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

Just think KE=(1/2)m*v*v.
It's a "kinetic-kill weapon".
Throw (or drop) anything fast enough and explosives become
superfluous. Of course, there are atmospheric effects to
consider. These effects will define the "terminal velocity"
of your tungsten/depleted-uranium KKW.
 
- Sam

>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?
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-  
>-----
>
>Even the engineers are not *this* depraved.  This must be the work of
the
>Med. students.
>
>						 - A friend of mine
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-  
>-----
>
>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
>>

________________________________________
Samuel Reynolds
http://www.primenet.com/~reynol
reynol@primenet.com
samuel_reynolds@csgsystems.com