By popular demand, and because I will, in fact, stoop that low, I give all of you who don’t read the comments a taste of the engineering stylings of monkyboy. I removed some of the spacing in the quotes to save space. All material was taken from the comments to this post.
Those aren’t ICBM’s the Palestinians are firing into Israel. A simple dirt berm would stop them. Where could Israel get enough dirt to build this wall o’ peace? Maybe it could dig a tunnel between Gaza and the West Bank…solving two problems at once!
later
A mile high barrier around Gaza ought to protect cities like Sderot from anything fired from Gaza, nichevo. Those Qassams look pretty flimsy…a simple reinforced chain-link fence would probably destroy them on inpact….then just replace the panel the rocket hit. Alternately, a net or grid could be suspended from helium ballons, so the barrier could be easily lowered in times of “peace.†It’s kinda old tech, but those rockets are over 70 years old, too.
See the barrage ballons England used to defend London during the blitz to get an idea about what I’m talking about.
Alrighty, then. Maggie (the person who requested this post, though she wanted Dan to do it) then said:
oooooh, blimps!
That made me laugh.
He’s not finished:
If you doubt the physics of my plan Rusty, I’d welcome some suggestions. Helium balloons can provide a tremendous amount of cheap lift. If you borrow a page from the internet and construct the barrier out of panels that have their own lift…there is no limit to the size you could make it…
A rail line along the Gaza border would make the barrier easy to transport on flat cars. I don’t see any physics problems. Done properly (multiple layers, etc.), it could even stop Iranian warheads…
Commentor nichevo gave a long explanation of why this will not work, with some nice calculations. I will only quote from the end:
In short, what you propose really can’t be done without, say, several lamps with extremely ambitious genies. And if it were, unless you kept the genies on retainer, the Pals could just blow it up again.
and monkyboy’s reply
So, you agree it could be done, the only drawback being the shadow the balloons would cast? I think most people would swap a little shadow to be free of the threat of rockets. Think instead of millions of smaller balloons. There would be some shadow, but no place would the sun be blocked completely.
Wow. You cannot make this stuff up. If you’re interested, you should go over to the post and read it all yourself. And yes, I should be chastised for giving him more space, but too many people seem to have missed out on the fun.
That was choice, wasn’t it? <sigh>
Now where’s that can-do attitude, guys?
I simply suggested that Israel could build some kind of barrier to block rockets fired from Gaza (and Lebanon and maybe even Iran) using some fairly primitive technology.
Either:
1. An earthen berm…a mile or so high. A big project to be sure, but certainly doable.
2. Some kind of barrier suspended from helium balloons. Preferably a mesh made of high-strength, light-weight steel.
Consider that even attempting to build such a barrier would earn Israel some much-needed positive publicity and give its leaders an alternative to military attacks on the rocket launch sites.
It may be very expensive to construct, but I’m sure the U.S. (and even the E.U) would pay for its construction…
I think your definition of certainly may differ from mine.
Apartheid Berm! Racist Blimps!
Monkyboy, what you are talking about will cost MORE than the Iraq War. You know, the one you think costs too much.
I have already given you a rundown on the numbers. $3-$10 BILLION per mile. You have not said how many miles, or how many inches, of balloon fence, berms, etc., you would need. And please state how much money you think could be made available for this setup, and by whom. Our top estimate was over 2 trillion dollars, remember?
Again, we are blowing off practical issues like “is there enough helium on Earth to do this?” and just treating it as a simple extrapolation.
Also, on the berm thing, why do you think it is possible top build one a mile high? Has anyone ever done so? And insofar as one did – assuming you can just teleport the dirt to the top of the pile and so forth – do you know how wide the base of a pile of dirt or sand is in proportion to the height?
Either it would take up so much room that there would be no land left in Gaza, only berm, or else your really thin high pile of sand would collapse and cover all of Gaza in a hundred feet of sand. Which might be an improvement but is probably not the point.
But I have a new idea for you. How about, instead of the Monkyboy Antimissile Balloon Fence, how about the Monkyboy Safety Cage?
Instead of going up a mile, just go up ten or twenty feet or so and then build across: make a roof over the whole of Gaza, just like a baseball backstop.
For fun, monkyboy, since I have been doing all the heavy lifting so far, maybe you would like to do the math on how much the Monkyboy Safety Cage would cost? If you want to save money, you could use tarps or bedsheets or Saran Wrap instead for the top part. As a benefit, Saran Wrap would keep the rain out. Yes, wrap all of Gaza in Saran Wrap, like a Christo artwork.
I’m not sure what you would do about an airport, multistory buildings, or oxygen, though.
By God, monky’s right! And those aren’t hardened structures they’re firing from! And that’s not a defensible border they’re behind.
A simple fleet of D-9’s would stop them.
