From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 18:33:15 GMT

In article <wJ73RB4w165w@iowegia.uucp> quest@iowegia.uucp (Steve J. Quest) writes:
>rabjab@golem.ucsd.edu (Jeff Bytof) writes:
>
>> 
>> >> Today's New York Times, and this month's issue of Physics Today, (about
>> >> inertial confined fusion) reveal the 'secrets' of the hydrogen bomb.
>> 
>> Are these some of the secrets the Rosenbergs gave to the Russians,
>> for which they were executed?
>> 
>> Jeff Bytof
>> rabjab@golem.ucsd.edu
>
>
>Jeff,
>
>        The Rosenbergs did not give anything to the russians that 
>they did not already know.  As "Americans", our government was too 
>cocky and proud to admit that the russians were able or even 
>capable of doing something that we did.  They figured it out on 
>their own, because contrary to the belief at the time, they were 
>NOT as stupid as our childish government led us to believe.  Their 
>premiers in the space race proved that.

     Recent reports from Russia indicate that the Soviets actually
     had a spy at Los Alamos, judging from their access to classified
     documents of the time.  To suggest that espionage did not
     immeasurably aid the Soviets in the acquisition of western
     technology is incorrect and naive.   At one time, the Soviets
     had a huge institution that existed for the sole purpose of
     reverse-engineering IBM mainframes.  You generally don't
     reverse-engineer systems if you know how to build them in 
     the first place.

>        I believe the Rosenbergs truly were spies, but were used 
>as scape goats to aid our egos that only *WE* are smart enough to 
>build a hydrogen bomb.  As a result, America was the only country 
>smart enough to design and build a bomb, and the russians had to 
>resort to stealing the technology.  This was simply not true, for 
>the russians have had quite a few brilliant scientists over the 
>years- and even today are not given the credit they deserve.

      No, but we were (with the Brits) the only ones that made the massive
      effort necessary to solve all of the first-time problems.
      It may well not be a matter of intellegence.  I suspect even
      Uganda has bright people who could develop thermonuclear
      weaponry given the right setting.  However, this setting 
      requires a certain national technological competence combined
      with a national effort and expenditure on a massive scale.

      Most everybody else relied on the original research, a reliance
      that would have been impossible without espionage.  Keep in 
      mind that the Soviets had suffered nearly catastropic losses
      in WWII while we were hardly touched.  It took a massive
      effort in the US, an effort that it would have been difficult
      for the Soviets to reproduce.  Do you actually think that the Soviets
      were *better* than us at military-scientific research?

      Finally, the Rosenbergs were executed because they were convicted as
      traitors.  If Stalin had managed to attain control of the 
      world through treachery, I suspect you would not feel so
      benignly about traitors.  I put selling out this country
      with mass murder as one of the most abhorent and intolerable of 
      crimes.

>        For example, I have a periodic chart that lists proposed 
>russian names for elements that they "claim" to have synthesized, 
>but only in fine print.  The actual names are generic and labeled 
>by americans pending "verification" that they actually *WERE* the 
>first to synthesize them.  And so it continues............sq

      Controversy notwithstanding, fabrication of transuranic elements 
      in accelerators pales in comparison with the military-scientific
      achievements necessary in constructing atomic weaponry for the 
      first time.

                              dale bass
-- 
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion