Comment by harperlee
2 days ago
Diesel, iron or aluminum, from your parent post, are difficult to explode… (personally, no clue about magnesium); and the point of the latter two is that you can “store” energy by upstreaming its consumption when power is available, you don’t necessarily need to produce an actual reversible energy store.
> and the point of the latter two is that you can “store” energy by upstreaming its consumption when power is available
Are you sure the parent isn't referring to something like a rust (iron-air) battery? Aluminum, Iron, and Magnesium are all viable battery chemistries.
Side note - I'm pretty certain you don't actually need to make contents of a ship explode to easily sink it with explosives.
I'm actually somewhat concerned that between drones and smart mines - we've never had a better chance of completely ruining our ability to do ocean based shipping during combat.
You may have seen that Colombian drug cartels are already using Starlink-piloted "sea drones" to do ocean-based shipping through blockades. The US Coast Guard estimates that 90% of crewed narcosubs get through: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aPLXdtbLZ0
The autonomous boat got intercepted on a test run.
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magnesium is the most explody of all those
But still not explosive at scale. It’s a surface area issue, a small strip of magnesium explodes when dropped in water but a 100t cargo of magnesium sinking in a harbor would be a huge fire.
> a small strip of magnesium explodes when dropped in water
No it doesn't.
Magnesium metal burns because the boiling point of magnesium is just 1091 C, so extremely reactive vapor is readily produced. But it would be very hard to heat it that high in water unless it was ignited first. It will then continue to burn under water.
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