Re: Planetary defenses

The Macross version was limited in arc in that it didn't have
mirrors.  It was somewhat aimable in that it could cover a
portion of the sky - in the series it eradicates a couple of
hundred (thousand?) ships in a beam a couple of miles wide
that went whipping around the sky like a search-light.	If I
remember correctly it was located somewhere in Alaska.
Of course the Zentradei ships covering the Southern Hemisphere
and those over Europe were untouched.

scipio@interlog.com wrote:

> >	  What about something like the "Grand Cannon" from
> >	  the anime "Macross" (or the first third of "Robotech") ?
> >
> >	  The barrel was several hundred feet in diameter, and
> >	  went miles into the ground.  The weapon beam was somehow
> >	  "steerable", like the electron beam in a computer monitor
> >	  cathode ray tube.  Raster-scanning the sky.
> >
> Correct me if I am wrong but didn`t something like that need mirrors
in
> orbit so it could be aimed? Once the mirrors went down wasn`t it kinda
of
> ineffective?
>
>			  Scipio