You have to remember to take into account the direction of re-entry.
Shuttles re-enter west to east to match the rotation of the Earth.
Re-entry the other way would mean you would have to add 24,000 MPH
relative to the ground.
This poses interesting questions for ground based detection - would
assault forces always be required to enter in the same direction as the planet
orbited? Would it make placement of defenses easier if you knew they always
had to come in (taking the US on Earth for example) over the
West Coast first? Or would they re-enter on the far side of the planet
and transit in atmosphere to the target site?
This might be a reason for building large squadrons of atmospheric
interceptors.
--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----
***
You have to remember to take into account the direction of re-entry.
Shuttles re-enter west to east to match the rotation of the Earth.
Re-entry the other way would mean you would have to add 24,000 MPH
relative to the ground.
***
Aha! So, everyone who gets my nascient concept of a planetary assault campaign
map, Schoon's already received, remember this point!
If you want to get some feel for orbital maneuvering (and how blasted
difficult it can be) download the freeware simulator "Orbiter" from:
http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/~martins/orbit/orbit.html
The physics are totally real; most of the vehicles are futuristic SSTOs, but
the newest version includes the Shuttle. There's also a heap of 3rd
party add-on craft.
I mess around with it, but I don't have the math to get serious. It's still a
very cool simulator. (and free, too!)
The manual & tutorial are very good, and will give you some idea of orbital
math even if you're as innumerate as I am...
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 06:13:09PM -0800, Brian Burger wrote:
You evil man you! I was going to do some work this morning!
Highly recommended to anyone with a Windows box to run it on...
> On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Roger Burton West wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 06:13:09PM -0800, Brian Burger wrote:
Yes, Orbiter is a very cool program. Even just kicking a ship into some sort
of low orbit and watching the world roll by underneath is really amazing.
And thank you, I know I'm evil. I recommend distracting simulations, and I
even hold public opinions on countries I'm not a citizen of. (I am, of course,
the only person on this list to *ever* do so.)
Enjoy the sim - you obviously didn't really need to work after all. <g>
> And thank you, I know I'm evil. I recommend distracting simulations,
*And* you split infinitives. <g>
> Laserlight wrote:
The future is now. The Infinitive reactor, harnessing the energy of the split
infinitive.
> On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Jaime Tiampo wrote:
> Laserlight wrote:
Jaime, you nearly had to buy me a new keyboard... I had a mouthful of ice
water when I read this! <g>
I'm glad you've found even more depths to my evil, Laserlight. I hadn't
considered grammar as a source. (except from that teacher I had back in 6th
grade, of course...)
> Brian Burger wrote:
> > > *And* you split infinitives. <g>
> I'm glad you've found even more depths to my evil, Laserlight. I hadn't
Always happy to be of service. Keep working at it, and perhaps we can
start an Axis of Even More Evil. ;-)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
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> On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, laserlight@quixnet.net wrote:
> >I'm glad you've found even more depths to my evil, Laserlight. I
The Axis of Grammatically Incorrect and Slightly Evil?
Sounds good to me!
> > Always happy to be of service. Keep working at it, and perhaps we
Based on comments from other Canadians (eg TomB), maybe it's "Axis of
> On Thu, 14 Mar 2002, Laserlight wrote:
> > > Always happy to be of service. Keep working at it, and perhaps we
Sounds workable; SatireWire's original article had "Canada, Mexico, and
Australia formed the Axis of Nations That Are Actually Quite Nice But Secretly
Have Nasty Thoughts About America"...
Either one sounds quite Canadian, really.
Eh?