At  10:02 AM 4/14/01, Dennis Handly wrote:
>Jim Phillips ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
>: "ASTEROIDS could be used to destroy enemy cities in what astronomers
>: describe as a deadly game of "cosmic golf".
>
>There was a science fiction book by the name of Newton's Cannon? where
>France did that to London, around the 1700s in this alternate universe.
>
>The astroid "winter" didn't help the victors.

Robert Heinlein's "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" describes a penal colony
on the moon revolting and using a magnetic accelerator designed to launch
50 ton, steel-encased shipments of ore back to earth to bomb targets on
Earth.  The book points out the advantage of using converting potential
energy to kinetic energy by letting objects fall from height and then the
sudden stop converts the kinetic energy to heat... lots of heat in the case
of 50 tons falling 240,000 miles in Earth's gravity well.

One of my favorite lines in the story is when the computer points out that
they can stop the daily hammering of Cheyenne Mountain (where the biggest
major military complex in the story is supposed to be and where I believe
NORAD is located presently) because "It's not there anymore."

--
Jeff

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