Environmentally Friendly Bombs on the Way

It sounds like the worst contradiction in terms: environmentally friendly bombs. And no, it’s not a story from the Onion this time around. Calling something green that’s designed to blow up its surroundings when it hits its target is just – well – dumb. Yet, scientists are working on a bomb that would create less environmental fallout via toxic gases and polluting debris. I guess if we’re going to slaughter people with high impact explosives, we might as well do it in a greener way.

From Yahoo News:

TNT, RDX and other explosives commonly used in military and industrial applications often generate toxic gases upon detonation that pollute the environment. Moreover, the explosives themselves are toxic and can find their way into the environment due to incomplete detonation and as unexploded ordnance. They are also extremely dangerous to handle, as they are highly sensitive to physical shock, such as hard impacts and electric sparks.

To make safer, more environmentally friendly explosives, scientists in Germany turned to a recently explored class of materials called tetrazoles. These derive most of their explosive energy from nitrogen instead of carbon as TNT and others do.

Tiny bombs were made from two promising tetrazoles with the alphabet-soup names of HBT and G2ZT. These materials proved less apt to explode accidentally than conventional explosives.

In initial experiments, G2ZT and HBT produced fewer toxic byproducts than common explosives. Still, they did generate some dangerous hydrogen cyanide gas. But mixing these compounds with oxidizers not only avoids making hydrogen cyanide, but also improved performance, Klapötke said.

While we could just, you know, stop bombing each other, considering that humans can’t seem to stop getting into deadly conflicts, that’s not likely to happen. So, it would certainly be best to try to limit the amount of environmental damage a bomb will do once it’s dropped.

Boom.

Link [Yahoo News]
Photo credit: Flickr user jaqian

Boeing Proves Their Bombs Don’t Just Kill People, They Put Out Fires!

Nobody ever said Boeing engineers aren’t smart. They’ve come up with a way to make C-17s into firefighters that drop collapsible, biodegradable containers of water onto blazes - putting fewer human firefighters into harm’s way. Beach-ball sized ‘water bombs’ are stacked on pallets within cardboard containers.

From Boeing:

The unit’s spherical shape minimizes airflow resistance. Each sphere contains 50 pounds of water and easily remains intact while it falls true to target. The spheres burst on impact at the heart of the fire. A single C-17 PAFF mission could airdrop 140,000 pounds of water on multiple “hot spot” targets-equivalent to nearly 100 helicopter deliveries.

“What’s more,” said Cleary, “the C-17 can airdrop from 1,000 to 2,000 feet above ground level using precision navigation and airdrop instrumentation, remaining safely away from the fire and winds,” he said. “If a C-17 were used, this delivery system is remarkably cost effective, and the savings in lives and property make it an interesting possibility for the Air National Guard.”

This is actually an incredibly cool way to control fires before they reach epic proportions - they get to the fires faster, can drop more water at once, have computer-aided targeting and can put out fires in all weather and all terrain, day and night. Considering that the other bombs Boeing is known for are meant for carnage rather than the good of mankind, we’re offering golf claps for their efforts.

Link [Boeing]

Photo: Flickr user DoctorWho