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Running the Interdiction

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Wed, 2014-06-04 00:21

#52

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

A mass shot from the moon

A mass shot from the moon needs a velocity i the neighborhood of 14km/second. On the otherhand to make it to high lunar orbit you only need 1.6 km/s. I'm sceptical that there are any mass drivers on the moon capable of the needed velocity there's no good use for them. I say that while eating my hat. I wrote an adventure where luna was bombing earth with their orbital launchers. Then I felt dumb when I did the math. Anywho, from what I gather there's no way to be subtle about it. Any flight up will bring serious heat. Why has the PTB left such a serious security hole as the remaining elevator? Am I right in figuring that the elevator is a minimum 18 hour trip one way?

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Wed, 2014-06-04 00:58

#53

kindalas

I think your math is wrong.

OneTrikPony wrote:
A mass shot from the moon needs a velocity i the neighborhood of 14km/second. On the otherhand to make it to high lunar orbit you only need 1.6 km/s. I'm sceptical that there are any mass drivers on the moon capable of the needed velocity there's no good use for them. I say that while eating my hat. I wrote an adventure where luna was bombing earth with their orbital launchers. Then I felt dumb when I did the math. Anywho, from what I gather there's no way to be subtle about it. Any flight up will bring serious heat. Why has the PTB left such a serious security hole as the remaining elevator? Am I right in figuring that the elevator is a minimum 18 hour trip one way?

When I checked here it says that on the moon require 2.4 km/s to hit escape velocity, but only 1.4 km/s when firing at earth since earth's gravity is "pulling" at the surface of the moon. So 5400 km/h can be done in 2:24 accelerating at 1G over a 114 km long "barrel". So lobbing rocks at earth can be done with a magnetically accelerated rail-car system where targeting is done by varying release velocity and location with extra track being used to slow the rail-cars down. Is it a shock that there is a rail line circumnavigating the moon's equator. As for aero-breaking once a object gets deep enough into the atmosphere some trusty rocket thrusters can be used for breaking so heat shields won't be needed. And if you can time it just right and have some covering mass driver fire to fill the sky with debris landing should be easy. Now leaving Earth would require a tremendous amount of velocity and then a bunch of costing along with a bunch of mass-driver flack to confuse the interdiction. I'd say Landing on earth would have an 75% chance of success. Take-off say 50% If you survive the 10% chance of surviving on the surface. And if you have mass-driver fire covering you in both directions. Kindalas

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Wed, 2014-06-04 01:10

#54

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Oh c'mon!

Oh c'mon! What's an orderofmagnitude between freinds? Thanks Kindalas. Guess I'll try to figgur it again.

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Wed, 2014-06-04 03:10

#55

lets adapt lets adapt's picture

I'd guess the space elevator

I'd guess the space elevator is up because it's still in use in one fashion or another.

Wed, 2014-06-04 03:37

#56

Smokeskin

kindalas wrote:

kindalas wrote:
When I checked here it says that on the moon require 2.4 km/s to hit escape velocity, but only 1.4 km/s when firing at earth since earth's gravity is "pulling" at the surface of the moon. So 5400 km/h can be done in 2:24 accelerating at 1G over a 114 km long "barrel". So lobbing rocks at earth can be done with a magnetically accelerated rail-car system where targeting is done by varying release velocity and location with extra track being used to slow the rail-cars down. Is it a shock that there is a rail line circumnavigating the moon's equator. As for aero-breaking once a object gets deep enough into the atmosphere some trusty rocket thrusters can be used for breaking so heat shields won't be needed. [...] Now leaving Earth would require a tremendous amount of velocity

These things tend to be symmetrical in terms or energy needed though. You'll need to shed a tremendous amount of energy going down too. So you'll either need to do the usual highly energetic heat-shield-requiring aerobraking going down, or bring some seriously big rocket thrusters - the same size you'd need to travel to the Moon. The main problem is that the moon is in a very high orbit. The potential energy from there is massive and it will have to go somewhere. Even at a dead drop from the Moon, you'll be falling for over 5 days and hitting the atmosphere at almost 10 km/s. That's more than LEO velocity.

Running the Interdiction

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