10 ms·

A DIY Cruise Missile (2004)

173 points by bgun 8y ago

kwhitefoot 8y ago
Does viewing this link make one a criminal under the UK's new legislation on viewing material likely to be of help to a terrorist? Anyway the page has disappeared but can be seen on the Wayback Machine. The page itself seems not to contain any information that would fall under that legislation but perhaps some of the links it contains might. As it is in the Wayback Machine and that is mirrored I wonder if the mere existence of the mirror would be enough to expose the hosting entity to a risk under the UK legislation.
- dcplogic 8y ago
  I guess it's likely to be of help to a terrorist the same way https://www.khanacademy.org/math https://www.khanacademy.org/math is.
- Tepix 8y ago
  "viewing material likely to be of help to a terrorist" - seriously? That would apply to a guide on how to browse the web and use Google, wouldn't it?
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    That's why overly broad laws are a terrible idea. This and it's ilk are basically "because we don't like your face" catch-all's. Sadly the UK is good at those to whit - The Anti-Social Behaviour Order (defunct but lastesd from 98 to 2015) which made previously criminal behavior a civil matter. We are a curiously illiberal liberal democracy.
  - youzicha 8y ago
    Or a gym training plan, since terrorists don't want to be overweight! https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/166323190559/documents-banned-by-section-58-of-the-terrorism https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/166323190559/documents-bann...
- DanBC 8y ago
  > Does viewing this link make one a criminal under the UK's new legislation on viewing material likely to be of help to a terrorist? 1) No 2) It's not new law. The law is from 2000. You can diff these two for the new bits original: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58/enacted https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58/enac... new: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58 3) Stop reading the shitty fucking register, because it's misleading you.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - benj111 8y ago
    "makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" Instructions on how to build a cruise missile would seem to fall under that. So do you have a slightly more helpful answer. Whether it is from 2000 or 2019, seems irrelevant.
    - RIMR 8y ago
      Find me the instructions. This mostly seems like a website about a project - not how to recreate it.
      - blotter_paper 8y ago
        That seems to be by design: >Obviously the goal of this website is not to provide terrorists or other nefarious types with the plans for a working cruise missile but to prove the point that nations need to be prepared for this type of sophisticated attack from within their own borders. >A detailed level of documentation will be provided to those who qualify and are willing to pay a small subscription for full access to the project diary.
        martin_a 8y ago
        > pay a small subscription for full access to the project diary Recurring payments do not work well with suicide bombers and alike. You've got to be careful with this.
- 0db532a0 8y ago
  The page worked for me in the UK.
Tepix 8y ago
Bruce Simpson is awesome. He still has his website. Check out his work on the pulse jet engine at http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/ http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/
- fest 8y ago
  He is also running a successful YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/rcmodelreviews https://youtube.com/rcmodelreviews
ChuckMcM 8y ago
Fun stuff. There is an apocryphal story of an event at the annual Blackrock Amateur Rocketry fly off where the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms either confiscated (one version) or denied use of (another variation) a rocket that had been steerable fins and was designed to use orientation with the Sun as a means to keep it going straight up. The story goes that once a rocket can track a heat source and fly based on that track it becomes a "munition" and is no longer just a rocket. That said, the information that you can make sophisticated weapons with off the shelf parts is not new nor necessarily rare. Everything from guns to armored machine gun platforms, drone bombers, to drone like cruise missiles seem to have not only been built but fielded in recent battles. It's hard to imagine that anyone can keep this sort of information "secret" by hitting individual web sites with cease and desist orders.
- Ritsuko_akagi 8y ago
  a gun is a sophisticated weapon? I though you could make one with a metal pipe, nail and springs; provided you have access to cartridges. could be wrong though.
  - bronco21016 8y ago
    Not only is a simple gun, as you describe, able to be readily and easily made but, one can also make a sophisticated gun (AR style) through 3D printing or even using a relatively inexpensive CNC.
    - Rebelgecko 8y ago
      You can even build an AR-15 without a CNC machine. It's doable with a hand drill, although will look nicer and may function better if you use a drill press or router. There's a video on youtube of a guy that made an AR-15 out of beer cans, although he had some blacksmithing equipment if I remember correctly.
      - anth_anm 8y ago
        saw a guy who made one out of old casings. Really cool. He had a milling machine though.
