Posted on 09/09/2005 5:26:35 AM PDT by nuke rocketeer
Actually, just a new material able to withstand the stresses of being used for an orbital elevator.
Also, the glass break could be helped with carefully timed explosives if necessary...
But, it didn't generate temperatures nearly as hot as a nuke would.
Well ok, send a bullet up just ahead of the ship. The bullet gets sacrificed.
And I bet there would be plenty of volunteers who would fly it up.
Why am I not surprised? I once read about someone placing a jet engine on a car just for kicks. It took them a while to figure this out after they wondered what made the big splat on the side of a mountain.
If it can be made to be no riskier than the space shuttle, many would kill for the chance. Of course sailing up towards a window would take some nerve....
At the speeds we're talking about, plasma, not broken glass would be the result. Think a bird strike at 600 mph looks ugly? Try 7,000 mph. 1/2e=mass X velocity squared
That was the first objection I had. So you create the world's longest vacuum chamber, and then pull the plug on it to let your payload out. Now you have an SAT question in the making - what happens when a payload traveling 8 km/s hits a wall of air traveling x km/hr in the exact opposite direction? Now you're not just hitting the atmosphere, you're hitting a not-insignificant headwind that you have to fight through before you even get out of the tunnel.
A window that is smashed, or is blasted, apart at the right moment could render this interval very small. Keep the ship moving straight with a massive rotating wheel inside serving as a gyro stabilizer. (Wheel rotation can be braked after emerging to allow turning the ship.)
Actually, I addressed that, but the head wind would be less than abruptly hitting the static atmosphere, as the pressure would decrease as it expanded.
If that's a problem, send a slower bullet ahead of the ship timed appropriately.
Well, the mass of the chunks of glass are the issue not their tensile strength. Again, birds are fragile compared to jet airplanes, yet do enormous damage. This is orders of magnitude greater than than.
Also you you catch up to and impact the "slower" bullet.
This is really, really fast guys.
The "cap" issue is one of the easier problems to solve. The vehicle has to enter static atmospheric pressure at some point, so you simply open the door, while selectively bleeding nitrogen into the tube down a section of its terminus, making the transition a smoother one.
If as you say it all turns to plasma, there won't be anything for the ship to hit. And there are other ways to break the glass, such as a guy with a hammer. Well kidding about that, but an explosive charge properly shaped and placed could scatter the glass outward from the mouth of the tube.
I'm sure the Coyote bought something like that from Acme catch the Road Runner.
Good read.
Very good read! I am an incurable Niven/Pournelle fan. However, I knew about Orion even before that. Poul Anderson also used an Orion in "Orion Shall Rise". Beofre that I head heard about from one of my engineering professors in college.
The pressure of what? The atmosphere? I don't think so.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.