Put it another way, if everyone on Earth contributed equally, your share of the Monkyboy Great Balloon Fence would be $2T/6B = $333. If only the US paid for it, the cost would be $2T/300M = $6,666 for every US citizen (taxpayer or not).
Put it another way, if the choice were to pay $60-200B for a Gaza fence, or pay $25M to blow up everyone in Gaza with 105mm artillery shells, and if this were the only choice, which do you think most people or nations would choose?
I thought of the “backstop roof” over north Gaza, nichevo, but that would just lead to more “bad” publicity for Israel.
You could start “small” and simply try to protect the town of Sderot from further rocket attacks from Gaza. They seem to be getting the worst of it…
I also want to point out that my estimates are based on the original quotes for the US-Mexico fence. Therefore, assuming there are no cost overruns, corruption, etc. Obviously with overruns the price could go to $3 trillion, $4 trillion, or any amount at all. Besides, who would get the contract? Probably Halliburton, right?
Hey! I just had another great idea!
Make all the people of Gaza work on this day and night. (For purposes of this analysis, assume dirt/sand berms.) Then they won’t have any time to launch rockets, and they’ll be too tired anyway.
Plus, then it doesn’t matter if it ever gets done, since as long as they are not done, they have to keep working, so there would be no attacks as long as they kept on. Especially since there would be no time for school or prayer – the more they screw around, the longer the wall will take.
Ideally, you just have them build forever, or until they die, or move away. Perfect! Or, as I think they say on teh Internets,
1 Tell the Pals to build a wall.
2 Uh, …
3 PROFIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PS Since they would have to get all the dirt or sand from the Gaza side, they would soon dig themselves down to sea level. The work would go a lot slower then, as every minute they would have to drop their shovels to come to the surface for air.
PPS Does any of this seem unfair? Please read the book of Exodus.
http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/sacred/bib/jps/exo001.htm
http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/sacred/bib/jps/exo005.htm
Monkyboy, don’t we always hear about how Rumsfeld “started small” in Iraq and there aren’t enough troops? Just like the terrorists move away from the troops and go blow up people somewhere else, in Gaza wherever the fence ends the Pals will just move a little to the left or to the right and fire at something else. You really have to build the whole thing at once, or there’s really no point.
BTW, the Qassams now have a range of about 5 miles. By implication, they can fly at least half that high, so you would really need a 2.5 mile high berm or balloon fence, or they will just fly right over it.
And with my original estimates, since you will not say so, I will say that to the naked eye, off my CIA map, it looks like you would need at least 4-5 miles of fence just to, as you say, “protect Sderot.”
At $3B-$10B per mile, this is $15B-$50B to protect one small town. A minimum of twice the Israeli defense budget, at the low end. Where does this money come from again? You and me?
Jeff, please start up a tipjar for the fence. I will put in my $50-$166 ($15B-$50B divided by 300M US citizens) for my share after Monkyboy does.
Guess we better go with the netting suspended by balloons then, nich.
This looks like a good material to make it from:
http://www.dsm.com/en_US/html/hpf/home_dyneema.htm
It’s what bulletproof vests and commercial drift nets that are up to…65 kilometers long…are made from.
Incidentally, at $25 million for 105mm shells, Monkyboy’s and my share would be 8 1/3 cents apiece. Jeff, you can have that right now, if PayPal does dimes.
Or give me your mailing address and I will send a dime right to you; keep the change, get some machine gun ammo for any cleanup. Woohoo!
In fact I could kick in for Monkyboy’s share. That would be 16 2/3 cents. Add actus too, and it’s a quarter. Done!
OK, monkyboy, very good, now go get some price and quantity available on that stuff. (Does it say how much a 65km drift net costs? Dimensions on that – length, width, weight?)
Figure you need a mile strand of it for every inch of border; we will ignore the horizontals for now, as well as the fact that bulletproof vests have multiple (like, dozens of) layers of the stuff to stop a bullet. So for one mile of border you would need 1 * 5280 * 12 = 63,360 miles of Dyneema.
Then, see if they have any pieces that are actually a mile long without any defects, or whether we will have to tie some pieces together. (Maybe we could use duct tape, but it wouldn’t be as pretty.) Somebody has to be paid to do all that tying, and they have to be good knots – no granny or reef knots.
And get the weight of one mile of it, so we know how many helium balloons we will need for each piece.
Also, since I think it deteriorates in sunlight, you would have to replace it every 6 months or so. (Remember, if you try to put suntan lotion on the Dyneema to keep the sun away, it adds to the weight and cost, and you need people to climb up and add more every time it rains.)
But I hand it to you, you don’t give up easy.
Believe it or not, nich, genocide of the citizens of Gaza isn’t a viable option for Israel.
Let’s guess that a 65km x 10m commercial fishing net made from Dyneema costs around $1 million.
