Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@datamann.com> Wrote:
>>Me:
>>Are you trying to tell me with a straight face that there is no way to know
>>where a satellite in a stable orbit will be in one hour's time?
>Not enough to hit it with a bag of nuts without an active tracking and
>maneuvering system installed that doesn't deploy the nuts until its
>within a few miles of the target.
The orbiting moon is a long way away so we only know approximately where it is,
the error is about a inch and a half. Your space battleship would be a lot
closer so we could do a little better, making it about as useful in a modern
war as a sea battleship, the USS Sitting Duck. If you know where something
is you can destroy it, no exceptions.
> A cone balloon in free fall will without guidance not remain oriented
>toward reentry
And a warhead in free fall will not need to be oriented toward reentry until
seconds before it hits the atmosphere.
>a balloon will have a different mass, and therefore will follow a different
>trajectory than the much heavier IRV.
A different trajectory? Research has shown that is not true, it was done a few
years ago by a fellow named Galileo.
> the round object is a poor reentry vehicle [...]
BALLOON! I said balloon. Put the cone shaped warhead in a aluminum coated
Mylar balloon like the sort kids have at birthday parties. Obviously a balloon
would disintegrate the instant it hits the atmosphere and I'm surprised I even
have to spell this out.
>You said it was orbiting opposite that of the SBLs, thus a retrograde
>(east to west) orbit.
What?
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:50 MDT