looking for documentation for 1963 minuteman missile computer

From: Eric J. Korpela <korpela_at_ssl.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue Oct 16 20:50:55 2001

> For the gun type, all bets are off - it's a _much_ simpler design.
>
> I wonder what kind of yeild you'd get using a .50 diameter bullet against
> a 1.00 diameter target. (inches)

The answer is 0. The ISTR that the critical radius for U235 is about 9 cm.
For plutonium, the critical radius is about 5 cm. Plutonium doesn't work
too well in the gun types, so you would tend to get a small but extremely
messy explosion even with a critical assembly.

There are tricks to getting the critical radius down to lower values...

Eric
Received on Tue Oct 16 2001 - 20:50:55 BST