"we could always throw rocks"

Anton Sherwood (dasher@netcom.com)
Mon, 20 Jan 1997 19:05:55 -0800

Damien Sullivan asks
: ... when you shoot rocks at Earth, how long will it take them
: to get there? ...

Some astronomer - Flammarion? - computed that if a satellite
is stopped dead in its tracks, the time to fall is 1/sqrt(32)
of its period. So a rock dropped at Earth from lunar distance
takes 116 hours.

Anton Sherwood *\\* +1 415 267 0685 *\\* DASher@netcom.com