hypo- *IS* deficient john you dumbfuck - that's as braintarded as putting a new ELECTRONIC ENTERAINMENT SYSTEM in an old car to somehow make the diving experience "simpler" and "more pure"
List of Objects at Lagrange Points
Nothing is there now. In 2011 Boeing proposed putting a station there for a reusable lunar lander, so it's pretty safe to assume there would be if we were making regular trips to the moon's surface.
I tried to keep my autism in check, but you niggers wouldn't let it lie.
As I make this moonrocks post, remember: As a nation-state actor, moon rocks are dumb as hell. You would need nuclear power to launch big enough moon rocks, so if you're building a deterrent WMD, just build nukes. Moon rocks are dumb. Now, if you are a bunch of angry, dumb prisoners with mining equipment...
So, ignoring that Moonbase Wu is an expensive boondogle that'll cost billions to just keep supplied let alone function as a deterent - I mean, sure the Russians know where our silos are, but we don't have to send the missile officers into space when its time to change crews.
However, its not as vulnerable to counter attack as people seem to think. You can't just set up a mass driver on earth and return fire. The reason for this is because earth has an atmosphere. The same atmosphere that makes things heat up on reentry doesn't care if you are going up or down - if you launch something from earth's surface at escape velocity (as you need to do with a massdriver) it will heat up to full reentry temperature in your railgun, and possibly explode. So even ignoring the 6x gravity you need to fight, you won't be able to retaliate with railguns.
Rockets Accelerate (fairly) slowly and constantly, meaning they suffer less atmospheric friction. So you could launch nukes at the moonbase, but that has its own problems. So the ISS gets pelted with a fair bit of debris - most of it man-made - but being that it above the surface most things are falling away from it; its small, fairly hard to hit target. The moon gets hit by debris - a lot. You will probably need some sort of anti-meteor defense for your moonbase; defenses occupants could use against rockets.
Now sure, you've got a whole planet, they have a moonbase, and could probably just send more nukes than they can shoot down.
The next trick is hitting a target. To hit a target 300,000 miles away with an unguided projectile takes a lot of computational horsepower. But lets face it. If you're putting reactors on the moon and railguns that can launch 11,000 tons of mass, you probably have computers powerful enough to crunch the numbers and CNC mill you the right shape and give you the right current to pop into your railguns.
Now if you really wanted to build your moonrocks launcher, here's what you do.
The fucker needs nuclear power, so you build it on the darkside of the moon. No one can see it. If you've got the computational horsepower to hit city over 300,000 miles, you can probably throw in a hookshot using the moons gravity without too much trouble.
You also ideally build a few of the fuckers, and you do this so you can launch multiple packages. And 11,000ton object isn't tiny, but in the grand scheme of space, it is. If your launchers are on the dark side of the moon, probably no one realizes you've launched until they start glowing from reentry.
I tried to keep my autism in check, but you niggers wouldn't let it lie.
As I make this moonrocks post, remember: As a nation-state actor, moon rocks are dumb as hell. You would need nuclear power to launch big enough moon rocks, so if you're building a deterrent WMD, just build nukes. Moon rocks are dumb. Now, if you are a bunch of angry, dumb prisoners with mining equipment...
So, ignoring that Moonbase Wu is an expensive boondogle that'll cost billions to just keep supplied let alone function as a deterent - I mean, sure the Russians know where our silos are, but we don't have to send the missile officers into space when its time to change crews.
However, its not as vulnerable to counter attack as people seem to think. You can't just set up a mass driver on earth and return fire. The reason for this is because earth has an atmosphere. The same atmosphere that makes things heat up on reentry doesn't care if you are going up or down - if you launch something from earth's surface at escape velocity (as you need to do with a massdriver) it will heat up to full reentry temperature in your railgun, and possibly explode. So even ignoring the 6x gravity you need to fight, you won't be able to retaliate with railguns.
Rockets Accelerate (fairly) slowly and constantly, meaning they suffer less atmospheric friction. So you could launch nukes at the moonbase, but that has its own problems. So the ISS gets pelted with a fair bit of debris - most of it man-made - but being that it above the surface most things are falling away from it; its small, fairly hard to hit target. The moon gets hit by debris - a lot. You will probably need some sort of anti-meteor defense for your moonbase; defenses occupants could use against rockets.
Now sure, you've got a whole planet, they have a moonbase, and could probably just send more nukes than they can shoot down.
The next trick is hitting a target. To hit a target 300,000 miles away with an unguided projectile takes a lot of computational horsepower. But lets face it. If you're putting reactors on the moon and railguns that can launch 11,000 tons of mass, you probably have computers powerful enough to crunch the numbers and CNC mill you the right shape and give you the right current to pop into your railguns.
