Doc Smith Lives!

[seawasp]

In going over the current Department of Defense SBIR solicitation, I came across the following:

"A09-027 TITLE: Nanostructured High Performance Energetic Materials "

For the uninitiated, "energetic materials" is current techspeak for "explosives".

And under this topic, the specific energetic nanostructured materials they are interested in?

"stable polymeric nitrogen".

In "Spacehounds of IPC", Doc Smith wrote about an ultimate explosive, "crystallized pentavalent nitrogen", nitrogen bound to itself in a single diamondlike form that was inherently explosive at a tremendous level; today's estimates of the power of this "stable polymeric nitrogen" is that it would be FIVE TIMES more powerful than any conventional explosive in existence today, more than half a century after Doc first wrote of it.

Once more, Doc's there first.

Comments

[kengr]

Thankfully, Campbell goofed on his super-chemistry trick (the catalyst that'd convert an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere to N2O5). If it was actually possible, it'd have been nasty.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Hmm ... yes, I can see how this would be about as much fun as a barrel of Vonnegut's Ice-Nine ...

[kengr]

Well, both together would be "safer" than either apart...

Y'see:

N2O5 + 2 H2O -> 2 HNO3

The stuff was being used as a weapon in a fight between a couple of warring planets in one of Campbell's novels (Possibly "The Mightiest Machine")