Jul 16, 2008

Trinity's 63rd Anniversary

There is nothing I can say about the Trinity test that hasn't already been said.

Click here for more information on the Trinity Site.

34 comments:

Anonymous said...

worked without testing

Frank Young said...

What?!?

It was a test. That's how we knew it would work.

Anonymous said...

Well, let me put it this way. It worked right out of the box.By the way, one of the two weapon designs dropped on Japan was never "tested" and technically neither one was since both weapons were dropped from high altitude and detonated as opposed to being perched,fully instrumented,on a tower in the desert.

Frank Young said...

I was hoping you had a better point.

Now, if we had a multitude of tested designs to choose from for the Japan missions do you think we would have used the untested ones?

Anonymous said...

We had two designs. We used one untested design and one tested design over Japan.

However, it is still the 63rd anniversary of the Trinity test. 11:17 and 11:39 are being obtuse.

Anonymous said...

Huh!? We did use the "untested ones". Are you trying to rewrite history or are you just uninformed? There was considerable debate whether or not to demonstrate the weapon or use it. Since both designs were not fully vetted it was decided it was best to use the weapon and hope for the best rather than take a bunch of high level Japanese observers to remote site and have the thing fail. The point is (which you don't get) it isn't as hard as some would claim to build a functional weapon with... no testing. Get the point now?

Anonymous said...

Now, no one could even build the tower in the desert without 6 inches of paperwork and 10 man-years of training, assuming, of course, that purchasing could manage to order all the materials and have them delivered to the correct location!

Anonymous said...

Little Boy.
Made in America, tested in Japan.

Anonymous said...

Let's see who can come up with the best caption for this old photo.

Anonymous said...

www.santafenewmexican.com/
Local%20News/
NNSA-seeks--more-long-term-contracts-for-labs

===============================
NNSA seeks more long-term contracts - New Mexican, July 16th
===============================

Administrator says relationships developed would help increase nation's safety

by Sue Vorenberg

It doesn't take a nuclear weapons physicist to figure out that a steady, long-term contract provides a lot more stability than several unpredictable short-term ones.

But for the nation's nuclear weapons labs, a lot of work outside their core nuclear weapons mission is defined by short-term contracts that come up whenever a government agency realizes it needs something, Thomas D'Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a news conference Wednesday.

That type of work, called "work for others," is a growing area for the nation's nuclear labs, but to make things more stable, D'Agostino is hoping to create several five-year long-term agreements between the labs and other government agencies, he said.

It's a plan that's in the works, and he hopes to make some announcements about solidified agreements in the next few months, he said.

"(Work for others is) a good model to solve problems," D'Agostino said. "It's not a good model to build a sustainable infrastructure."

Building long-term relationships with other agencies will help national labs like Los Alamos and Sandia create more effective science and technology projects and will help them diversify as the nation's nuclear arsenal continues to shrink, he said.

And the long-term relationships with the other agencies, in turn, should also help make the nation more safe, said Michael Anastasio, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"If you think of the intelligence community and if you can build those long-term relationships, you can better watch technology and issues around the world," Anastasio said.

Teams of scientists paired with those in the intelligence community for several years can look for long-term patterns and signs in other cultures or countries that could turn into possible threats against the United States, he said. Those teams could then find ways to head off problems before they become disasters, he said.

And that's "more valuable than a sequence of activities," Anastasio said.

Some of those longer-term agreements at Los Alamos could include work with the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, the Department of Defense and "with some intelligence agencies" that he couldn't name, Anastasio said.

At Sandia, longer-term agreements might fall in areas like combustion research, computer-related work and nanotechnology, or the study of "small, smart things," said Sandia director Tom Hunter.

The longer-term work, which would impact LANL, Sandia, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Nevada Test Site, will likely fall into several topic areas, D'Agostino said, adding the concept isn't just a way to keep the labs afloat in a time of budget cutbacks and layoffs. "This is not a lifeline; this is a recognition that there is incredible synergy" among the intelligence communities, federal agencies and scientists at the labs, he said.

The plan won't mark an end to work for others, he added, but it will help the labs to work more effectively on larger scientific problems, D'Agostino said.

"There will always be specific and unique problems that have to be addressed," he said.

Contact Sue Vorenberg at 986-3072 or svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.

Anonymous said...

"Now, no one could even build the tower in the desert without 6 inches of paperwork and 10 man-years of training, assuming, of course, that purchasing could manage to order all the materials and have them delivered to the correct location!"

Plus, the cost would be 10x and 3 years behind schedule :)

Anonymous said...

"Let's see who can come up with the best caption for this old photo."

The Manhattan Project architects, brought together again through wormholes in the year 2015, are seen looking through the remanents of the Los Alamos Manufacturing Enterprise (LAME).

Anonymous said...

The Manhattan Project was very successful, it also used a minimum of paperwork, and it was operated by MED, not DOE/NNSA.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, nor Gen. Leslie R. Groves wrote useless or impractical memorandums et cetera, they clearly stayed on course, in their effort to defeat Nazi Germany, that later shifted to the defeat of Japan, with the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

(Dr. C. Paul Robinson would have been a better choice to lead DOE/NNSA than Mr. Thomas P. D´Agostino, he (Robinson) better understand the dynamics of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence in general, and the need for a better integration between DOE/NNSA and DoD, and steps forward.)

