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,