That gives us a cost of around $25 million for a 5 mile high x 5 mile wide barrier to protect Sderot (and a pretty good chunk of the rest of Israel) from rocket attacks.
Let’s assume we are suspending our Dyneema net in strips about 30 ft wide so they can be easily hauled down and replaced when needed…
Now how do we get into the billions of dollars?
We just need to contact the company that makes Dyneema to ask them how much 25 square miles worth of commercial drift nettting weighs…then we can figure out the cost to lift it with helium balloons.
Here’s their contact info:
http://www.dsm.com/en_US/html/about/Info_contact.htm
Those aren’t ICBM’s the Palestinians are firing into Israel. A simple dirt berm would stop them.
Look up the word ,”ballistic” and then look up the concept,”economy of scale”
Wouldn’t it just be simpler to buy Gaza and give the Palestinians airline tickets to someplace nicer?
/sarcasm off/
try this (not sure if it will do) from ebay:
Ultima Dynaflex Micro Dyneema Braid 300yd 18lb
US $47.32
x6 = 1800 yds (~= 1 mi) = $283.92
x 63,360 = $17,989,171.20 per mile
Now keep in mind that is not chainlink fence, that’s 18lb (breaking strain) fishing line. I hope it is obvious that chainlink is stronger than 18lb fishing line. It also doesn’t include balloons, ground stations, etc., nor horizontal strands.
I don’t know how much this weighs; each mile-hi strand might weigh I dunno, a pound? Maybe 2, For this you need a 3-4 foot diameter helium balloon. See http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/lift.html
They can’t fire rockets out of really deep holes either. How much would it cost to make Gaza a really deep hole?
But a 5280’ tall, 20 KM long pile of dirt? That is a political winner, my friends. People love barriers.
You could think even further outside the box and cover Sderot in a 20 foot layer of a soft rubbery substance, like this. It wouldn’t be too expensive and teh rockets would bounce right off!!1! Porblem sloved!
That depends on how much money they have to spend.
Not sure I accept this. Source? I showed you mine.
I saw the Dyneema contact info. You go contact ‘em, please.
It’s silly to argue with mb about the cost. The idea is flat out impossible. Repeat IMPOSSIBLE! There is something on the surface of the earth called wind. This wind stuff can occur from any direction at hundreds of kilometers per hour. Wind is why there are not any, repeat not any, man-made structures that are anywhere close to a mile high on this planet. mb is not capable of doing the calculations of cost, engineering, material strengh or political result or even understanding them if you do them for him. You are wasting your time arguing with him.
But what the heck, it’s a free country until Pelosi gets her way, knock yerselves out.
For some, public humiliation is not enough.
They say not even the world is enough.
Who may know the limits of the human ego?
I think that Israel should build a mile high wall out of…cotton candy. You could build these enormous cotton candy machines and space them around the border. Wind won’t be a problem because the giant gumball machines will provide anchoring material and, if you position enough machines, they can continue to produce more cotton candy than the wind blows away. Now if we get 4000 tons of cherry italian ice and…..
<shudder> <SCREEEEEE> <BANG> <SMOKE>
Holy crap, my satire generator just imploded from irrelevance…
Monkster,
To put it another way, you’re proposing the creation of either a mountain (e.g. the berm) or something with mountain-like properties (the “Great Balloon Fence”). If you’re not buying the purely engineering and economic reasons such a thing has not been done, then consider this: if such a thing were possible with the ease you describe, don’t you think it would have been done in Gaza, or by Hizbollah in southern Lebanon as a defense against Israeli missile attacks.
I am also curious as to your thoughts regarding a more active approach such as the THEL.
BRD
Check out the angle of repose for soil. The “safe” angle is 53 degrees; you’d want it to be shallower than that, but let’s use that for a starting point.
The wall would be about 8000’ wide, plus whatever width you’d want on top. Now, let’s work in metric units: 1600 meters high, 2400 meters wide. That’s a volume of 3.8 million cubic meters of material for EACH METER of wall. And that’s without any width at the top. If you want to have a 20-meter wide causeway at the top, that adds 32,000 cubic meters for each meter of wall. I think we can ignore that, given the soil required to reach the desired height, that’s less than 1%.
A kilometer of wall requires 3.8E9 cubic meters, or 3.8 cubic kilometers. A 100-kilometer wall would need 380 cubic kilometers. Mt Everest is about 2400 cubic kilometers; so you’d need to move and shape 1/6th of Mt Everest. You’d basically be building a short stretch of the Rocky Mountains.
Then there’s the maintenance requirements. And you couldn’t build it out of just soil, because otherwise the erosion would be horrific, not to mention the danger from earthquakes. Gotta wonder what would happen to the world economy if Israel started buying the concrete and steel for this monster.
Nichevo, et al.
