Nuclear Weapon Tests
An unforeseen use for surplus barrage balloons was as tethered shot balloons for nuclear weapon tests, throughout most of the period when nuclear weapons were tested in the atmosphere. The weapon or shot was carried aloft to the required altitude slung underneath the barrage balloon, allowing test shots at much higher altitudes than tower shots, in controlled conditions. Several of the shots in the Operation Plumbob series were carried out using barrage balloons to carry the devices.
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Famous quotes containing the words nuclear weapon, nuclear, weapon and/or tests:
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“Could it not be that just at the moment masculinity has brought us to the brink of nuclear destruction or ecological suicide, women are beginning to rise in response to the Mother’s call to save her planet and create instead the next stage of evolution? Can our revolution mean anything else than the reversion of social and economic control to Her representatives among Womankind, and the resumption of Her worship on the face of the Earth? Do we dare demand less?”
—Jane Alpert (b. 1947)
“But what is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of reason.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.”
—Gail Sheehy (b. 1937)