djsumdog 8y ago
Side note, I always found it funny that one of the symbols for the Royal New Zealand Air Force is the British symbol (composed of concentric circles) with a Kiwi in the middle. The symbol for their air force literally has a flightless bird on it!
- andromeduck 8y ago
  But kangaroos and maple leafs can't fly either...
- peteretep 8y ago
  That’s beautiful irony, although the concentric circles is far from a British-only symbol
  - samatman 8y ago
    The symbol (and indeed, the air force itself) is directly descended from the RAF. I’m not sure what your point was, but GP’s was quite clear.
    - peteretep 8y ago
      > The symbol ... is directly descended from the RAF Aircraft roundels originated with the French Tricolore cockade. Concentric circles are used in many many country's roundels, and are far from anything particularly British.
      - samatman 8y ago
        Yes and the Kiwi roundel is directly descended from the British RAF symbol. Which you can distinguish from all other roundels, by definition, or they wouldn't be useful things to have!
      - samatman 8y ago
        I think perhaps your mistake was thinking that the description given was meant to be exhaustive? It's as if I said "The American flag (composed of stripes and a blue corner)" and you were to say "wait, that's not exclusively American" Yes but, so what?
Hasz 8y ago
Turns out off the shelf GPS modules are good to 50,000m and 500m/s. https://www.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/MAX-8_DataSheet_%28UBX-16000093%29.pdf https://www.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/MAX-8_DataSheet_%... Only downside is you're limited to 4g, but that's not the end of the world. Low update rate, but workaround-able with a IMU. A simple micro, accelerometer, gyro, and you're in business. Pulse jets can get stupid cheap -- there's not much more to them than sheet metal. Frame is easy enough to fabricate -- Fusion360 will even simulate your aerodynamics for you. This thing could be built for waaaay less than $5k; Probably buildable for < $1500, depending on what kind of explosives you load into it -- I have no idea how much those are. It's also well within the range of a hobbyist. Any sort of organized group should have no problem, assuming they can round up an electrical engineer and a machinist.
- bsder 8y ago
  > Any sort of organized group should have no problem, assuming they can round up an electrical engineer and a machinist. Thankfully most competent machinists and electrical engineers can find more profitable things to build. I've said repeatedly, our best defense against terrorism is the fact that terrorists are dumb. It's why good, old fashioned, people intensive police work is far more effective than high tech solutions.
  - danielvf 8y ago
    I agree that most terrorists are dumb - in fact, I wrote a draft post on how I think it came to be that way: http://braino.org/essays/the_rise_of_the_stupid_terrorist/ http://braino.org/essays/the_rise_of_the_stupid_terrorist/
    - Animats 8y ago
      That's funny. Clean it up and submit it to Parameters.
  - jonathankoren 8y ago
    You're right, but I also think about how the Zetas had (have?) a habit of kidnapping engineers to build and maintain their radio network. https://www.wired.com/2012/11/zeta-radio/ https://www.wired.com/2012/11/zeta-radio/
fmajid 8y ago
I don't know about cruise missiles but ISIS has modified commercial off-the-shelf drones to deliver bombs. 3 French Special Forces soldiers were killed in one such attack during the battle of Mosul.
segfaultbuserr 8y ago
I always wonder, is it really possible for a free civilization with sufficiently advanced technology to survive and sustain? Due to development of the contemporary industry, many types of technology, previously only available to major corporations and governments, can now be purchased off-the-shelf for personal use. The very development of personal computing and the Internet is a manifestation of this. In the early 1960s, computers used to be seen as giant, enormous, oppressive machines used by faceless corporations and governments to produce national statistics, design nuclear weapons, or perform top-secret cryptographic communications. On the other hand, our pioneers of personal computing have identified, that once the power of computers is available to everyone, to "we the people", it may become a powerful anti-authoritarian tool, something we've never seen in the human history. This is the original meaning behind the famous 1984 advertisement by Apple. And we've been following the same path of liberties and decentralization down the road in the next 30 years. Although today, especially since after 2013/2016, computers and the Internet has somewhat restored its "oppressive" public image, Apple and Google becomes the new IBM, etc, but it's clear that the essence of the technology is still largely neutral, and we have many development in the decentralized, pro-freedom world. The advent of free and open source software has mostly guaranteed that individuals could has the freedom to use the computer for any purpose. The discovery the public-key cryptography can protect personal communication against the most powerful nation-state on Earth, and in principle, allowing the construction of an anonymous communication system, which is believed by many as a mean to eliminate the state, partially or fully. Recently, the proliferation of dirt-cheap