D'oh! (RG miscalculation)

1 posts ยท Sep 17 1999

From: Kent Nordstrom <knord@q...>

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 10:51:12 -0400

Subject: D'oh! (RG miscalculation)

Apologies to all for this; I must have been drinking decaf this morning.

I just wrote a long missive talking (in part) about how RGs could shoot slugs
at 0.01c and hit something 30 million km away in "about 2 minutes." This is,
of course, way, way off. That should properly be "about three hours," which
argues against my call for slower RGs, or that 1" is something much less than
1 million km. I'm not sure why 1"=1million km sticks in my head. (Maybe I was
thinking 1" = 1 million m, and switched it around.)

If 1" = 1000km, then the 0.01c railgun hits 30" in about 10s, which seems nice
and reasonable (I did the math on paper this time and checked it, instead
doing it in my head and dropping prefixes left and right).

The stuff about the kiloton was correct, however.

Keep 'Em Calculating,