I have learned a new reason for a spaceship not to land on a planet. Nuclear energy can lift and lower large masses but:
"To build up her fantastic velocities, [the Thunderbolt] must spurt out ions at nearly the speed of light: which required immensely long accelerating tubes, open to the vacuum of space. They would arc over and burn out if air surrounded the charged rings." (p. 226)
Couldn't the rings be covered for a descent with retro-rockets?
Lifeboats are useless at hyperbolic speeds, i.e., greater than Solar escape velocity, because smaller craft would run out of reaction mass before decelerating sufficiently.
There were only four men in the Western Reformist hijack gang and Banner has killed them one by one but now there is the problem of decelerating the sabotaged Thunderbolt. The human problem has generated a physical problem but Andersonian heroes are problem-solvers.
3 comments:
I would think that the bigger problem is that ion drives produce low acceleration for a long time, which is excellent for going anywhere to anywhere in a solar system *except* for getting from a planetary surface (or within an atmosphere) to orbit. For this later situation the ion drive & power supply is just dead weight you are best off leaving in orbit.
The fact that the ion drive works poorly (at best) in an atmosphere just adds to how it becomes dead weight in that situation.
Jim, I expected an answer from someone with more knowledge than me.
Kaor, Jim!
It's good to have someone as knowledgeable in the sciences as you commenting here.
Ad astra! Sean
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