Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 2465-2469 (10-14 June, 2013) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread
Border Reiver:
It's still cool - even if impractical.
Anyone else hear Mr. Rhys-Davies line from the Two Towers? (Keep breathing, that's the ticket.)
snubnose:
--- Quote from: ZoeB on 14 Jun 2013, 01:44 ---
--- Quote from: Skewbrow on 13 Jun 2013, 23:59 ---TL; DR; Orbital bombardment doesn't sound very energy efficient. You spend a huge amount of energy to get that mass into orbit only to have atmospheric drag consume most of it when falling.
--- End quote ---
Only if in a circular orbit. A high eccentricity "Molniya" type orbit, all you need is a slight nudge at apogee. That way perigee would be inside the Earth ie you get re-entry, at a near-normal angle if you do it right.
--- End quote ---
Yes, but then your options where to enter the atmosphere are much more limited.
PintsizeForPresident:
--- Quote from: Skewbrow on 14 Jun 2013, 04:33 ---So I don't know how much delta vee they could get, or need, from the retro rocket.
--- End quote ---
A few 100 meters per second is enough for re-entry from low earth orbit. You could easily attain that by firing a gun from a space station, backwards.
If you are so inclined, you could see for yourself how re-entry works with Orbiter. It is a very good, realistic spaceflight simulator, with a tech level that's on par with the QCVerse (i.e., single stage to orbit spaceplanes). It is a bit like a flight sim, in that it lets you perform all necessary maneuvers by hand. It also lets you do dockings with a space station, moon landings (and you can accelerate time to make it less tedious) and even interplanetary flight. And if you really want to go hardcore, there's an Apollo package which includes an emulator for the Apollo Guidance Computer that runs a copy of the original software.
ink slinger:
Shouldn't the current poll question have an obligatory: "I, for one, welcome our new intelligent spider overlords?"
DSL:
--- Quote from: ink slinger on 14 Jun 2013, 09:06 ---Shouldn't the current poll question have an obligatory: "I, for one, welcome our new intelligent spider overlords?"
--- End quote ---
That's covered if you vote for both "offer waffles" and "offer Cheerios."
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version