[geeks] ultralight suicide mission

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 @ 09:55 -0700, Dan Duncan said:

> On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> > Jump off the trailing side, on the other hand, and you'll smack into the
> > cable.  You'll smack into it relatively gently, as far as lateral
> > velocity is concerned; but you'll be moving downward at a pretty good
> > clip by then, and it'll probably hurt, especially if you hit a car on
> > its way up.
> 
> Even if you don't hit a car, think "belt sander" or "bandsaw."
> If it didn't flay your skin off, it would probably at least
> shred your spacesuit at which point you'd be dead anyway.

Also, how would you jump off of the tether?

I would think the only place you could jump off would be the station,
which needs to be fairly far out because they want it to be zero or
slightly negative Gs. The counterweight is at geo-synchronous altitude.

Also, from what I've read if you jumped off the station, you would not
fall, you would be flung away from Earth. Part of the reason for the
station location is to make launches easy.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["There is no such thing as security.  Life
is either bold adventure, or it is nothing -- Helen Keller"]