electronics potentially allows a hardware hacker to manufacture semiconductors, electronic equipment, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing toolkit, handguns, or missiles in his/her backyard. Most hackers see this aspect of technology as a force of liberation. If some people, somehow, eventually managed to create a stateless world in virtual reality, it would be impressive but not surprising. The question is, what about malicious actors? Many things a hacker would do can be classified as illegal activities, but his/her intend is not malicious, just a different ideology. But there are truly malicious actors in all civilizations. The damage that can be done by a malicious actor in a free world, is proportional to the level of (decentralized) technological development. And they can be something more harmful than individuals - rogue nation-state, organized terrorism, etc. WMDs can be created in days, not years. And you absolutely cannot ban the technology, for example, cryptography, because it's needed for a free society. So, the eventual outcome is either, (A) The civilization is destroyed by a few malicious actors. (B) The civilization becomes a dictatorship, possibly driven by mass surveillance, where most individual liberties are abandoned, we either have 1984, The Matrix, or Black Mirror. (C) Neo-Luddism, where technology is abolished. Or a combination of (B) and (C), found in many Science Fictions. Is that the eventually doomsday of a free technological civilization? Do we the technologists still have hopes? For example... (D) Due to space colonization, any malicious use of technology can only have localized effects, allows many free civilizations to survive? (E) Due to mind-uploading, nobody bothers to mess with the physical world? Did I miss something?
blaze33 8y ago
Coming soon: Cruise Missile As A Service. Our on-demand global network of 3d printers quickly and reliably fulfills all your strike requests. Comprehensive plans with a predictable kiloton/strike billing. Bitcoin accepted. Our activities are carbon-compensated to preserve the environment. /s (I hope)
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  And of course, in a true SV fashion, at least initially most of the strike orders will be fulfilled by employees sneaking up to the target with homemade explosives. You have to hustle, fake it 'till you make it & stuffs. /s (if your's /s).
- DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
  Remember those "twitch plays X" streams? How about "Twitch fires cruise-missiles" next? Just hook up the twitch chat to your missile API and get that sweet internet fame. /s (I really REALLY hope)
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    This would make for a great Rick&Morty episode, though :).
atemerev 8y ago
I quite understand the motivation behind the project — this is absolutely great. However, open publication of all details can create all sort of problems, including those he described. If you want to be a weapons designer (and why not?), your best bet is probably working for the government. The second best option is to limit information distribution to other hobbyists / professionals.
solidsnack9000 8y ago
Seems like the project was ultimately not completed: http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/diary.shtml http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/diary.shtml
bArray 8y ago
This project is awesome regardless of it being a weapon. Trying to prevent information from getting out there is ridiculous - if somebody wants to kill lots of people they will find a way irrespective of actions taken to prevent it. The safe guard here is: (1) there is a reasonable level of engineering competence required, (2) a resource barrier (time and money), (3) building something like this is quite obvious and (4) most people don't want to hurt people.
akimball 8y ago
Given Pu, a gun type nuke is basically banging two rocks together. Given DU, Pu is just hitting it with fast neutrons and chemically separating. Given marginally free hydropower, fast neutrons are a homebrew fusor and a light switch away. DU and hydro turbines are cheap. A hobbyist with patience can build a lowtech fission bomb. Carfentanil can be manufactured by the billions of lethal doses - or scaled to trillions, with a HELOC. Virosynthesis isn't a hobbyist endeavor yet but soon will be. The only reason we aren't all dead is lack of incentive. Of course a sufficiently bad government can change the incentive structure overnight.
triplesec 8y ago
This is probably the best book on how the professionals had fun building rockets back in the day. It's a gread read, and full of useful practical chemical engineering advice and cautionary tales. You might find PDFs, but you can also buy it here: https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-University-Classics/dp/0813595835 https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-Univers...
- richardhod 8y ago
  Some quotes here give insight into the fun and dangers involved. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/663284-ignition-an-informal-history-of-liquid-rocket-propellants https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/663284-ignition-an-inf... '“It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.” ' I think I learned about the book from this blog, or a HN post of it,and it is both fun and expertly informed. http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi...

