🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <drury-070193073338@esrfd.es.dupont.com> drury@esvax.dunet.dupont.com (Robert F. Drury) writes:

	{responding to scenario that vaporizes 200 lb of water when
a rotor fails}

>    Well, I just can't let this one pass...I have to add my $.02 to this
>*interminable* thread.  Would anyone out there care to be in the same car,
>or for that matter within several hundred yards of a car, where 200 lb of
>water had suddenly and very rapidly been converted to superheated steam? 
>This would convert the whole car and occupents (sp?) to a large
>fragmentation grendade.  Just because something is vaporized does not mean
>it is rendered harmless; hot, expanding gases are what do the damage in all
>explosions.  When water is vaporized, it's volume increases ~1000X, so that
>200lb of water(25 gallons) suddenly wants to take up 25,000 gallons; wants
>to *bad*.  If constrained to remain at its original volume, it will be at
>1000 atmospheres, attained within microseconds.  The pressure vessel
>capable of containing this *will* weigh more than a battery pack, or a car.

	There was such a pressurized superheated mass of water here
in Washington, which burst about a decade ago.  The superheated water
was moist dirt, and the containment vessel was Mount St. Helens.
People died five miles away, and forests closer by (half a mile
or so) were converted into toothpick-size splinters.

	The local seismologists valiantly refused to tell reporters the 
energy yield of the explosion in any terms other than SI units.
I converted, though: it was about twenty megatons.

	There's a dome swelling in the caldera; Mount St. Helens
might be back up to its original altitude again some day.

	John Whitmore