Re: Teeny Nukes

On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 07:25:55PM -0500, Robert W. Eldridge wrote:
>Probably much more
>cost-effective to use some super-scientific high yield chemical
explosive,
>or FAE shells, or something along that line.

Gyrobombs!

With sufficient materials tech, you can get more energy per mass in a
spinning gyroscope than in any current chemical explosive. Combine that
with a fragmenting charge on the flywheel, and you get no explosion,
but lots of very fast-moving fragments.

Side effect: the fragments come out more or less in a disc, rather than
in a sphere. Depending on what you're doing, this can be a lot more
efficient than a normal explosion. Great for bounding landmines, for
example.