From: Mark Grant (mark@unicorn.com)
Date: Tue Jan 14 1997 - 17:49:20 MST
On Tue, 14 Jan 1997, Michael Lorrey wrote:
> I was admitting my own mistake. See, even the hugely arrogant Mike can
> admit it when he is wrong. I was also posting the correct answer, which
> was not what Mark had posted.
Duh, in physics there's a widely-used concept of "order of magnitude"
calculations were you simply try to get within a factor of ten of the real
value. A factor of three is pretty good when you're only aiming for a
factor of ten. Whether it's fifteen or six tons is immaterial, because
it's certainly *not* ten thousand tons.
> Not at all. I was referring to atmospheric impacts. According to James,
> earthgov will still need to build and use meganukes to have as much of
> an impact under vacuum conditions as a much smaller nuke would on earth,
But as I pointed out, by James calculations a 10MT groundburst nuke on the
moon will have the roughly same effect on underground structures as on the
Earth.
> As you all have read my statements before, that war strategically is a
> competition of cost effectiveness in battle. These two differences, in
> gravitational potential and environment, between earth and the moon are
> significant in giving any lunar David a much more even hand against the
> terran Goliath.
The moon has a factor of four energy advantage, Earth has nukes; That's
it. As you say yourself, "there's no such thing as a free lunch"; shame
that Heinlein didn't apply that maxim to his own scenarios and not just to
other people's.
Mark
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Mark Grant M.A., U.L.C. EMAIL: mark@unicorn.com |
|WWW: http://www.c2.org/~mark MAILBOT: bot@unicorn.com |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:00 MST