Given this geographic data, I think we need to use a howitzer-launched cruise missile, with the full terrain-following guidance package.
Does anyone know of the feasability of laser targeting in this particular case?
It seems to me that the ability to discern a laser point on a molten lava target might leave something to be desired.
My other thought is that, given the wall of your standard cinder cone volcano, target illumination would have to be done by air, in which case you might as well launch from there as well.
(And no drones either; I wouldn’t count on them against a dragon)
Couldn’t we turn this to our advantage? If the laser-guided shell can’t distinguish the heat from the lava from a laser, wouldn’t it just home in on the lava without laser guidance?
As I understand it, the glow of the lava won’t make a difference, unless it’s laser lava. 
Laser light is different than normal light, being coherent and of one frequency, and that difference lets it be detected despite any reasonable* amount of normal light.
It can, as I said above - which is why a heatseeker might be a better option.
- I added “reasonable” because I just know that otherwise someone would pop in and say, “That’s silly ! A supernova would melt the detector !” or something of the sort.
Certainly not. Supes’s resistance to magic is minimal, so he’d have been defenceless against the Ring’s lure. Then it would have been all the world against the Kryptonian Ringlord. Welcome to hell.
What about a catapult?
Covered in my first post and **Silenus’ ** post.
I must say that for once the Google Ads have served up some useful links. I get one advertising the Lord of the Ring musical in London and another offering to sell 2 museum artillery pieces. 
Huh. I’ve been wondering why they’re trying to get me to visit a divorce lawyer in Houston. 
I think Tolkien made it pretty clear that only a Hobbit who was a member of the Landed Gentry could perform this task. Samwise couldn’t do it because he was a servant and thus obviously had inferior blood coursing through his veins.
But Samwise could carry Frodo, even though Frodo had to carry the Ring.
Therefore, strapping Frodo to a piece of heavy artillery and shooting him at Mount Doom would also have been perfectly acceptable.
It would have made for a much shorter book, however.
Sauron: Launch detected. Deploy Mt. Doom chaff and flare countermeasures!
“What do you mean, Frodo Baggins approaching?”
“Open fire. All weapons. Dispatch war rocket ‘Ajax’ to bring back his body.”
“Mr Frodo, Mr Frodo, I love you, but we’ve only got 14 hours to save Middle Earth!”
IIRC Mt. Doom was the only acceptable place to destroy it not because it was magic, it was just the only place hot enough. I’m fairly certain that it was mentioned that dragon’s breath could have done the trick, they just didn’t have a dragon handy.
The end of this battle practically writes itself. 
Other rings could be melted by dragons, but not the One Ring:
“It has been said that dragon-fire could melt and consume the Rings of Power, but there is not now any dragon left on earth in which the old fire is hot enough; nor was there ever any dragon, not even Ancalagon the Black, who could have harmed the One Ring, the Ruling Ring, for that was made by Sauron himself.”
I have to go look into this, but do you suppose there were no other active volcanoes to be found somewhere in Middle-Earth? No Dragon could melt the One Ring and I think it was implied the One Ring needed to be destroyed where Sauron made it.
muldoonthief’s quote, confirms the part about no Dragon. There is some more in the one of the texts that might clear up the Volcano requirement. Paging Doctor Qadgop the Mercotan.
This is from wiki, so it is not definitive, however …
Jim
IIRC, in the First Age, when Morgoth occupied his vast fortress complex in the frozen north, his activities there also sprouted some volcanoes.
Nazgul with torches flying on fell beasts ?
Now, I have to ask…does it matter what lava from Mt. Doom the Ring is melted in? Would the stuff bubbling out of the peak be just as effective as the pool of lava in the Crack of Doom, or would it be appreciably cooler/less magical?
Do I want to know what they’re using for chaff?