173 points by bgun 8y ago

Does viewing this link make one a criminal under the UK's new legislation on viewing material likely to be of help to a terrorist? Anyway the page has disappeared but can be seen on the Wayback Machine. The page itself seems not to contain any information that would fall under that legislation but perhaps some of the links it contains might. As it is in the Wayback Machine and that is mirrored I wonder if the mere existence of the mirror would be enough to expose the hosting entity to a risk under the UK legislation.

dcplogic 8y ago
I guess it's likely to be of help to a terrorist the same way https://www.khanacademy.org/math https://www.khanacademy.org/math is.
Tepix 8y ago
"viewing material likely to be of help to a terrorist" - seriously? That would apply to a guide on how to browse the web and use Google, wouldn't it?
- noir_lord 8y ago
  That's why overly broad laws are a terrible idea. This and it's ilk are basically "because we don't like your face" catch-all's. Sadly the UK is good at those to whit - The Anti-Social Behaviour Order (defunct but lastesd from 98 to 2015) which made previously criminal behavior a civil matter. We are a curiously illiberal liberal democracy.
- youzicha 8y ago
  Or a gym training plan, since terrorists don't want to be overweight! https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/166323190559/documents-banned-by-section-58-of-the-terrorism https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/166323190559/documents-bann...
DanBC 8y ago
> Does viewing this link make one a criminal under the UK's new legislation on viewing material likely to be of help to a terrorist? 1) No 2) It's not new law. The law is from 2000. You can diff these two for the new bits original: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58/enacted https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58/enac... new: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58 3) Stop reading the shitty fucking register, because it's misleading you.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- benj111 8y ago
  "makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" Instructions on how to build a cruise missile would seem to fall under that. So do you have a slightly more helpful answer. Whether it is from 2000 or 2019, seems irrelevant.
  - RIMR 8y ago
    Find me the instructions. This mostly seems like a website about a project - not how to recreate it.
    - blotter_paper 8y ago
      That seems to be by design: >Obviously the goal of this website is not to provide terrorists or other nefarious types with the plans for a working cruise missile but to prove the point that nations need to be prepared for this type of sophisticated attack from within their own borders. >A detailed level of documentation will be provided to those who qualify and are willing to pay a small subscription for full access to the project diary.
      - martin_a 8y ago
        > pay a small subscription for full access to the project diary Recurring payments do not work well with suicide bombers and alike. You've got to be careful with this.
0db532a0 8y ago
The page worked for me in the UK.

Tepix 8y ago

Bruce Simpson is awesome. He still has his website. Check out his work on the pulse jet engine at http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/ http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/

fest 8y ago
He is also running a successful YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/rcmodelreviews https://youtube.com/rcmodelreviews

ChuckMcM 8y ago

Fun stuff. There is an apocryphal story of an event at the annual Blackrock Amateur Rocketry fly off where the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms either confiscated (one version) or denied use of (another variation) a rocket that had been steerable fins and was designed to use orientation with the Sun as a means to keep it going straight up. The story goes that once a rocket can track a heat source and fly based on that track it becomes a "munition" and is no longer just a rocket. That said, the information that you can make sophisticated weapons with off the shelf parts is not new nor necessarily rare. Everything from guns to armored machine gun platforms, drone bombers, to drone like cruise missiles seem to have not only been built but fielded in recent battles. It's hard to imagine that anyone can keep this sort of information "secret" by hitting individual web sites with cease and desist orders.

Ritsuko_akagi 8y ago
a gun is a sophisticated weapon? I though you could make one with a metal pipe, nail and springs; provided you have access to cartridges. could be wrong though.
- bronco21016 8y ago
  Not only is a simple gun, as you describe, able to be readily and easily made but, one can also make a sophisticated gun (AR style) through 3D printing or even using a relatively inexpensive CNC.
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    You can even build an AR-15 without a CNC machine. It's doable with a hand drill, although will look nicer and may function better if you use a drill press or router. There's a video on youtube of a guy that made an AR-15 out of beer cans, although he had some blacksmithing equipment if I remember correctly.
    - anth_anm 8y ago
      saw a guy who made one out of old casings. Really cool. He had a milling machine though.