For those interested, these folks, are looking at the feasibility of building a large structure. Reports within the last couple of years suggested a start of construction in 2007, but I haven’t seen anything to support that in recent memory.
Monkyboy,
If you could sketch out (like a rough, back of the envelope thing) what you’re talking about, I’m sure it would help folks get a better idea of what you’re talking about. If you don’t have a place to host it, e-mail it to me, and I can post it.
BRD
Posted by monkyboy | permalink
on 11/20 at 09:11 AM
My mouth is hanging open at this.
Here’s a very simple question: why should the Isrealis have to build any kind of barrier, defense, wall ABM system?
WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY????????????
[I do believe that I have actually been sucked into the black hole of monkeyboys stupidity]
Let’s see… a mile high dirt berm. To give it at most a 60 degree slope on each side, which would probably be too steep, it would have to be a mile wide at the base. So for a mile long section we have a volume of dirt equal to…
V = .5*(1760 yds)^3 = 2,725,888,000 cu yds
Convert that to tonnage by multiplying it by 2700 lbs/cu yd* and then dividing by 2000 lbs per ton :
T = 2,725,888,000 cu yds * (2700 lbs/cu yd)/(2000 lbs/ton) = 3,679,948,800 tons
Now, how much do you suppose it would cost to move each ton of dirt into location? I found one website that said that sand costs $8-$11 per cu yd not including delivery costs. I think my wife and I paid $40 per cu yd for topsoil, but we’re talking about the Middle East where sand grows on trees, so let’s give it a very low bid of $3 per ton delivered.
Cost = 3,679,948,800 tons ($3/ton) = 11 billion dollars
For one mile of “berm”.
Of course, we’re completely ignoring the cost of securing the sand by planting something on it. Our sand is not going to stick around if we don’t plant a shrubbery. I’ve no idea how to price that, though, so I’ll let it go.
The numbers tell us a great deal, but let’s take a step back and visualize what we’re talking about here. The highest point in the Appalachians is 6684 ft, but the range averages about 3000 ft.* So what Monkeyboy is proposing to do is build a mountain range around Israel taller on average by more than half than the Appalachian Mts.. This proposal is either so incredibly stupid as to be the product of a mentally retarded brain, or it was thrown into the discussion as a ludicrous assertion meant to distract everyone and derail the conversation–or both. I’m going to go with both.
But by all means, continue to reward his efforts. Just stand well back from the cage so you don’t get any on you.
TW: He’s a small monkey, but he’s got a lot of spunk.
Hey, what if we just hide Sderot on the other side of Denver?
PWN3D!!1!
tw: our18
I didn’t think he was that old.
I think his mind came from 1842.
“What-ho! Perhaps these Israeli chaps should build some mountains? They’ve got the moneys a-plenty!”
“What you say, too far an abundance of soil required? Piffit! Where’s that can-do attitude?”
“Ah, perhaps, I may have been made to mistake the matter at hand. Say, what about blimps? I hear that dirigible technology is all-the-rage!”
“All you would need is an army of smarmy grandmothers to knit new blimps! A victory for pro-gress! What-ho!”
“What is this wind thing you speak of? Piffit! Where is that can-do attitude!”
“Say, chaps, can I just go back to losing a real argument, or will it suffice to lose an imaginary one?”
Our monky- straight out of 19th century England!
This is very easy, of course: Because it is evidently unsporting to shell the area from which the Qassam, Scud, or whatever is launched, as any other military on earth (except ours I guess) would do.
Oh, and because the Pals cannot be expected to live in peace, of course.
Just give up, Arabs! The American Indians did and they had about ten thousand times as much character as you. Just imagine Powhatan blowing up Pocahontas to annoy Miles Standish. There is no loss of face in giving up, the loss of face is in SUCKING!!!!!!
PS Ardsgaine, the easiest way to get the dirt to stay put is to melt it with nuclear weapons. Dimona is close by and can supply all the necessary materials.
PPS
,
Yes I know, but it is teh funny! Teh Int3rn3t 1334speek alone is worth it. Teh r0xx0r!
Probably it’d be more esthetic and effective to deploy a ballistic force shield (see: early Star Trek) coupled with a nuclear damping device.
Not that either of those things exist right now, but hey! We could DO it!
Moment of sanity: 60 degree angle of repose is too high. Think 40 degrees or less. And I’d want to see it made of rock, with a retaining mesh. And of course we’re ignoring the obvious difficulty presented by building a one and two-thirds-mile-wide structure around a strip of land that’s only four miles or so wide.
Back to insanity: hey, we could always chip Gaza off of Israel and tow it out to sea, couldn’t we?
And of course all Gaza would have to do to counter this defense is to build a quarter-mile-high trebuchet.
