Re: [OT] Bureau of Relocation

Roger Books wrote:
> 
> I've been thinking a bit about this, the planet to orbit is trivial
> in the published universe.  Why?
> 
> Well, lets see, we have antigravity.	If it is sturdy enough to be
> used in a tank it will be used in the civilian world.
> 
> With antigravity you can basicly turn electricity into height.  Let's
> see, the formula for potential energy is:  mgh (IIRC).
> 
> So, assume each colonist needs 10 (metric) tons of gear to get started
> and we need to lift it to, oh, say 100Km.  That would be:

	Well, we have a first problem with this: this material is NOT
now at
orbital velocity. In order to get it there, it needs to be moving fairly
fast. Now, I suppose you can leave your anti-gravity on, but eventually
you'll have to MOVE the stuff, and I presume that antigrav drains some
power.

> 1E6m * 10m/sec2 * 1E4Kg, or about 1E11J  A Joule is 1Watt/Second
> 
> 1E11/3.6E6 = 2.8Kw-Hours.  Even assuming 10% efficiency that's still
> only 28Kw hours to orbit.
>
> Roger (Feel free to check my math, I haven't done this since
>	 my last Physics class years ago and may have made a mistake.)

	I see only one problem. 1e11/3.6e6 = 2.8e4kW-hours, or 28
megawatt
hours. Not a math problem, just a division problem. At 10% efficiency,
that gives us a power consumption of 280 MW-hours, which is (IMO) fairly
large.

-Brian Quirt