Starfish Prime

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Starfish Prime

Post by SquidInk » 05-16-2012 08:55 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States of America on July 9, 1962, a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Defense Atomic Support Agency (which became the Defense Nuclear Agency in 1971).

Launched via a Thor rocket and carrying a W49 thermonuclear warhead (manufactured by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) and a Mk. 4 reentry vehicle, the explosion took place 250 miles (400 km) above a point 19 miles (31 km) southwest of Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. It was one of five tests conducted by the USA in outer space as defined by the FAI. It produced a yield equivalent to 1.4 megatons of TNT.

[...]

Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse which was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a telephone company microwave link. The EMP-damaged microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian islands.




http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =128170775

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Post by SquidInk » 05-16-2012 11:27 AM

Document giving some context to Starfish Prime, Bluegill Prime, and others in the early '60s. How Johnston Atoll was contaminated, and why there was such a furious rush to conduct the tests.
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Post by Dale O Sea » 05-16-2012 12:02 PM

Fifty plus years later one has to wonder what the are testing now..

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Post by SquidInk » 05-16-2012 12:39 PM

Today? It's a thousand times worse. Most of the experimental weaponry is now directed inwards, at us, instead of at perceived enemies 'abroad'. Paranoia at the highest levels, and an unbridled will to take a profit no matter what costs you are transferring to those around you ... it's a combination (un-noble science & economic motive) that means, effectively, we're all dead.

At least the weaponization of the Van Allen Belt, and projects like Orion were eventually halted for the greater good. I'm fairly certain Monsanto, Pfizer, Blackwater (or whatever they call themselves today), Google, GE, Honeywell, et al, have no such compunctual hang-ups.
I was on a troop ship returning from a stint in Korea. The area had been cleared of commercial shipping, but our little transport was chugging along – - directly under the blast. It was my job on the ship to tune in radio stations for the troops from where ever I could find them. That evening I was listening to KPOI in Hawaii and did a count down on the ship’s PA. 3-2-1 Unbelievable. The description above was accurate. I couldn’t believe that the entire sky lit up. In fact, I was a little worried that something had gone wrong when the north-south band of white lit up and wouldn’t go away. it was obviously following the Earth’s magnetic field.

I’ll never forget it. - http://www.damninteresting.com/starfish-prime/
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Post by Dale O Sea » 05-16-2012 12:50 PM

Saved by the ionosphere - again? And I guess all those initial qualms we had about nukes blowing the atmosphere off of the planet had been dismissed..?

1962..JFK signed off on this - if he was told. Tests like this would make the Russians and Cubans take note. Talk about a shot across the bow..across the globe, more like.
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Post by SquidInk » 05-16-2012 12:50 PM

Related: http://www.futurescience.com/emp/test184.html
Test 184

by Jerry Emanuelson, B.S.E.E.

Futurescience, LLC

This is a page about the 1962 Soviet nuclear EMP tests over Kazakhstan.

Electromagnetic pulse is a strange and mysterious phenomenon to most of the general public. Even for most of us who have read and studied a lot about EMP over the years, something that is even more strange and mysterious is the Soviet Union's series of nuclear tests in space, most notably the test known only as K-3 or Test 184. These EMP producing tests were done over a large populated land mass in Kazakhstan. Even though the economic state of Kazakhstan was rather primitive by today's standards, it was heavily industrialized and electrified.
An ordinary one ampere fuse will carry sub-millisecond pulses of thousands of amperes without blowing. It is heat that melts the fuse element, and very short pulses, even of extremely high current, do not have enough time to melt the fuse element. The SN-1 fuses used in Kazakhstan were rated to withstand 3600 amperes of a pulse with 5 microsecond rise time and a 10 microsecond fall time. The current pulse induced by the E1 component of the EMP would probably have been much shorter than this.

(The induced current pulse is generally significantly slower than the E1 electric field. For example, the E1 EMP from the 1962 U.S. Starfish Prime test was slowed sufficiently by transformers in the streetlight system in Honolulu that it blew several fairly slowly reacting fuses in the Hawaiian streetlight system, although the E1 electric field pulse lasted less than a microsecond. The E3 component of the Starfish Prime EMP had no reported effect on the Hawaiian power grid because the lines were too short.)

After an extremely short pulse of a very high current in a small fuse, you get a phenomenon known as a fatigued fuse, where the straight element of the fuse sags or appears twisted, but is not blown.
The radar and the radios that were damaged in Test 184 were probably all vacuum tube equipment. Other than small consumer transistor radios (which were usually made in Japan during this time and used germanium transistors), the only solid-state devices that were commonly used in 1962 were selenium rectifiers in radio power supplies. The Soviet Union always had difficulty in manufacturing silicon solid-state devices due to their inability to achieve sufficiently accurate temperature control during the fabrication process. Even today, Russia is the leading country in the manufacture of vacuum tubes, with Svetlana tubes of St. Petersburg, Russia claiming to be the largest manufacturer of vacuum tubes in the world.

Although vacuum tubes are highly resistant to EMP damage, many other components in radio and radar equipment using vacuum tubes can be damaged by EMP.
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Post by SquidInk » 05-16-2012 12:54 PM

Dale O Sea wrote: Saved by the ionosphere - again? And I guess all those initial qualms we had about nukes blowing the atmosphere off of the planet had been dismissed..?

