Old Timey History Lessons with Dok.

[Doktor Howl]

#1:  Operation Plumbbob.

Once upon a time, kiddies, a man named Dr Robert Brownlee, from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, was asked to examine whether nuclear detonations could be conducted underground. I guess it was believed that this would be less polluting, though by then we knew our nukes worked and we were mostly doing it because it made a loud noise.

So in Operation Plumbbob, the bombs were placed in deep boreholes, and a 2000 pound steel manhole cover was placed at the top of the shaft.

The first test, the manhole cover just flat-up disappeared.  The second test, they ran the highest speed camera they could, and they got the steel cover moving in one (1) frame.  They were able to calculate the speed of the manhole cover from that, which came out to 69.5 miles per second.

That's higher than the static escape velocity of the Earth (7 MPS) and in fact of the solar system with a starting point of Earth's orbit. 

This test was conducted 29 times.

So we flung 1 ton manhole covers at random into interstellar space as often as we could.  Which I approve of.  It will give aliens a much clearer view of us than Voyager 1 did.  Specifically, it will tell them to stay the fuck away from us.  We don't want to be friends.  Fuck off. Go home.

[Cramulus]

that's probably how they should launch shit into space from now on

[Doktor Howl]

that's probably how they should launch shit into space from now on

Way back when I was a kid, before fun was invented, we had "cannon crackers", which were just Goddamn huge fire crackers.

You could put one on a wooden chair, light it, and put an upside down, empty coffee can over it.  When it went off, the coffee can would go flying, and there'd be a hole in the seat of the chair that matched the coffee can.

That's what we did when we were kids; we learned about shaped charges because there was literally nothing else to do.

[rong]

kinda wish it was called Operation Plumbbomb

[Brother Flight Risk]

All grand until they gain sentience and return to Earth seeking their Creator mere thousands of years from now, only to be disappointed in their findings.

[chaotic neutral observer]

So we flung 1 ton manhole covers at random into interstellar space as often as we could.  Which I approve of.  It will give aliens a much clearer view of us than Voyager 1 did.  Specifically, it will tell them to stay the fuck away from us.  We don't want to be friends.  Fuck off. Go home.

In one of the Star Trek movies, there was a scene where some Klingons shot up an antique earthling space probe.  Now I wish that scene had been written with a manhole cover smashing through the Klingon bridge, killing the captain and bridge crew, and causing a diplomatic incident.

[Doktor Howl]

So we flung 1 ton manhole covers at random into interstellar space as often as we could.  Which I approve of.  It will give aliens a much clearer view of us than Voyager 1 did.  Specifically, it will tell them to stay the fuck away from us.  We don't want to be friends.  Fuck off. Go home.

In one of the Star Trek movies, there was a scene where some Klingons shot up an antique earthling space probe.  Now I wish that scene had been written with a manhole cover smashing through the Klingon bridge, killing the captain and bridge crew, and causing a diplomatic incident.

"AND DON'T COME BACK."

[Eater of Clowns]

They recreated this experiment with Roger's poomp once and named the resulting hole in reality Tucson.