Core77

The Fastest Way to Deliver Relief Goods: Decommissioned Nuclear Missiles

By Rain Noe - October 18, 2013

in Social Impact | Cars

Overnight delivery is amazing. The thought that I can finish a drawing here in New York, drop it off at a FedEx office at 5pm and have it show up first thing tomorrow in L.A. is pretty neat.

A far superior delivery system is the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. It takes about five minutes to boost itself into suborbital flight, where it then cruises for less than a half-hour, and then spends just two minutes plummeting down to its target more than 7,000 miles away. And even small ICBMs can carry half a ton of cargo. Of course, since that cargo is usually a nuclear device, we think of ICBMs as deliverers of death.

Huai-Chien "Bill" Chang, a doctoral candidate in Space Architecture at the University of Tokyo, however, has a different idea for what ICBMs could be used for: Long-range disaster relief. Should a natural calamity strike in a region of the globe that's difficult to access, Chang posits, an ICBM somehow modified for a soft landing could be loaded up with supplies, and quickly delivered where it is needed. And with the dearmaments following the end of the Cold War, there's no shortage of mothballed missiles.

"These rocket engines are still functioning. If we could use these engines, the cost would be very much reduced," Chang told science and astronomy enthusiast website SPACE.com, following a recent presentation of his idea at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Space 2013 conference. "I'd like to see something like this happen before the next big disaster hits."

Here's Chang himself explaining the concept at a TEDxTokyo "audition:"

o

Favorite This
Q
4

Comment

Comments

zuuuul

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

he wants the engines it sounds like (haven't watch the TED vid yet). the engines are what enable us to deliver ICBMs around the world in no time at all, and are a closely guarded technology by the handful of countries who've been able to develop these weapon systems. those could be adapted for new vehicles that would better function as aid delivery. basically he's calling for a technology that's been totally squandered on the advancement of warfare to be made available to the people of the world (not the governments of it) to be adapted into something good for once.

the idea of these relief vehicles being re-repurposed back into weapons is kind of ridiculous, too, since it's probably cheaper just to buy an actual black market missile and not modifying it, or to resort to normal terrorist tactics and not blowing a ton of money on something we've been ready for for years, and will leave no question about who fired it.

decommissioning removes the warheads, but leaves us with several thousand missiles (and their sexy engines) that taxpayers would be paying to keep in storage. finding something to do with them not only reduces the cost of keeping them around, it also makes this guarded technology available to the world and advancing the collective technology of man ever so slightly. also he gets points for being probably the only person who's thought of repurposing nuclear missiles into something other than a different kind of weapon, and more importantly something that will actually be doing good for man when it's launched. or at least the only one who knows what he's talking about. this isn't a plan of how to creatively reuse those pesky nukes cluttering up your garage, this is a plan of how to repurpose the single deadliest weapon in human history into something designed to help people across the world, not kill them. it's one of those idealistic, alter the human condition, strengthen the global community, change the freakin' world ideas, that we're supposed to at least consider if there's any chance it can be made into reality.
!Report as spam
Nickolai Belakovski

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

My first thought was that this was pretty crazy as well, but then I thought, if you're only using missiles already built, and not ordering new ones, then maybe this makes sense.

The difference being that you would have to design a capsule that could hold supplies and do a precision landing, and preferably be reusable. This also assumes that the government controlling the missile will provide the missile for free and subsidized operator support.

All in all, there's only so many mothballed missiles, and it would be way cheaper to just load up a cargo plane and send it over.
!Report as spam
slabman

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

At a cost of several million dollars to launch an ICBM, and assuming you could modify it carry one warhead rather than the normal multiple payload, plus the risk of unintentionally starting World War III, that better be half a ton of something you really, really need to get half way around the world in a hurry.
!Report as spam
Tom Mc

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

What kind of unicorn farts and fuzzy clouds world do these people live in?

Maybe after the collapse of our currency Iran will be so kind as to fire one of these mothballed former Soviet missiles at us with "relief supplies" in it. Give me a break.
!Report as spam