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How Stuff Works

by on September 24, 2008 in Tech

ICBM edition! Patiently ignore the wishy-washy fake production company crap at the beginning, the actual video and animation are way interesting. This is 1960s technology, by the way. Amazing how effectively it still works.

Comments (6)

Comments

  1. Brent says:
    September 24, 2008 at 5:05 pm

    Oh yeah. It’s nice to see a visualization of what I had to learn from text and line diagrams!

    Oh, and I’d have to say it’s sort of ’60s tech. That’s a Minuteman III with at least an upgraded booster and single warhead mod. It’s more like that ’60s vehicle you’ve been tinkering with and upgrading ever since…better wheels and tires, new motor with EFI, etc…

  2. Jonathen Wrainwright says:
    September 24, 2008 at 5:37 pm

    wowzers!

    I guess I kinda pictured the missile flying to and from its target in one piece, instead of breaking up into stages. Shows what I know.

  3. AnotherOpinion says:
    September 25, 2008 at 6:29 am

    Skip to 1:20 in to avoid the production company intro. Now, I wanted a boom at the end. *Marvin the Martian voice* There’s no Boom. There’s supposed to be a boom.” */MMV* Oh, and I liked all the patches at the end.

  4. Kevin says:
    September 25, 2008 at 10:40 am

    That was neat, but do all ICBMs get down to basically just a warhead like that? I can just imagine the difficulty in anti-missile missile fire having to basically hit a Mach-whatever lawn dart like that. I’ve heard it described as hitting a bullet with a bullet but that really brings it home. It also helps explain why they’re researching the airborne laser to nail them in boost. Much bigger and combustible target there.

  5. PirateParrot says:
    September 25, 2008 at 4:28 pm

    They don’t all get down to just a warhead like that. Some of them have multiple warheads, warhead decoys, etc. Hitting it in boost phase means a bigger, slower, more combustible target, and there’s only one of them.

  6. Curt says:
    September 26, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    The Peacekeepers’ Cold launch (The whole thing was kicked out of the silo via compressed gas, and then lighted off in mid air after falling back for a good five to ten feet) is a lot more impressive.

    The minuteman is a heck of a weapons system.