Re: Lunar combat (was: Re: [OT] Moon Dragon Review?)

Ground Zero Games wrote:
> at least some of their thrust downward to counteract the gravity pull
- if
> they lose their drives, then they will accelerate downward and crash
just
> like an aerospace craft in atmosphere. Though I've forgotten an awful
lot
> of physics in the last 20 years, am I right in thinking that on an
airless
> world the higher you fall from the faster/harder you will impact,
given
> that there is a constant acceleration imparted by gravity and there is
no
> air drag to produce a terminal velocity effect?

Correct.  However, your acceleration will be lower vis a vis the Earth,
since the Moon has less Mass (and therefore generates a 'shallower'
well) then
the Earth.  On the flip side, given the hostile environment awaiting
you, any
sort of crash could prove fatal.  (Remember, your space suit was made by
the
lowest bidder... (8-) )

Anybody want to actually do the calculations of the energy transfered to
an
airframe at impact on the moon versus that on the Earth?  I don't have
any
of my physics textbooks here at work.  (Oerjan?  (8-) )

J.

-- 
Jerry Han - jhan@idigital.net - http://www.idigital.net/jhan - TBFTGOGGI
*    "They say this Highway is goin' my way,   | Billy Joel -	       *
*	but I don't know where it's takin' me" | "Running On Ice"      *