Re:John A Phillips
by consp on Friday September 02, 2022 @05:09AM
(#32688479)
And you still need a looooong barrel and a fast moving plutonium part (see the thin man design on wikipedia and then extrapolate from there) even creating near close enough pure plutonium since economically you won't have pure.
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Re:John A Phillips
by bayouborne on Friday September 02, 2022 @07:58AM
(#32689547)
"Parsons’ first order of business was the plutonium gun. Because it needed a muzzle velocity of at least 3,000 feet per second it would have to be 17 feet long. It should weigh no more than a ton, a fifth of the usual weight of a gun that size, which meant it would have to be machined from strong high-alloy steel. It would not require rifling but needed three independently operated primers to make sure it fired. Parsons arranged for the Navy’s gun-design section to engineer it."
- Richard Rhodes - The Making of the Atomic Bomb