djsumdog 8y ago

Side note, I always found it funny that one of the symbols for the Royal New Zealand Air Force is the British symbol (composed of concentric circles) with a Kiwi in the middle. The symbol for their air force literally has a flightless bird on it!

andromeduck 8y ago
But kangaroos and maple leafs can't fly either...
peteretep 8y ago
That’s beautiful irony, although the concentric circles is far from a British-only symbol
- samatman 8y ago
  The symbol (and indeed, the air force itself) is directly descended from the RAF. I’m not sure what your point was, but GP’s was quite clear.
  - peteretep 8y ago
    > The symbol ... is directly descended from the RAF Aircraft roundels originated with the French Tricolore cockade. Concentric circles are used in many many country's roundels, and are far from anything particularly British.
    - samatman 8y ago
      Yes and the Kiwi roundel is directly descended from the British RAF symbol. Which you can distinguish from all other roundels, by definition, or they wouldn't be useful things to have!
    - samatman 8y ago
      I think perhaps your mistake was thinking that the description given was meant to be exhaustive? It's as if I said "The American flag (composed of stripes and a blue corner)" and you were to say "wait, that's not exclusively American" Yes but, so what?

Hasz 8y ago

Turns out off the shelf GPS modules are good to 50,000m and 500m/s. https://www.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/MAX-8_DataSheet_%28UBX-16000093%29.pdf https://www.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/MAX-8_DataSheet_%... Only downside is you're limited to 4g, but that's not the end of the world. Low update rate, but workaround-able with a IMU. A simple micro, accelerometer, gyro, and you're in business. Pulse jets can get stupid cheap -- there's not much more to them than sheet metal. Frame is easy enough to fabricate -- Fusion360 will even simulate your aerodynamics for you. This thing could be built for waaaay less than $5k; Probably buildable for < $1500, depending on what kind of explosives you load into it -- I have no idea how much those are. It's also well within the range of a hobbyist. Any sort of organized group should have no problem, assuming they can round up an electrical engineer and a machinist.

bsder 8y ago
> Any sort of organized group should have no problem, assuming they can round up an electrical engineer and a machinist. Thankfully most competent machinists and electrical engineers can find more profitable things to build. I've said repeatedly, our best defense against terrorism is the fact that terrorists are dumb. It's why good, old fashioned, people intensive police work is far more effective than high tech solutions.
- danielvf 8y ago
  I agree that most terrorists are dumb - in fact, I wrote a draft post on how I think it came to be that way: http://braino.org/essays/the_rise_of_the_stupid_terrorist/ http://braino.org/essays/the_rise_of_the_stupid_terrorist/
  - Animats 8y ago
    That's funny. Clean it up and submit it to Parameters.
- jonathankoren 8y ago
  You're right, but I also think about how the Zetas had (have?) a habit of kidnapping engineers to build and maintain their radio network. https://www.wired.com/2012/11/zeta-radio/ https://www.wired.com/2012/11/zeta-radio/

fmajid 8y ago

I don't know about cruise missiles but ISIS has modified commercial off-the-shelf drones to deliver bombs. 3 French Special Forces soldiers were killed in one such attack during the battle of Mosul.