1962..JFK signed off on this - if he was told. Tests like this would make the Russians and Cubans take note. Talk about a shot across the bow..across the globe, more like.


I agree, Dale. Shots across the bow.

It is extraordinary that just after discovering the Van Allen belt, we sought to try and weaponize it by blowing off Atomic bombs - not really knowing the outcome. I guess that's how we learn, but these scientists were not just curious - they had every intention of creating a viscous weapon. In fact, all of this sounds to me like groundwork for what became HAARP.

I could be wrong.
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Post by earthist » 05-16-2012 06:28 PM

SquidInk wrote: I guess that's how we learn, but these scientists were not just curious - they had every intention of creating a viscous weapon. In fact, all of this sounds to me like groundwork for what became HAARP.

I could be wrong.

I'm sure you're not wrong -- sad to say. An educated "Arrogant Asshole" (aka scientist) is still an "Arrogant Asshole." Is this the difference between intelligence and wisdom?

If I believed in that kind of God, I'd pray, "Dear Lord, give us wisdom." As it is, I just have to shudder.
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Post by SquidInk » 05-17-2012 08:55 AM

earthist wrote: Is this the difference between intelligence and wisdom?


Probably, earthist. I think 'intelligence' has yet to be proven as an effective survival strategy.

Related: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012 ... 62/100296/

Also related: showthread.php?threadid=46045

Possibly related: http://www.slate.com/articles/technolog ... pon.2.html
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Post by SquidInk » 05-18-2012 09:32 AM

http://www.stimson.org/summaries/how-no ... in-space-/
At least six satellites were victimized by STARFISH PRIME: the British Ariel I, the U.S. Traac, Transit 4B, Injun I, Telstar I, and the Soviet Kosmos 5. The most famous victim of STARFISH PRIME's electromagnetic pulse effects was Telstar, which enabled the transmission of images across the Atlantic, just as the British music invasion of the US airwaves was building. Before the Beatles scored their first number-one hit and transfixed viewers on the Ed Sullivan Show, another British band, The Tornados, topped the US charts with Telstar, an instrumental inspired by the satellite. Telstar was dying from nuclear effects while it was #1 on the Hit Parade.
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Post by SquidInk » 07-18-2012 06:37 PM

On July 19, 1957, five men stood at Ground Zero of an atomic test that was being conducted at the Nevada Test Site. This was the test of a 2KT (kiloton) MB-1 nuclear air-to-air rocket launched from an F-89 Scorpion interceptor. The nuclear missile detonated 10,000 ft above their heads.

A reel-to-reel tape recorder was present to record their experience. You can see and hear the men react to the shock wave moments after the detonation.

The placard reading "Ground Zero; Population Five" was made by Colonel Arthur B. "Barney" Oldfield, the Public Information Officer for the Continental Air Defense Command in Colorado Spring who arranged for the volunteers to participate.

The five volunteers were:
Colonel Sidney Bruce
Lt. Colonel Frank P. Ball (technical advisor to the Steve Canyon tv show)
Major Norman "Bodie" Bodinger
Major John Hughes
Don Lutrel

and George Yo****ake, the cameraman (who wasn't a volunteer)

Wow.

~1:20 - "The mounds are vibrating! It worked! It worked!'"

What worked? Any body else get chills watching this?

Related: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/scien ... wanted=all
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Post by SquidInk » 07-18-2012 06:44 PM

The atomic canon, 1953...

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Post by Fan » 07-19-2012 05:51 PM

SquidInk wrote:
Wow.

~1:20 - "The mounds are vibrating! It worked! It worked!'"

What worked? Any body else get chills watching this?

Related: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/scien ... wanted=all


I wonder if they suffered any ill effect? This is a crazy video, and the people testing this stuff are crazy too.

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Post by SquidInk » 07-20-2012 08:39 AM

Fan wrote: I wonder if they suffered any ill effect? This is a crazy video, and the people testing this stuff are crazy too.
  • Col. Sidney C. Bruce — died in 2005 (age 86)
  • Lt. Col. Frank P. Ball — died in 2003 (age 83)
  • Maj. John Hughes — very common name, but I'm guessing he is Maj. John W. Hughes II (born 1919, same as the above) — died in 1990 (age 71)
  • Maj. Norman Bodinger — unclear (not listed in the database), he may still be alive?
  • Don Lutrel — I think this is a misspelling of "Luttrell." There is a Donald D. Luttrell in the DVA database, US Army CPL, born 1924, died 1987 (age 63). Seems like a possibility.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/ ... clear-bomb
"It was a publicity stunt to show the American public how safe it was during an atomic bomb," Yo****ake says, "and if there was a war or something, with atomic bombs going off, that it was going to be safe for the general public."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162- ... clear-test

The video at this link says Luttrel survives.
Yo****ake also filmed a lot of other nuclear testing in the '50s and '60s. He's still going strong at 83.

He says that, at the time, he "just thought it was another job; didn't give it too much thought. But then again, I was young."

Only one of other five men, Don Lutrel, is still alive. He's 88.

He told us that all six people who were there that day have had cancer, but there's no definite link to that day.

Yo****ake says he has no regrets about taking part in the test.
[edit: LOL - Yo'merde'ake then!]
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Post by Fan » 07-20-2012 08:43 AM

sooo... nukes not quite as bad as we may have thought? :)

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