BRD,
I hope you haven’t invested all your money in that Solar Tower in Australia. 1000 meters tall, more than twice as high as the Empire State Building, first one ever built anywhere near that big. When I see a round number like 1000 meters for a physical dimension, I think it was picked by someone in marketing.
Maybe they can do it. I hope they can. I’d rather put my money in a slot machine, though. Besides, that Enviromission stock would look funny next to the Exxon stock in my portfolio.
There is, of course, the other problem with the balloon fence idea (okay, the other other other other… <repeat as necessary> …other problem).
It’s easy to think of a countermeasure for the helium curtain. Mount a 23mm AA gun on a pickup (if the Somalis can do it, the Palis can too, much less Hezbollah). Shoot a couple of baloons from Lebanon / Gaza. Drive away and hide before the IAF finds you (and it’ll take a while before they get over the helium curtain). Wait till they go away. Do it again. Even if they do catch you, a used Toyota pickup and a cheap Soviet ZU-23 AA gun is probably significantly cheaper and easier to replace than the balloons and fence.
Now, if they use inflated condoms to support the fence, it’s harder to hit. You’d need to train attack birds to attack the condoms…
I gotta wonder if monkeyboy’s bizarre technological solutions to what is an essentially societal problem isn’t the same mindset as the old “if we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we solve [poverty|crime|illiteracy]”.
If nothing else, we have a new exemplar for a certain type of problem-solving.
monkytard’s gotta be having us all on. Has to be. Which points out truly compassionate conservativism (and equal parts traditional leftist narcissism) but that’s beside the point. If there is one.
A “berm” of of sand a mile tall would be fifteen miles or more at its base. It would surely swamp all of Israel in blowing dunes. I think that’s moronboy’s strategy.
In other words, Israeli intelligence has already thought of it. And balloon fences, for crying out loud in the dark. And anti-matter shields and space/time continuums that disappear missles altogether and huge flypaper screens maintained by fifty trillion crawling nano-bots.
And of course, cotton candy anchored by giant gumball machinery.
I suppose there’s a reason none exist…
Hesco Barrier is the answer.
Hesco Baskets are wire mesch baskets lined with tough weather resisten paper which are filled with soil for large tall, easilly constructed walls and balistic protection. We use them all over Iraq and Afghanistan.
Teh most common Hesco basket is 4’X2’X2’. so one mile high would require a stack of 1320 4’ baskets. When you stack them though, you stack one on 2, so that half a basket width shows on each side. So we need a layer that adds one each. Since the width is half the height, the answer then is obvious, the bottom layer will have 1320 baskets and be 1/2 mile from one side to the other.
So we only need, 3.267383622155125e+275 baskets to produce a wall of protection 1/2 mile thick at it’s base and 1 mile high! Oh, and 2 feet wide.
At a cost of ~$50.00 per basket.
Oh. And Hesco recommends not stacking their baskets higher than 8 layers.
Well shucks… maybe the blimp borne fence is more doable.
Chicken wire is the lightest metal mesh fencing I know of. A roll, 5’ wide by 60’ long, 20 guage wire, 4 strand construction and 1” hex size weighs about 30 lbs. It’ll take 88 roles to produce a one mile long net. 2620 pounds of fencing for each 5’ section.
It takes about 80,000 cubic feet of helium to lift 2000 pounds. So each 5’ section of fence will require a dirigible roughly 40% the size of the Hindenburg.
Hmmmmmm…….
6Gun
I’m tellin’ ya, it could work. 4000 tons of Cherry italian ice to cool the air and keep the dust down. Maybe bubble gum rather than gumballs as they have a better coefficient of attach and then…
<BANG> <BANG> <FOOOOOOM> <SMOKE> <FIRE>
Um, gotta go now…
What effects would such a barrier have on weather and ecology?
So we only need, 3.267383622155125e+275 baskets to produce a wall of protection 1/2 mile thick at it’s base and 1 mile high! Oh, and 2 feet wide.
Eh? Try 871,860.
All you need is LOVE, neocons.
And this ashtray.
Cotton candy? It would be delicious! The ecology would dance with glee…
<shudder> <shake> <smoke>
and … and …the peoples would be brought together in italian ice eatoffs, cooling the air winning approval from Leo DiCaprio and …
uh oh
****FOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!****
All right, all right, it’s a stupid idea! Now I have to cover the hole in my roof…
Aw, c’mon; use your imagination. Think: fishnet stockings. Otherwise, you’ll have to consider how a 5’wide section of chicken wire, at the top, will be able to support the ton-plus of chicken wire hanging from it. Same width of chainlink would weigh 7600 lbs; same kind of problem.
Pablo,
And this chair and this paddleball…
Of course, they could just go with a big sheet of Glad ForceFlex, but the sail area would be tremendous.
Aside from the ridiculousness of building something that big for such a stupid reason, even someone with no engineering could raise an objection.
