Re: NGE: Science of the "Official" Second Impact?

Jack Bohn wrote:

Ken Arromdee wrote:

For a followup, calculate the length of time it would take for the Lance of
Longinus to fly to the moon at any reasonable speed.

7 miles per second escape velocity from Earth (sorry, Metric
System, this number is engraved in my consciousness), quarter of
a million miles to the Moon, we'll just assume it keeps a
constant velocity, I make around 36,000 seconds, ten hours.

It occurs to me that "reasonable speed" is a different thing for
the trip from the Moon to the Earth. You don't want to be trying
to catch an object moving at the speed of a meteor (your average
meteor, not one shot at the Earth at 0.95c).

Let's make it at rest - to at rest, half-accelerate,
half-decelerate trip.

At 1g, unless I've made a mistake, it comes out to less than two
hours.

Unfortunately, the travel time decreases with the square of the
acceleration. To get the lance to our pilot's hand within ten
minutes would require 100 g acceleration for a mid-point speed of
more than 200,000 miles per second.

(I hope Side 1 hasn't been built, they'd have something to worry
about.)

--
-Jack

.

Relevant Pages
Loading