File talk:Peacekeeper-missile-testing.jpg

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On this picture, are these actually atom bombs, or just fake ones? --Abdull 14:56, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the caption came from, but it implies they were just testing the re-entry vehicle. I suspect very few tests like this are done with live weapons. -- Solipsist 15:12, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

The US has only tested one nuclear tipped missile with live bomb, and it was an IRBM, not an ICBM. Cool photo tho :) Rsynnott 23:20, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

It is such a beautiful photo, I must say. User:Banes|Ban]]es 11:06, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

It is a stunning image of one of the most evil things I have ever seen. The fact that such a thing exists (regardless of who created it or why) sends chills down my spine. Thank you for sharing.

exposure time?

How long does it take to move from the beginnung of the trace to the inpact? Are there videos of such a reentry?

To be honest, I don't know. But from looking at it, you can see that the lines come out from the clouds, then stay clear for quite a while, but then drops behind clouds in the distance. This to me indicates that the re-entry vehicles are "sliding" across the atmosphere and not dropping straight down, which again means that the lines are really really long. My point is, it must be shot with a long time exposure, with the horizon (and waves) cropped in afterwards ... Or do these vehicles actually produce such long lines ? - In any case, it's a really paradoxal picture, with beauty representing destruction. And the fact that it's very blue, makes it fit in perfectly with KDE -- KennethJ 23:41, 6th December 2005 (UTC)

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The RVs enter on about a 20-degree trajectory. It is a night exposure, but it is real. There is no cropping or compositing. The light is ambient. The RVs do fly through clouds. The entry itself is around 10 seconds, but the exposure is longer than that. If you refer to the Peacekeeper page, I talk about the plasma that causes the trail. Cancellier 19:26, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

? There's no mention of plasma trails on that page. And the waves are not blurred at all, so if it's not a composite then it can only be a second or two exposure. Lukas 82.45.216.215 23:33, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

The RVs are still travelling at several *thousand* miles an hour as they approach the ground. The plasma (and the light) is produced by the tremendous heat from moving through air that fast. The exposure must have actually been quite short - very little blurring of clouds and waves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.212.91 (talk) 16:20, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Um, confidential?

I thought these kind of things were supposed to be kept secret. I guess i was wrong.

With stuff like this, most countries that develop it want to show it off. There's no point in keeping the existence of nuclear weapon technology a secret if the primary purpose of the technology is intimidation. Obviously, you wouldn't want to release anything that gave the opposition hints on how to duplicate your technology, but as Kubrick wrote: "Yes, but the... whole point of the doomsday machine... is lost... if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?"24.167.71.40 14:47, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

There isn't anything secret in the photograph. Every country knows the point of an MIRV is to deliver payloads to multiple targets, and this image just shows that the US has a working MIRV saumaun (talk) 01:54, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Source link

The source link was broken when I tried it. Does anybody have another source? I'd like to confirm this is a real photograph, not an 'artist's impression'. - Crosbiesmith 17:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, not much we can do if the link from Army's web site doesn't work anymore, but this Google image search turns up a number of other places (including some that aren't Wikipedia mirrors) where you might find it. howcheng {chat} 17:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It is a real photograph, it is not an artist's impression. You can find similar photographs all over the web of MIRV testing. --24.147.86.187 02:09, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Distance between impacts?

Does somebody know what the relative distance is between the impact points on the ground? --sys2074 13:10, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Twenty times? or Twenty-five times?

I believe there is an inconsistency with two different captions of this image on two separate pages. The first page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_fire_exercise#Other_types the caption says the explosion power is twenty-five times that of a Little Boy But then, on the LGM-118 Peacekeeper page the caption says only twenty times the power. Does anyone know for sure. I would guess it would be only twenty times.

According to the Peacekeeper page: The Peacekeeper was a MIRVed missile; the MX could carry up to 10 re-entry vehicles, each armed with a 300-kiloton W87 warhead/MK-21 RVs (twenty times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II).

According to the Little Boy page: Approximately 600 milligrams of mass were converted into energy. It exploded with a destructive power equivalent to between 13 and 18 kilotons of TNT.

Any details?

Have further details been discovered, such as name, date and program of the test or if there was any payload on those projectiles (subsequently detonated), etc.? 91.11.212.195 (talk) 17:58, 8 April 2009 (UTC)