Now if you really wanted to build your moonrocks launcher, here's what you do.
The fucker needs nuclear power, so you build it on the darkside of the moon. No one can see it. If you've got the computational horsepower to hit city over 300,000 miles, you can probably throw in a hookshot using the moons gravity without too much trouble.
You also ideally build a few of the fuckers, and you do this so you can launch multiple packages. And 11,000ton object isn't tiny, but in the grand scheme of space, it is. If your launchers are on the dark side of the moon, probably no one realizes you've launched until they start glowing from reentry.
The next trick is hitting a target. To hit a target 300,000 miles away with an unguided projectile takes a lot of computational horsepower. But lets face it. If you're putting reactors on the moon and railguns that can launch 11,000 tons of mass, you probably have computers powerful enough to crunch the numbers and CNC mill you the right shape and give you the right current to pop into your railguns.
Theoretically, launching a ballistic projectile from the moon to the Earth and hitting a precise target requires solving a 4-body problem. I'm not sure that's even possible.
In reality, the tiniest errors in the weight of the projectile, the speed of the launch, and the altitude and azimuth of the launch will make the weapon wildly inaccurate. An ability to correct the projectile's post-launch course is essential.
And while these gedankenspiele are interesting, they have nothing to do with Rocket Scientist John, who thinks that the moon is like a big ol' airplane flying round the Earth and that you can literally drop rocks from the moon and hit targets on Earth.
There's no need for missiles or mass drivers or nuclear power plants or supercomputers -- you just kinda eyeball your target and drop the rock, which will hit its target with the energy of "hundreds" of nuclear bombs, which would require a "rock" that weighs 230,000 tons to equal the energy of 200 Hiroshima bombs. Let's assume that John's 230,000-ton rock is lunar basalt and weighs 188 pounds per cubic foot. His rock will be an easily handled 2,446,808 cubic feet, which will give you a cube 135 feet long on each edge. While Mississippi John could easily drop this rock from the moon as it flies over the target, others might have trouble fitting it in their mass drivers.
Theoretically, launching a ballistic projectile from the moon to the Earth and hitting a precise target requires solving a 4-body problem. I'm not sure that's even possible.
Solving a four-body problem isn't the problem; solving it within timeframes that allow you to use the result for anything useful is the problem. then yes, as you said, the reality gets significantly messier. Especially since you can never actually test the fucking thing.
But again, you're completely correct. Nobel-Laurette Engineer Miss'ippi John (who as you remember, won the prize in automotics for installing a stereo in a porsche and recharging his A/C, two feats that have never been equaled) would solve this 4-body problem issues by simplying making a long enough lever that he could shove a 135ft^3 basalt cube out of side of the Moonplane that circles the earth.
The next trick is hitting a target. To hit a target 300,000 miles away with an unguided projectile takes a lot of computational horsepower. But lets face it. If you're putting reactors on the moon and railguns that can launch 11,000 tons of mass, you probably have computers powerful enough to crunch the numbers and CNC mill you the right shape and give you the right current to pop into your railguns.
It's not just computational horsepower though (even Isaac arthur mentions it in his orbital bombardment episode)- the problem isn't just more crunching , possibly solar raditona pressure, micro debris deflection, mechanical precision, and in the military proposition.. countermeasures (somebody mentioned sand-casting for instance)
as far as the hardware precision -- they were harnessing an industrial machine for military purposes -- so either they were sending the same general sized thing at the same speeds that they have been sending (which probably isn't that fast b/c it's not-economical...as the energy will go up as the square) in which case Earth is already set up to intercept and recover
or they are sending something way off spec with no possibility of test fire/tuning
(and an instant telegraph that it's a weapon...and subject to....get this kinetic countermeasures!)
In your last post you mentioned in the story, they were the unwashed masses"that had a reactor but couldn't weaponize it (might as well dirty bomb it in a regular commercial delivery. So if they can't weaponize a nuke plant, with super computers and the CNC mills - are they really going to be able to re-engineer a first unit AND build a secondary unit in complete secrecy
seems more like plot armor.
I mean shit, my physics teacher in college had to check in with the gubment every 6 months or so (he wasn't a US national)
of course there is the opposite problem too, since you are railgunning with the 'super computer' the calc precision can be matched on the other side to deploy countermeasures (which could be a simple running a "space tuck" into it...or a daedelus detonation), and since it's ballistic flight, ain't nothing you can do abt it
The thing about a meteor defense applies both ways. If we've moved to industrialization enough to put up a permanent moon base, then Earth could very well have one for larger rocks...you know things that might come in with nuke-level energy - or simply repurposing just about anything flying (like the craft that are doing pickup on the normal cargo)
esp with a kinetic weapon, hitting it with just about anything
I doubt Earth would try to counterattack with railgun even if there was availability...and since space is already industrialized, might not be coming planet side. But if it would, it would probably be rockets. which can have active guidance -- so a meteor defense system designed to take out ballistic rocks might not work so well against a guided system
Luna has the opposite problem, no atmosphere, so ACM guidance all the way down is practical
but the easiet 'counter-attack' would be abandonment -- no resupply, and the hell of 1/6g for a short, very miserable life.