I mean, doesn’t mb read the papers or listen to the radio? ‘Cause then he’d know about the helium shoratage.
http://www.woai.com/news/state/story.aspx?content_id=C5AC4093-9177-4CC4-98F5-544FFA4647D1
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6444180
So we’d have to use hot air instead, but at least mb would have job security!
Christ, can you imagine the environmental impact study on that??
That might generate enough paperwork they wouldn’t need to move dirt to build it. Just stack the files up…
This new learning amazes me, Monkyboy. Explain again how sheep’s bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes, would you?
Monkyboy, two years after the completion of his mile-high Jew condom:
“THE ISRAELIS ARE DESTROYING THE OZONE LAYER AND CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING!”
Ya know, one thing the mile-high wall would do would end the “Israel’s stealing all the water” crap. All the rain would fall on Gaza, so of course the new line would be that the Israelis are “trying to drown the Palestinians”.
The obvious solution is to ring gaza with mile high statues of Mohammed. Then the pals couldn’t fire rockets into Israel for fear of hitting one.
Oh shit. The Iranians just invented 5300 foot missile trajectories. No, wait. 5500-footers.
Now what?
Oops. 6000-footers.
Shit.
Don’t airliners fly at like six miles?
Here come the forty thousand foot missile trajectories. Forty thousand feet of vertical sand is gonna be like 115 miles across at the base.
Of course, with all of Israel burrowed into the leeward side of this gargantuan “berm” of sand, maybe the missiles will just glance off into the sea, eh monkyphysicsengineerboi?
So we layer the entire thing in Teflon!
Our monky- straight out of 19th century England!
Or early 20th century France.
Def. Guy
No, can’t be statues of Mo… that would be blasphemy and cause worldwide riots, beatings, rage and beheadings from the Religion of Pieces.
And it would be our fault for provoking them.
WTF? This whole thread is like sticking a finger in your own eye.
Why can’t we just say: “MonkyBoy, you are a pea brain?” That just about covers it, doesn’t it?
Jeebus…It’s like talking about the candy on “Sugar Mountain”…
TW: complete86 – exactly what should have been done with MB’s first comment
You best be driving fast, a mile wide swath of chain link fence hitting the ground at upwards of 70 miles per hour might leave a mark.
On a serious note, if we suspended enough parasols from balloons, would the increased shade counter the effects of global warming?
“Put it another way, if the choice were to pay $60-200B for a Gaza fence, or pay $25M to blow up everyone in Gaza with 105mm artillery shells, and if this were the only choice, which do you think most people or nations would choose?”
Amen brother, Amen. I have $20 I will donate for the first box of bullets.
BTW this thread really proves why you can’t debate or reason with a liberal……..they ARE human beings, contrary to conventional wisdom, but they lack any kind of deductive reasoning or logic. They also suffer from a condition known as moral equivelency and the only cure is a good dose of real life(a one way ticket and citizenship in Iran, Syria or Lebenon).
AAAARRRRMMY Blimp Sir!
john
As well as the Perpetual Misery of Victims Everywhere We Must Save With Other People’s Money, better known as … um… MVEWMSWOP Syndrome.
Perhaps you’ve heard of it … no? …
That’s pronounced “mmm – vem – swap.” Syndrome
Really!
Your ballons will be smote,
says the blood of this goat!
– Mikey the Augur
mmmm, goat!
Darleen
We could simply tell them that the statues are of Jesus, and that they will remain in the form of Jesus up until the time when they come into contact with explosives, at which point they miraculously change into Mo.
now, if they were to build a large, wooden badger…..
heh: MB just turned12
Ideally, there would be a second shrubbery, placed slightly higher…
BRD,
I think if the THEL actually worked, Israel would be using it now to defend Sderot.
And if Israel’s current plan worked…no rockets would be falling on Israel today.
So, we left off with a cost of $25 million for the actual barrier…just need to find its weight so we can calculate lift requirements.
As for people trying to “shoot down” balloons:
This barrier would be on the Israeli side of the border. Set back far enough…the bad guys would have to drive their AAA truck into Israeli territory to shoot…I think the IDF could handle that “threat.”
Also, think many small balloons, not a few large ones. Losing some wouldn’t matter.
As for airliners hitting it:
There are plenty of places in Israel and the rest of the world where planes aren’t allowed to fly…this would just be one more.
As for wind:
That could be a problem. Needs some work.
If the bad guys want to shoot at the barrier, great, that means they aren’t shooting at people. With a modular design, it would be easy to replace the damaged sections.
Anything else?
You really are dumb as a post, aren’t you monkyboy?
I take exception to that, sir!
Let’s assume for a second that the berm could get built. How are the Israelis supposed to stop the Palis from launching from ON the berm?
Any ideas monkyboy?
If they launch from within65 meters of the top they could have a considerable range boost.
