Re: [Phys-l] Machining Tolerances (was Another uncertainties question...)

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@mindspring.com>]

At 14:08  -0800 1/26/08, Bernard Cleyet wrote:
> The important point was, did Fuchs know of the Trinity success -- that
> would, I'd think, ramp up Joe's effort, especially if Trinity was light
> enuf to aeroplane carry.

Yes. He was a witness to Trinity. He sent a report back to Moscow 
about it, but they didn't get it until after Potsdam. My comment was 
based on the speculation of what Stalin would have done if Trinity 
was postponed, or cancelled altogether. this could have happened if 
one or more of the glitch's that happened on the day before the test 
had proved to be serious--the possible machining mismatch, the 
failure of a test of the detonation mechanism the day before Trinity, 
and a couple of others.

> Interesting you point out Joe needed to know if it worked.  My mother
> back in the early fifties often said that was the only secret.  Sort of
> like the cat, yes?
That was Szilard's main point in his opposition to Trinity. He said 
that if the test was never done, then Stalin wouldn't know if the 
bomb would work or not, and would not have been willing to devote the 
huge resources necessary to such a project, given the debilitated 
state of the USSR at the end of the war, based only of speculation.

Your mother was right. If Trinity had never happened, that would have 
been the only secret, and neither side would have known the answer.

However, I'm convinced that the bomb would have been built and tested 
eventually, under the pressures of the cold war, so eventually the 
nuclear race would have been on. The difference is that, with a bit 
more leisure to look at things, they may well have built better bombs 
initially--maybe 100-200 kT--and it is more likely that they would 
have been used, and it is also possible that the USSR would have 
continued their project, to parallel ours, in which case they might 
well have been in a position to retaliate if we had used them first, 
say in Korea, and the devastation would have been even worse than 
what happened in Japan.

So in a perverse way, the world may be a bit better off that we used 
them when we did. they haven't been used in anger since, and if both 
sides had had them when they were first used, I doubt anyone would 
have shown any such restraint.

Of course, the people who have died as a result of all the testing 
and other activities involved in nuclear weapons work is probably 
more than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and ironically, most of 
those victims were citizens of the nations who did the building and 
testing, rather than their adversaries.

It seems to me that nukes have been a major lose-lose proposition for 
all sides. No matter how the history went or could have gone,

Hugh
--

************************************************************
Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Hard work often pays off after time. But Laziness always pays off now.

			February tagline on 2007 Demotivator's Calendar