[mulmen]

> Two paratroopers and some electronics can turn a passenger jet into a bomb carrying many kilotons of conventional explosive.

A fully fueled 747 only carries about 190 tons of fuel and 140 tons of cargo. How do electronics turn that into kilotons of explosives?

[samatman]

Centitons of explosive then. Much like a Starship.

[mulmen]

I don’t think jet fuel is as explosive as TNT so these two paratroopers would have to fill the cargo hold with tens of tons of explosives.

[lazide]

Jet fuel has significantly more total energy per unit of mass than TNT. 46 MJ/kg for Kerosene [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion], and 14.5 MJ/KG for TNT [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT].

Kerosene can be used to make a thermobaric bomb in the right conditions. It’s just just trickier to actually do than detonating TNT. Notably, TNT can certainly help accomplish making a thermobaric bomb.

Either way, the cargo capacity by weight for a 747 is still the same.

[mulmen]

More energy =/= more explosive. Are the fuel tanks of a 747 conducive to creating a thermobaric bomb? By two paratroopers?

[lazide]

With some TNT or cutting charges and an electronic device (timer/detonator)?

I didn’t propose the initial idea, but it actually could probably work if the plane was flying [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001021802...], and [https://tetrazolelover.at.ua/WpnryInTheWoods/Zhang2015_Artic...]. You’d want to run some significant calculations first to get the airspeed/timing just right, but yeah.

It would be one hell of a show. Like a tactical nuke, probably.

Edit: did the math because I was curious. A fully fueled 747 contains approximately 9 trillion joules of energy worth of fuel (not counting any payload, or the energy in its aluminum fuselage - which would be significant). A ton of TNT equivalent is 4.181 gigajoules. So the fuel load of a 747, if properly detonated, would be “equivalent” to a 2KT nuclear bomb.

A 747 has a maximum payload capacity of an additional 100-120 tons.