It does come off a little A team in a couple of places
building the gizmo
quick BA, militarizes this railgun to gnat shooting accuracy and build a whole other one in secret but don't look at our operating nuclear facilities with on duty nuke engineers that they've been doing since the late 40s and for god's sake man, don't notice we are a mining operation. ..that'd be too hard
and the elite paramilitary bad guys who can't land a shot
as moonnecks (space rednecks) we are able to calc out a trans-lunar ballistic trajectory to installation-level precision (we'll pretend uncontrolled variable don't exist)
but somehow the guys who made the things can't reverse plot that from a fixed firing position and send out countermeasures even though space-travel is now so common that we have commercial goods being shipped and they aren't constrained to ballistic deployment.
but John sort of shoots himself in the foot - you know why he installed that apple play system...as he says in his podcast he "instinctively" checks twitter alerts and that's why he installed it
If John weren't such a hypocrite, I'd agree with his general idea that the current trend of installing touchscreens and other bullshit in cars is a bad idea. I will never buy one of these fucking vehicles. The nicest car I recently saw was a 1949 Ford. I'd rather have one of those than any of these touchscreen monstrosities.
It does come off a little A team in a couple of places
building the gizmo
quick BA, militarizes this railgun to gnat shooting accuracy and build a whole other one in secret but don't look at our operating nuclear facilities with on duty nuke engineers that they've been doing since the late 40s and for god's sake man, don't notice we are a mining operation. ..that'd be too hard
and the elite paramilitary bad guys who can't land a shot
as moonnecks (space rednecks) we are able to calc out a trans-lunar ballistic trajectory to installation-level precision (we'll pretend uncontrolled variable don't exist)
but somehow the guys who made the things can't reverse plot that from a fixed firing position and send out countermeasures even though space-travel is now so common that we have commercial goods being shipped and they aren't constrained to ballistic deployment.
hehe - interesting way of putting it.
I guess as A-Team (and I am STILL not flying with any crazy Murdock) is an action-adventure morality play that takes dramatic liberties, so does MiaHM.
The thing about MiaHM is it's political allegory and I think some of the technical points are done for expediency.
though I do find it a bit strange..heinlein was a naval officer.....that'd he miss some things
the problem with Luna is it'd be more of an installation than a colony.
unlike a colony that is resource rich (which is why you'd colonize) and is independently viable (indigenous population is a good indicator if it can support itself in basic living functions), the moon is maybe more like midway that has value, but it's independently viable. Luna would probably act more as a facility with need for re-supply, tours of term-employment and so forth.
but I think Heinlein is taking that liberty to move the story along as political allegory as he may very well be doing with the technology (both in kind and in asymmetry) to move the story along.
sci-fi often employs very 'speculative' means as a narrative device (and the piece was written mid-60s how hard the SF is..welllll -- as SF has developed we've seen distillation into sub-genres with the hard getting hard)
Starship troopers had FTL to move the story along
Stranger in a Strange Land had Martians
again, to allow for the commentary of the theme...they are devices in the literary sense rather than the utilitarian sense
take another author's work, Dune, also a socio-political allegory - with magical spices and made up ecosystems (not a criticism, they are narrative devices)
I think with all these guys. Like Pournelle, we have to distinguish between the fiction and non-fiction writing
Mote in God's eye : fiction
Thor proposal : non-fiction
the technical problems of a narrative device in even hardish SF reminds me of the chant : the ringworld is unstable, the ringworld is unstable!
If John's in Disney, then I am praying for the poor unfortunate souls who end up using the spinning tea cups after him. Young children should not be exposed to his rotting crotch wound detritus.
On the plus side, it's Florida, so a shaved wendigo and a screaming chink midget won't stand out at all.
Reminder: For the last 7 years since the playstation 4 was released, Wu has spent on average 3 hours each and every day inside her house playing just playstation 4 games. If the stats were available for every other gaming platform I'd be surprised if there were any time at all for going outside.
Quarantine made no difference to Wu's lifestyle and this performative bitching is pathetic.
Same as modern "racism", "rape" covers a lot of shit. There's a reason that "statutory" rape is clarified as such, and it's to distinguish between that and actually coercing an underage person into sex. It's still a crime, nobody is minimizing it, but a real journalist would want to be very careful to not open themself up to a lawsuit. But then again, John got bullied out of journalism school by that one sand nigger, so he probably never learned that.