segfaultbuserr 8y ago

I always wonder, is it really possible for a free civilization with sufficiently advanced technology to survive and sustain? Due to development of the contemporary industry, many types of technology, previously only available to major corporations and governments, can now be purchased off-the-shelf for personal use. The very development of personal computing and the Internet is a manifestation of this. In the early 1960s, computers used to be seen as giant, enormous, oppressive machines used by faceless corporations and governments to produce national statistics, design nuclear weapons, or perform top-secret cryptographic communications. On the other hand, our pioneers of personal computing have identified, that once the power of computers is available to everyone, to "we the people", it may become a powerful anti-authoritarian tool, something we've never seen in the human history. This is the original meaning behind the famous 1984 advertisement by Apple. And we've been following the same path of liberties and decentralization down the road in the next 30 years. Although today, especially since after 2013/2016, computers and the Internet has somewhat restored its "oppressive" public image, Apple and Google becomes the new IBM, etc, but it's clear that the essence of the technology is still largely neutral, and we have many development in the decentralized, pro-freedom world. The advent of free and open source software has mostly guaranteed that individuals could has the freedom to use the computer for any purpose. The discovery the public-key cryptography can protect personal communication against the most powerful nation-state on Earth, and in principle, allowing the construction of an anonymous communication system, which is believed by many as a mean to eliminate the state, partially or fully. Recently, the proliferation of dirt-cheap electronics potentially allows a hardware hacker to manufacture semiconductors, electronic equipment, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing toolkit, handguns, or missiles in his/her backyard. Most hackers see this aspect of technology as a force of liberation. If some people, somehow, eventually managed to create a stateless world in virtual reality, it would be impressive but not surprising. The question is, what about malicious actors? Many things a hacker would do can be classified as illegal activities, but his/her intend is not malicious, just a different ideology. But there are truly malicious actors in all civilizations. The damage that can be done by a malicious actor in a free world, is proportional to the level of (decentralized) technological development. And they can be something more harmful than individuals - rogue nation-state, organized terrorism, etc. WMDs can be created in days, not years. And you absolutely cannot ban the technology, for example, cryptography, because it's needed for a free society. So, the eventual outcome is either, (A) The civilization is destroyed by a few malicious actors. (B) The civilization becomes a dictatorship, possibly driven by mass surveillance, where most individual liberties are abandoned, we either have 1984, The Matrix, or Black Mirror. (C) Neo-Luddism, where technology is abolished. Or a combination of (B) and (C), found in many Science Fictions. Is that the eventually doomsday of a free technological civilization? Do we the technologists still have hopes? For example... (D) Due to space colonization, any malicious use of technology can only have localized effects, allows many free civilizations to survive? (E) Due to mind-uploading, nobody bothers to mess with the physical world? Did I miss something?

blaze33 8y ago

Coming soon: Cruise Missile As A Service. Our on-demand global network of 3d printers quickly and reliably fulfills all your strike requests. Comprehensive plans with a predictable kiloton/strike billing. Bitcoin accepted. Our activities are carbon-compensated to preserve the environment. /s (I hope)

TeMPOraL 8y ago
And of course, in a true SV fashion, at least initially most of the strike orders will be fulfilled by employees sneaking up to the target with homemade explosives. You have to hustle, fake it 'till you make it & stuffs. /s (if your's /s).
DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
Remember those "twitch plays X" streams? How about "Twitch fires cruise-missiles" next? Just hook up the twitch chat to your missile API and get that sweet internet fame. /s (I really REALLY hope)
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  This would make for a great Rick&Morty episode, though :).

atemerev 8y ago

I quite understand the motivation behind the project — this is absolutely great. However, open publication of all details can create all sort of problems, including those he described. If you want to be a weapons designer (and why not?), your best bet is probably working for the government. The second best option is to limit information distribution to other hobbyists / professionals.

solidsnack9000 8y ago

Seems like the project was ultimately not completed: http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/diary.shtml http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/diary.shtml

bArray 8y ago

This project is awesome regardless of it being a weapon. Trying to prevent information from getting out there is ridiculous - if somebody wants to kill lots of people they will find a way irrespective of actions taken to prevent it. The safe guard here is: (1) there is a reasonable level of engineering competence required, (2) a resource barrier (time and money), (3) building something like this is quite obvious and (4) most people don't want to hurt people.

akimball 8y ago

Given Pu, a gun type nuke is basically banging two rocks together. Given DU, Pu is just hitting it with fast neutrons and chemically separating. Given marginally free hydropower, fast neutrons are a homebrew fusor and a light switch away. DU and hydro turbines are cheap. A hobbyist with patience can build a lowtech fission bomb. Carfentanil can be manufactured by the billions of lethal doses - or scaled to trillions, with a HELOC. Virosynthesis isn't a hobbyist endeavor yet but soon will be. The only reason we aren't all dead is lack of incentive. Of course a sufficiently bad government can change the incentive structure overnight.

triplesec 8y ago

This is probably the best book on how the professionals had fun building rockets back in the day. It's a gread read, and full of useful practical chemical engineering advice and cautionary tales. You might find PDFs, but you can also buy it here: https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-University-Classics/dp/0813595835 https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-Univers...

richardhod 8y ago
Some quotes here give insight into the fun and dangers involved. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/663284-ignition-an-informal-history-of-liquid-rocket-propellants https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/663284-ignition-an-inf... '“It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.” ' I think I learned about the book from this blog, or a HN post of it,and it is both fun and expertly informed. http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi...