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To: Fudd

Sounds kinda like a exotic weapon.

1300 G`s,wow

Niven used this launch system in Ringworld,or
was it for landing


16 posted on 10/03/2006 3:15:40 PM PDT by 31M20RedDevil
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To: KevinDavis

Space ping!


17 posted on 10/03/2006 3:19:07 PM PDT by bamahead (It is better to correct your own faults than those of another. - Democritus)
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To: 31M20RedDevil

Heinlein also used something like this located in India (IIRC) in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"


21 posted on 10/03/2006 3:29:10 PM PDT by AngryJawa ({NRA}{IDPA} Proud Infidel Since 1968)
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To: 31M20RedDevil

Niven also had some sort of anti-gravity inertial damper machine. IIRC. It's been 20 years.


28 posted on 10/03/2006 3:47:16 PM PDT by Fudd
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To: 31M20RedDevil
Niven used this launch system in Ringworld,or was it for landing

He described the rings as being for decelerating a ship returning to the Ringworld.  For those who don't know, the Ringworld is a ring 93 million miles in radius - one Earth orbit - which would make it 600 million miles long. It started with the mass of a Jupiter sized planet, and it's a million miles wide, about a thousand meters thick.  It has three million times the surface area of the Earth.  It was built by my species (literary spoiler reference to my screen name).

More precisely the rings would actually have been for accelerating or decelerating any returning space ship, as needed, to match the Ringworld spin rate (770 miles/second). The ship would then just maneuver over to a landing platform once it's matched the spin rate.  For "launching" the ship, already traveling at the Ringworld spin velocity while sitting on the platform, would just be "dropped" through a trap door, ala one of these satellites being flung into space and float away at roughly 1 gravity.

The superconducting rings were made from scavanged parts of the original designs steering jets, needed to keep the ring stable with it's star at the center of it's spin.  The Ringworld inhabitants who built the system didn't realize that they were endangering the entire Ringworld when they stole the parts for their system and for their Bussard Ramjet space ships, which also used the superconductors.  That stuff gets covered in Ringworld Engineers, Ringworld Throne and Ringworld's Children.  He also talks about the engineering of Ringworld in a neat essay, Bigger Than Worlds.

Can you tell I'm a bit obssessed? <g>

73 posted on 10/04/2006 10:39:02 AM PDT by Phsstpok (Often wrong, but never in doubt)
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