Helium balloons hoisting a fence. Nice idea.
Why not put the balloons on top of the mile high berm and have a two mile high barrier?
Build a great wall with outposts across the top for observation and as tether points for the helium balloon/ fish net.
Maybe terrace the Israeli side and have a kibbutz grow avocados on it, thus reducing greenhouse gases and reversing global warming in one of the warmest desert areas on our planet. Maybe Al Gore will move his office there until the Audobon Society denounces the Israelis for disrupting the flight patterns of migratory fowl.
Hey monky…. are you a student?
You should go into politics…. writing earmarks for pork….
Believe it or not Robert, few problems are solved by cranky old men who spend their time pissing on everything.
You guys are the ones who harken back to WWII to justify things.
Take some time and review some of the innovative designs from that period…
The Dambusters.
http://www.dambusters.org.uk/
The floating harbors from D-Day.
http://www.usmm.org/normandy.html
The Manhattan Project.
http://www.atomicmuseum.com/tour/manhattanproject.cfm
We seem to have decided that the only solution to our current problems is to let the military battle a few bad guys hidden among large civilian populations…
How is that working out?
The Apartheid Balloon-Fence
News Flash! The following link reveals the thrilling story of monkyboy’s early career as a scientific/engineering genius (as well as his other identity, Rog-Er):
<a href=”http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=619″ target=”_blank”>
Curses! Once more: http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=619
Maybe we can get the IDF to redeploy to Okinawa…
…therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia…
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=115558
this thing keeps eating my comments, here, lrt me try again…
OK…
To extend this a little further, one zepplin will support 12.5’ of fence, so to support 135’ (the width of a zepplin), you would have to stack then 10 high, or about a quarter mile. Thats 400 zepplins to support 1 mile of fence.
AAA isn’t neccessary to shoot it, a .50 cal would go a mile, and with tracer rounds, you could set the whole thing ablaze, and 20 square miles (if the fence is 20 miles long) of fence, and 8000 flaming zepplins coming down, might be a bit hazardous to anyone in the vicinity. Wait for favourable winds, and you could wipe out half of Isreal with their own balloon fence.
I must say though, a ballon fence is still more practical than a mile high dirt berm…
lee
Umm … do you realise what you just wrote?
BWWWAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHA
Nobody has yet addressed the problem Slartibartfast touched on earlier: most material wouldn’t support their own weight if you tried to hang a mile of it. You have to find something very light weight with a very high tensile strength.
That is going to jack your price up a bit, I would imagine.
The drift nets made of Dyneema are up to 35 miles long, B Moe.
http://www.dsm.com/en_US/html/hpf/home_dyneema.htm
I imagine anything that long that can be dragged through the ocean along with tons and tons of fish could support its own weight…
Yes, yes I do.
Do you have any idea what (or how long) it would take to build a 20 mile long, 1 mile high, stable, defenseable, dirt pile?
I’ll give you a hint.
Think about moving Invesco stadium in Denver, and everything below it down to sea level, along with the adjoining 10 miles on each side, over to Kansas.
Building 8000 zepplins doesn’t sound so stupid now, does it?
You obviously imagine alot of things. I know for a fact you are dangerously lacking in common sense or applied physics.
Thanks for the helpful input, B Moe.
Let’s not forget the current plan to stop rocket attacks from Gaza is to lob artillery shells into densely populated areas while trying to avoid incidents like this:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/785917.html
If the balloons were placed along the length of the net…where each panel provided at least some of the lift required to hold the entire structure aloft…you wouldn’t even need materiel that could support the entire structure.
Any more problems with my design, or can we assume we are down to the matter of how much it would cost?
Of course even with all of those nifty projects, winning WW2 still involved lots and lots of 105mm rounds (and 75mm, 76mm, 150mm, 85mm, 122mm, 152mm, 5 inch, 8 inch, 16 inch…).
You could always protect the wall with, say, a massive dirt berm. That would stop the AAA fire. And set it a mile or so back from the border, and protect this ‘dirt wall’ and the balloon fence with troops. But then you need some kind of protection for the troops from Hezbollah rockets…
Besides, the Israelis are Jews, aren’t they? They must be rich enough to afford to spend millions to fix the damage caused by a couple of dollars worth of surplus 23mm HE rounds on all those balloons…
Here are some numbers monk, do the math. Anything with a remote chance of stopping a rocket won’t support itself at anything near a mile high, probably not even half that. And it costs over $2 a foot.
Only because little vermin like you go apeshit when the Israeli’s go in and kick some ass.
Pickup truck? ZSU-23? Nonsense (well, that is a strong word considering the rest of the thread)! I just realized that my fishing-line fence is “cheap” enough to build, aye. But would it work? Aside from the missile getting through, this is fishing line we’re talking. You don’t need ack-ack to cut that, a nail clipper or a broken bottle will do nicely, not to mention perhaps fire. You could do it with your bare hands.
