> * spike wrote : That means
> > the shield absorbs about 4600 calories per gram, or
> > about 1100 joules per gram.
>
> Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: hmmmm.... i think there's something wrong there.
Dooooh! You are right Alejandro. Damn, that explains why my
home calc disagreed with the one I did at work. Good deal, tho!
That lowers the erosion rate by more than an order of magnitude.
(2.6E8 joules per second) / (1.9E4 joules / gram) = 13 kg/sec
(13 kg/sec/km^2)* (m^3/900 kg) * (24*3600 sec/day)*
(km^2/1E6 M^2 ) = or 0.13 cm/day. For 45 years.
Thats only 21 meters thickness, which suddenly sounds
at least possible. Now I hafta look again at that estimate
for the density of hydrogen and helium in interstellar
space. Thanks Alejandro! spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:36 MDT