# vampires rocket from Green to Blue *The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 01 Sep 2000* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Michael Andre-Driussi *01 Sep 2000, 12:46* > Robert Borski wrote: > Of course, maybe the inhumi can fly faster than 50mph, although I'm still > not sure how they propel themselves over that 105,000 miles of void. (I'll > spare you my theory about short digestive tracts and le Petomaine-type > locomotion.) Oh good, I was going to mention bio-rocketry! I was also toying with making ablative re-entry shields from polar ice (ah, but this adds to the liftoff mass; a handy field of comet ice already in orbit?), or bio-ceramic heat tiles that could be generated, or maybe the inhumi can become "gaseous" like movie vampires (at which point maybe they could play with their own density for smooth, slow re-entries?). These are all just playful thoughts toward the landing side: the problems of lift-off seem a tad more difficult. (Vernean supercannon?) The gravity tide created by the close encounter is enough to raise huge tides (obviously: even puny Luna raises tides around here). Given a really high mountain (Mount Everest) as the launch pad and the gravity assist of the other world swinging into the sky, I wonder how low the escape velocity (of a 1 g world) could possibly become? That is, I wonder if a Blue/Green "Lagrange Point" would dip deep into the world's atmosphere . . . No, no of course not. But where would the L-point be at closest conjuction? =mantis= *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Kevin J. Maroney *05 Sep 2000, 14:25 · follows Michael Andre-Driussi* > At 12:46 PM 9/1/00 -0700, Michael wrote: > I was also toying with making ablative re-entry shields from polar ice (ah, > but this adds to the liftoff mass; a handy field of comet ice already in > orbit?), or bio-ceramic heat tiles that could be generated, or maybe the > inhumi can become "gaseous" like movie vampires (at which point maybe they > could play with their own density for smooth, slow re-entries?). These are > all just playful thoughts toward the landing side: the problems of lift-off > seem a tad more difficult. (Vernean supercannon?) We know the inhumi can fly on Blue. If the inhumi can spread themselves thin enough to drift down in the atmosphere of Blue, then they don't need heat shielding. Our space vehicles need serious heat shielding because on re-entry they are basically falling through atmosphere, not flying or gliding. One engineer I know described the Space Shuttle's reentry as being "as graceful as a falling brick". Compare this to the flight of a low-orbit airplane like the U-2--the U-2 didn't have much in the way of heat shielding, because its descent was controlled flight. I agree that the problem of launch from Green is by far the more puzzling, unless the inhumi can somehow teleport (because of residual Neighbor blood making distance less certain?). ``` Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney at ungames.com Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction http://www.nyrsf.com *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ``` ---