RE: Drifting to DSII (was Re: New Fighter Types (drifting OT....))

Yeah, I think it was a RL system-concept.  I don't know if it was
something 
that a bunch of SF writers came up with, or military think-tanks, or
what. 
 It was years, if not decades before the SDI project - which had some
good 
ideas, too.  It wasn't quite the city-buster described earlier - might
as 
well throw rocks from Luna if you're going to do that (thanks, Mr. 
Heinlein!).  It was more of an anti-armor system.

Noah

-----Original Message-----
From:	Chen-Song Qin [SMTP:cqin@ee.ualberta.ca]
Sent:	Tuesday, July 21, 1998 08:10 PM
To:	FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
Subject:	Re: Drifting to DSII (was Re: New Fighter Types
(drifting OT....))

There were actual RL plans for building these weapons?	Were these
connected with Star Wars or something?

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Even the engineers are not *this* depraved.  This must be the work of
the
Med. students.

						- A friend of mine

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On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Brad Holden wrote:

>
>    Actually...yes.  But I was thinking that the THOR system (a real 
project,
>    never developed, AFAIK...) was more along the lines of a crowbar,
or
>    something.  Fired from OWP (Orbital Weapons Platforms).  We never
made 
the
>    good stuff (Orion, Thor, etc.).
>
> Well, Orion and Thor kinda expensive (though from a military/power
> projection standpoint Thor would be an awesome replacement for Nukes.)
>
> A prototype for Orion was built using high-explosives, see John
McPhee's
> The Curve of Binding Energy for details.
>
> 7.2e15 Joules of energy is a bit steep for a battlefield weapon, thats
> more a city destroyer.  Maybe the original poster got the units wrong?
> The Thor I read about was more like 1m long an 0.5 cm in diameter, 
something
> small enough to survive reentry and not leave an enormous crater.  It
has
> the added bonus of not killing the poor slob ordering the fire 
mission....
>
>
> cheers
> brad
>