as a shockwave and a ball of hot gas, with relatively little delivered by light. Because the part exploding is surrounded by smoke and chemicals that absorb light.
Re:The Soviet Union’s Flawed Rival to Concorde
by ericd on Thursday October 19, 2017 @03:38PM
(#15510930)
Yeah, I was going for worst case assumptions, where all of the energy turned into infrared, which is definitely not going to be the case.
Here's the math, if you want to double check: (10 x 4.184 x (10^9 joules))/(4 x pi x (24000 meters)^2)
Edit: On my phone I'm getting ~5.8 joules per square meter. Google seems to be mangling the units, though, so I can't be sure it's not dropping or adding in a factor of 1,000, though.
Edit 2: assuming that figure is correct, unless it's released in <1/200 of a second, it's not competitive with the sun at the equator (>1,000 Watts/Joules per m^2 per second)