Tom Wagner wrote: >... > P.S. Does anyone know who it was that said (in the 1900s?) that there was no > propellant strong enough to hurl an object into orbit? As I recall he said > that dynamite couldn't do it and at the time that was the most powerful > "propellant" known. According to Arthur C. Clarke's book, Profiles of the Future, it was Professor A.W. Bickerton in 1926 who wrote: "This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd length to which vicious specialization will carry scientists working in thought-tight compartments. Let us critically examine the proposal. For a projectile entirely to escape the gravitation of the earth, it needs a velocity of 7 miles per second. The thermal energy of a gramme at this speed 15,180 calories... The energy of our most violent explosive - nitroglycerine - is less than 1,500 calories per gramme. Consequently, even had the explosive nothing to carry, it has only one-tenth of the energy necessary to escape the earth ... Hence the proposition appears to be basically impossible... ACC then proceeds to tear this argument into tiny shreds, of course. ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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