Gunpowder plot experiment
Discussion
Concluding after the news on ITV is a pretty interesting documentary presented by Richard Hammond about the gunpowder plot.
They are building a life size Palace of Westminster out of concrete and are going to blow it up with the full 36 barrels of gunpowder after the news to see what would have happened.
Just from seeing 1 barrel being blown up, by guess is it will make a bloody great mess!
They are building a life size Palace of Westminster out of concrete and are going to blow it up with the full 36 barrels of gunpowder after the news to see what would have happened.
Just from seeing 1 barrel being blown up, by guess is it will make a bloody great mess!
It's gonna be a bloody big bang for sure.
I hate seeing my cousins hurt! 
I think that was safely blown to buggery!
For those that didn't see it, an entire length of 7 foot thick, reinforced concrete wall was obliterated into alost nothing! The side wall portions moved to 45 degrees.
What would be interesting would be the amount used to do the same kind of damage to the houses of parliament, I think 36 barrels would have had the same effect.
How much more explosive is semtex compared to gunpowder, i.e. how much high explosive would it take these days?
For those that didn't see it, an entire length of 7 foot thick, reinforced concrete wall was obliterated into alost nothing! The side wall portions moved to 45 degrees.
What would be interesting would be the amount used to do the same kind of damage to the houses of parliament, I think 36 barrels would have had the same effect.
How much more explosive is semtex compared to gunpowder, i.e. how much high explosive would it take these days?
Gazboy said:
It was damned impressive in slo-mo! The wave effect as the roof, and wallc came away was stunning. I nominate it for the turner...
Muncher- wasn't the amount of Semtex used to down Pan-Am 109 concealed in a cassette tape???
Yeah, something like a small cassette recorder iirc.
I'm just interested in how much more powerful something like C4 is compared to gunpowder and how that would affect the volumes needed.
The amount of explosive power needed to burst apart a pressurised airliner is not that great. An airliner is a potential bomb in any case. Think of a balloon - any serious breach in the skin will cause explosive decompression. The Comet airliners in the 1950s burst apart with no help from explosives. Indeed, when a BEA Comet 4 was destroyed by a bomb in 1964, it was thought for a short while that the old problem of fatigue had returned.
lord summerisle said:
wasnt it the square shaped windows which the main reason behind the breakups of the comet planes... the corners provided stress risers during compression/decompression?
Exactly right. It is the reason to this day why no airliners have since been built with square or rectangular windows.
Actually, the only Comet (G-ALYP)where they could pinpoint EXACTLY where the failure occured showed that it WASN'T a window that failed at all. It was an RDF panel in the roof. Although similar in some ways to a window, the RDF panel was a fibreglass insert in the roof under which a Medium Wave aerial was positioned to allow the aircraft to pick up Radio Beacon transmissions to allow it to determine its position (Radio Direction Finding).
Not enough wreckage was found from the other Comet to determine exactly where the fuselage had failed.
Comet G-ALYU was tested to destruction in a water tank at Farnborough and it DID suffer a fatigue failure of a window aperture.
In fact, nearly all airliners today DO have square shaped window but the corners are radiused to relieve the fatigue stress on the corners - look at any Boeing or Airbus passenger cabin and you will see how "squarish" the windows look. Compare them to a 1950s designed pressurised airliner, like the Vickers Viscount or Fokker F-27 Friendship where the windows are oval or circular. What is interesting is that when Fokker redesigned the F-27 as the F-50 in 1980s, they replaced the large round windows with smaller square shaped ones.
>> Edited by Eric Mc on Wednesday 2nd November 09:34
Not enough wreckage was found from the other Comet to determine exactly where the fuselage had failed.
Comet G-ALYU was tested to destruction in a water tank at Farnborough and it DID suffer a fatigue failure of a window aperture.
In fact, nearly all airliners today DO have square shaped window but the corners are radiused to relieve the fatigue stress on the corners - look at any Boeing or Airbus passenger cabin and you will see how "squarish" the windows look. Compare them to a 1950s designed pressurised airliner, like the Vickers Viscount or Fokker F-27 Friendship where the windows are oval or circular. What is interesting is that when Fokker redesigned the F-27 as the F-50 in 1980s, they replaced the large round windows with smaller square shaped ones.
>> Edited by Eric Mc on Wednesday 2nd November 09:34
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