If you want to match chainlink strength, I guess you just multiply by 100 or so. So about $1.8B-$3.6B/mi for the fabric alone.
BTW, anybody want to run numbers on helium use? I’m pretty sure you would have to use hydrogen in the balloons, because while hydrogen is abundant, helium is a nonrenewable resource.
…Oh, also: Wouldn’t this, like, totally screw Gaza Airport? What kind of landing patterns could you possibly have?
…
Robert Crawford: I don’t think cries for the moon were ever stilled by an explanation of its distance.
wait, where do the Unicorns fit into this? I WAS PROMISED UNICORNS!!!!!
I told ya he wasn’t capable of understanding your calculations!
Hehe.
An Apartheid Balloon Fence surrounded by an Apartheid Dirt Berm!!!!!
Is this shit STILL going on? Why?
monkydik’s having you on.
With the material monk is talking about, in a fine enough mesh to hope to catch a rocket, it is going to be over $200 billion a mile.
Probably, but I am an engineering nerd and can’t help myself.
Monky,
I have been meaning to write a couple of things all day, but I’m looking at least a good 16 hours slaving in front of the computer today, so I’ll keep it short.
You’re familiar with sailing ships right? Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, Columbus and all that?
Have you really given thought to the fact that your entire notion is to make a really, really, REALLY BIG F$&*@NG SAIL and use it to block missiles. Never mind the inherent unsuitability of non-rigid materials in setting off impact fuzes, never mind the astronomical physical and mechanical problems associated with upkeep, never mind the nearly otherworldly effects on wind circulation, I just have two things that I am suprised that you haven’t addressed:
1) The mainsail of the Nina was about 882 square feet – enough to push a 90 ton vessel at speeds of about 9 miles per hour across the entire Atlantic ocean. One square mile is 27,878,400 square feet. A barrier measuring, let’s say, five miles in width and one mile high, would then be 158,040 times larger than the sail that powered the Nina.
The world’s largest personal sailboat has a sail area of roughly 25,000 square feet, which is enough to move the 1240-ton vessel at just under 23 miles per hour. Your proposed sail is 1,115 times larger than even this.
And you hope to keep it from moving, or otherwise tearing loose and flapping off into the distance. With what? Consider that the private vessel mentioned above has 75 tons of gear to rigging for those 25,000 square feet of sail.
2) It has occurred to you, that if the only thing that prevents a Palestinian rocket from hitting it’s target is a requirement that it reach 1 miles plus 10 feet at the top of it’s arc. You might say, ‘Well, the Israelis can add 10 more feet of fabric.’ And then some other young enterprising young fellow will figure out how to pop it up another 10 feet or so. You can pretty much figure out where this spiral goes. Let’s say that they get ambitious and get some of the Katyushas from a BM-21 that are floating around – then you’ve got to contend with heights of more than 10 miles.
When you get to the point that the fence is 10 miles high, you’ve got something that’s approximately half the length, and two-thirds of the width of the Gaza Strip itself. Yeah, you’ll end up with a big ole sail that is one-third the total area of the entire Gaza Strip.
Now – what happens when the wind shifts? You’re now holding a Very Large blanket over a third – or more – of the Gaza Strip. Or what does one do if, let’s say, the wind picks up?
BRD
Nichevo, a ZSU-23/4 Shilka would probably be able to do billions of dollars of damage to the balloon fence in a couple of minutes, but I doubt Hezbollah has any of those. I was referring to the good old towed ZU-23, but I probably had that confused with the older 14.5 mm AA guns that the Somalis were probably using. Either way, it’s a moot point. Since this thread has reached the point of absurdity, I thought a healthy dose of surrealism would help.
So, we’ve established that the Helium Curtain has problems with the scarcity of resources, the tensile strength limitations of the materiel, the likely Hezbollah countermeasures, would be impossible to construct or maintain, require the Israeli army to stand guard outside the barrier to protect it, would be an ecological nightmare and an aircraft navigation hazard of immense proportions. What’s primatlad’s response?
Priceless.
My solution? (tounge firmly in cheek here) Israel should let “rogue elements” of the IDF launch artillery into Lebanon and Gaza without worrying about where it lands or doing anything to stop them. Hey, fair is fair. When Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority stop the people in their territory, we’ll badger the Israeli’s about stopping the people in their territory.
I think it’s become the political geek version of debating who’d win in a fight: Superman or Aquaman, or which version of the Enterprise is better. At this point, we’re still keeping it going to let primatlad dig himself a deeper hole in his Aquaman t-shirt. And it’s fun to watch.
Civilis,
It’s the unholy combination of political-engineering hybrid uber-geeks. I don’t think folks would be here running out the numbers if it didn’t provide some return.
BRD
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