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

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

We're getting there already:

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18948081

is diazidotetrazine, C2N10. 'A satisfactory detonation performance, with detonation velocity D of 8.45 km·s-1 and detonation pressure P of 31.3 GPa, both of which are higher than those of TNT and HMX counterparts'

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The holy grail of explosives is something like N₆₀ -- a buckyball, only made out of nitrogen rather than carbon.

Ludicrously unstable, needless to say.

AIUI, the current research centres on taking fullerene tubules and stuffing polymeric nitrogen chains down them, using the delocalized electron clouds lining the tubules to stabilize the polynitrogen: snip the end off the tube so the nitrogen spills out and it will disintegrate rather rapidly.

[sub-musashi.livejournal.com]

Only explanation: you invent a time machine and go back to tell Doc Smith, thus creating a stable time loop.

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

*chortle* Just wonderful.

[hallerlake.livejournal.com]

Now when they manage to build duodec, then we're really in for it. ;-)

[rugor.livejournal.com]

That the First Historian was first is merely a matter of academic interest as the information would already be contained in the visualization of any mind of merely moderate power.

He, not William Shatner, invented everything.

[julesjones]

Squee!

I now feel a strange urge to go and see if any of my Doc Smith books are currently Not In Storage.

[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.

[cateagle.livejournal.com]

Chalk another one up for Doc!! I had to chuckle in 1982 when I was read into the B-2 program, 'cause so much of what was being done was right inline with the "indetectable speedster" of Gray Lensman. Considering that Doc was a chemical engineer, his ability to anticipate this kind of thing is a tad less surprising. What's interesting is to read Heinlein's appreciation of Doc, epsecially where he takes Heinlein through the steps to convince him that the plot of "Spacehounds" was plausible and that Doc could do that bit of bootstrap technological development. Considering that Heinlein had engineering training, too, that's impressive (then again, I'm an engineer, too, and might be susceptible to that line of reasoning ;)).