(D´Agostino and DOE/NNSA in general, is late, sometimes, very late, i.e. "We can´t fully set policy.")

(If DOE/NNSA was a chessplayer, he/she would be n+1 moves behind, if DOE/NNSA was a pokerplayer, he/she can´t change tactics fast enough, i.e. easy to read.)

Anonymous said...

7/18/08 6:24 AM

well, you finally found a way to use "obtuse" in a sentence even though your use is unremarkably obtuse.

Anonymous said...

"Let's see who can come up with the best caption for this old photo."

what kind of giant fucking nipple can we grow out of this!?

Anonymous said...

"NNSA seeks more long-term contracts"- New Mexican, July 16th

So Tom, Mike, et al want outsiders to dump big buckets of cash on to NNSA and their labs?

Never going to happen, not with the waste and high expenses that go on at the NNSA labs. The only WFO work that will ever be done at these labs is the current type... stuff which is focused on specific deliverables and can be monitored and cut off it the PI and staff don't perform.

Frank Young said...

7/18/08 7:40 AM,
Are you trying to rewrite what I typed or are you just stupid? Your dream of trading America's tested weapons for your "trust me" weapons is dead. Get over it.

Anonymous said...

7:36 am: "Your dream of trading America's tested weapons for your "trust me" weapons is dead. Get over it."

The poster was not plugging "trust me" weapons. He was simply (and correctly) pointing out that no testing is needed to create a "functional" weapon, of which point Little Boy is the canonical example. It's a warning we all need to take seriously. Your knee-jerk response was illuminating, however.

Anonymous said...

7/19/08 2:13 PM

What??

Re-read what you posted.

As for the question posed in 7:36AM.

Answer:
They are just stupid.

Frank Young said...

Thank you.

Anonymous said...

10:06 pm: "Re-read what you posted."

Just did. What's your problem?

Anonymous said...

" 10:06 pm: "Re-read what you posted."

Just did. What's your problem?

7/19/08 10:42 PM"

This could be a learning moment for you.
For it to be effective we cannot tell you what is wrong with what you have said. When you discover it yourself it will be much more helpfull for you. We can guide you a bit, re-read what you wrote but this time look for what was said that makes no sense. You can be like a detective and figure who did it, only in this case you need to find out why you are an idiot.

By the way if you have had a traumatic brain injury than I apologize for my comments.

Anonymous said...

10:52 am: "This could be a learning moment for you."

You are absolutely correct. I've learned not to try to deal with mental midgets like you.

Anonymous said...

"10:52 am: "This could be a learning moment for you."

You are absolutely correct. I've learned not to try to deal with mental midgets like you.

7/20/08 1:08 PM"

Ooooookaaaaay!

Anonymous said...

Alas, a teachable moment is lost.

It is always sad to see, but we must pesevere.

Anonymous said...

I rise in defense of 1:08 pm. His/her only sin appears to be expanding the intent of the original disputed post. Why is that such a horrible mistake on this LANL blog?? There appears to have been some misunderstanding?

Anonymous said...

Take a look at #11, although I enjoyed the entire list.

http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu
/~siegel/quack.html

Anonymous said...

"7/20/08 10:31 PM"

11. "Experimental verification isn't important in science."

Look up "scientific method" in the dictionary. Science is the study of the real world. If you make a claim in court, you need real evidence to back it up. If you make a bet, you have to provide a way to test that bet in a way that is unambiguous. It must be either right or wrong; there is no third alternative for a meaningful statement.

Anonymous said...

11:50 am: "If you make a bet, you have to provide a way to test that bet in a way that is unambiguous."

I'd say that Hiroshima was pretty unambiguous.

Frank Young said...

I really did not expect any comments on this post. As often happens, the blog readers have surprised me. The comments have ranged from, in my opinion, absurd to humorous to deceitful to factual. Since everyone but me is anonymous here, it gets a little confusing.

In a few days I hope to have a new post that covers the issues raised here in the comments. Meanwhile, perhaps a few historians or "old-timers" could chime in on this:

Little Boy, "containing virtually the entire U.S. supply of uranium-235", could not be tested. To do so would preclude the possibility of it's use in combat. Is this the reason it's untested design was employed first? With Fat Man held in reserve to destroy Little Boy if it failed to detonate?

And finally, as has been noted by POGO and others, no testing is needed to create a "functional" weapon. Two appropriately sized masses of HEU are sufficient. However that has no relevance to the point I was (trying) to make about RRW.

Anonymous said...

alzheimers

Anonymous said...

7/19/08 7:36 AM

Frank, I think there is a problem in the control room.

You have extrapolated from my post that...My dream of trading America's tested weapons for your "trust me" weapons is dead?

What in the hell are you babbling about? You still don't get it.

Alzheimers

Anonymous said...

Little Boy, "containing virtually the entire U.S. supply of uranium-235", could not be tested. To do so would preclude the possibility of it's use in combat. Is this the reason it's untested design was employed first? With Fat Man held in reserve to destroy Little Boy if it failed to detonate?

Answer: They wanted to hold the second weapon in reserve in case mars attacked, Frank.

Alzheimer's

Frank Young said...

Oh boy, I have a fan!