Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:00:19 -0800 (PST)
From: Jerry Friedman 
Subject: Re: (urth) contra Summa contra Marcus


--- matthew.malthouse@guardian.co.uk wrote:
...
 
> A question.
> 
> The Whorl of the Long Sun produces a facsimilie of gravity through spin.
> Otherwise when we see it there is no other acceleration.  Is there (and
> I
> ask because I can't remember) any mention of how the Whorl behaved when
> traveling?  I'm thinking here of AC Clarke's Rama and it's circular sea
> with one shore higher than the other to prevent the water flooding over
> the land when Rama is under acceleration.
> 
> A linear path is simple enough but a circular one would require
> accelerations in directions other than parallel with the access of the
> Whorl - either constant or periodic.  The first suggests some motive
> force
> applied at an angle to the direction of travel, the latter might be
> effected by an attitudinal adjustment.
> 
> In either case how large a force could be applied without it being
> perceptible to the inhabitants?  And is there a mid-trajectory
> roll-over?

The acceleration, either for a straight-line path (speeding up and
slowing down) or for a curved path, would have to be negligible
compared to g (or g on the _Whorl_ if that's different).

> >> IV. The objection from gravitation
> >>
> >> This has been discussed to death ... but ... it's very hard
> >> to produce a plausible argument for Green as a satellite of
> >> Blue (even an escaped satellite) without producing tidal
> >> effects of a scale that dwarf those described by Horn.
> >
> >It is not possible that the Blue/Green system could be gravitationally
> >stable.   Ergo, it is recent.
> 
> Yet the Neighbours have a long history of interaction with the Inhumi.
> Ergo the orbital arrangement of Blue and Green must have been stable for
> minimally several thousands of years of that history and potentially for
> periods sufficient to have impact on the evolutionary development of the
> species.
> 
> So we have a contradiction between celestial mechanics and narrative.
> It's
> fiction, not history, so narrative is our only evidence and it would
> appear that celestial mechanics can go hang.  ;-)

I totally agree.  The celestial mechanics doesn't work at all,
independent of whether Blue is Ushas or not, and it works only slightly
better if Gagliardo's numbers are wrong.

-- 
Jerry Friedman

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