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Thin Film Dome Protects Cities From Nuclear Blasts
How is it possible that a thin film dome could protect a city from harm in the event of nuclear attack? Read on.
(Cheap Method for Shielding a City from Rocket
and Nuclear Warhead Impacts)
His idea is a thin dome covering a city with that is a very transparent film 2 (Fig.1). The film has thickness 0.05 – 0.3 mm. One is located at high altitude (5 - 20 km). The film is supported at this altitude by a small additional air pressure produced by ground ventilators. That is connected to Earth's ground by managed cables 3. The film may have a controlled transparency option. The system can have the second lower film 6 with controlled reflectivity, a further option.The offered protection defends in the following way. The smallest space warhead has a minimum cross-section area 1 m2 and a huge speed 3 – 5 km/s. The warhead gets a blow and overload from film (mass about 0.5 kg). This overload is 500 – 1500g and destroys the warhead (see computation below). Warhead also gets an overpowering blow from 2 -5 (every mass is 0.5 - 1 kg) of the strong stones. Relative (about warhead) kinetic energy of every stone is about 8 millions of Joules! (It is in 2-3 more than energy of 1 kg explosive!). The film destroys the high speed warhead (aircraft, bomber, wing missile) especially if the film will be armored by stone...
(Cheap Method for Shielding a City from Rocket
and Nuclear Warhead Impacts)
Regular Technovelgy readers might be thinking of the long history of science-fictional domes, like the glass dome described in A Modern Utopia (1905) by H.G. Wells or the moon dome described in Brigands of the Moon by Ray Cummings, published by Astounding Stories of Super Science magazine in 1930.
However, I was thinking of the roofed valley from Misfit, written by Robert Heinlein in 1939. In the story, a valley on an asteroid is selected for habitation. It is fitted with a "roof":
The Captain selected a little bowl-shaped depression in the hills, some thousand feet long and half as broad, in which to establish a permanent camp. This was to be roofed over, sealed, and an atmosphere provided..."Is this roof going to be just fifty feet high?"
"No, it will average maybe a hundred. It bellies up in the middle from the air pressure..."
Libby concentrated for an instant, then looked puzzled. "But look -- This valley is a thousand feet long and better than five hundred wide. At half of fifteen pounds per square inch, and allowing for the arch of the roof, that's a load of one and an eighth billion pounds. What fabric can take that kind of a load?"
"Cobwebs."
"Cobwebs?"
"Yeah, cobwebs. Strongest stuff in the world, stronger than the best steel. Synthetic spider silk. This gauge we're using for the roof has a tensile strength of four thousand pounds a running inch."
Update 07-Feb-2025: I should probably add that the earliest reference to the idea of covering a city with a glass dome was from Mrs. Maberly: Or, The World as it Will be (1836), by an Anonymous Author:
On looking upwards, in order to behold what in other towns would have been the open space of the firmament - and which, in ancient London, would have been mysteriously veiled over by a dense and awful canopy of eternal smoke, - an airy and elliptical dome of glass, fashioned and pointed like the cupola of a Moorish temple, reared itself to an immeasurable height.
(Read more about the domed city)
End update.
Don't miss these dome-related stories; Glass Dome Cities On Mars, Dreamed By Elon Musk and Space Domes Over-rated? Science Fiction Authors Have Answers.
Thanks to Dr. Rachel Pawling for posting about this study.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/1/2022)
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