This is the public log of DeeDee 'dzyjak' Jackson, a fictional character. DeeDee lives and works aboard a space station which orbits Saturn, and sometimes he writes about it.

2006-01-10

Slush Bomb

The Dizzy Pig Bar and Grill serves a great Slush Bomb. It's cold, and has alcohol. Counter-Spin Rick isn't talking about drinks. The Slush Bomb is named after an accepted ice mining practice.

For the record, I didn't know any of this until One Track's chimp-snicker encouraged me to look into it.

A slush bomb is a generic term for a man made ball of slush, (mixed water and water-ice for you geniuses) usually very large, and always under acceleration. Acceleration is the 'bomb' part. Ice busters are good at making slush bombs, but it's easier and cheaper to bring in the big chunks of ice, so they don't do it often.

Why? Liquid water doesn't last long in vacuum. It goes from ice to vapor almost instantly. To make a slush bomb, a heat source (usually clean burning fuel) is injected into the center of the ice, so it only melts on the inside. Any water leaking out would freeze shut the leak.

The idea is to maintain a core liquid temperature while the slush ball is moving and growing (smashing into smaller chucks of ice, cracking open, leaking water, freezing together). Surprisingly, ice boosters are designed to do this.

Now--give Counter-Spin and his ice buster friends an excuse to aim one or more slush bombs at an OSA troopship. Rick is positive he can bury the ships in ice without fatalities, but he says if OSA is sending troops, it ain't with flowers. Either way, if it works, we will be adding rescue duties to our unpacking of boxes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ah so that's a slush bomb.