XPost: sci.military.moderated   
   From: schillin@spock.usc.edu   
      
   jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:   
      
   >In article ,   
   >John Schilling  wrote:   
      
   >>The book many people here are referring to and nobody is actually   
   >>naming because everybody assumes everybody else knows what it is,   
   >>is Robert A. Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", published   
   >>in 1966.   
      
   >	snip   
      
   >>So anything built for mercantile rather than military purposes, as   
   >>was the original lunar catapult in tMiaHM, will be designed to launch   
   >>hundred-pound buckets every second rather than hundred-ton barges every   
   >>hour.  And a hundred-pound projectile will shed almost all of its energy   
   >>harmlessly in the upper atmosphere.   
      
   >	There's also the question of why exactly someone would design a   
   >grain barge of any size to be able to reach the ground at Mach 25. What   
   >possible good could come of this?   
      
      
   A grain barge would have disintegrated in the upper atmosphere, resulting   
   in pretty fireworks as all the grain went to H2O, CO2, and assorted NOX.   
      
   Same thing would happen with a grain barge loaded with loose rock, except   
   fireworks would be of different hue depending on composition of rock.   
   For bombardment, hundred-ton chunks of *solid*, and relatively hard,   
   rock.  Some of the grain-barge hardware is necessary to accelerate   
   and steer the rocks, so you expend a grain barge with each shot, but   
   the hollow-container part of said barge is irrelevant.  Whether they   
   strip off just the parts they need and bolt them to the rock before   
   launch, or bolt the rock into the nose of a (mostly empty by volume)   
   complete barge and let the useless shell burn away a few seconds   
   before the rock hits, is unclear from the text and mostly irrelevant.   
      
      
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