US Global Nanospace Inc (USGA)

[scion]

The disappearing mailbox
The contingent from recently renamed U.S. Glob al Nanospace (USGN) brought a vanload of products to Blackwater to demonstrate the scope of their company's military and law-enforcement activities. Included were a prototype protective ring for Humvee gunners, flat plates of the same material from which the ring was made, and a bullet-resistant airliner cockpit door. Those items all share a common purpose - they're designed to stop bullets. So far, so good.
But the USGN team also brought a pair of mailboxes - one carried a new type of blast-containment liner; the other was an ordinary, free-standing, corner-variety mail receptacle.
The idea was simple: Blow up the unlined mailbox with an explosive charge, then show how the blast from a similar-sized charge is contained by the liner.
Unfortunately, USGN's "mailboxes guy" didn't have any explosive material with him; worse still, he was unsure about what size charge the liner could with stand. Those are not minor oversights, particularly considering the audience that had gathered at Black water for the demo.
With some help from our Blackwater hosts, the liner-equipped box was set up about six feet in front of the number-19 sign at the berm end of the long-gun range. The first attempt to detonate the charge failed; only a slight "poof" was heard when the precursor charge fired. So a new blasting cap was affixed to the PETN, or explosive, cord.
This time the cord did what it's designed to do, sending the blast-barrier-lined mailbox in all directions. Parts of the mailbox blew a large hole through the number-19 sign, leaving just a 9 between the 18 and 20 markers.
"Was it supposed to do that?" one of the confused onlookers was overheard asking.
The answer, of course, is "no."
The Global Nanospace team learned a pair of valuable lessons from the mailbox demo: They should bring their own explosive charge to any demonstration and they should test their barrier product against a specific charge before demonstrating it publicly.
As for our evaluators, they, too, were the wiser after the blast. As one noted: "One thing's for sure - PETN is some great stuff."

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