All your heroes are sad and old. And eating porg chops.
Funnily enough, though, the whole "bombs dropping straight down in space" was one of the few things that had a fairly straightforward and logical explanation--they were electromagnetically accelerated along the rails and just continued at their final accelerated velocity to their targets.
Alas, though, the time for that review I was going to write has come and gone. I still have all my notes and my outline, but it has been so long since I've seen it now that I don't think it would be fair to write it. If I do ever see it again, though, I definitely want to crank something out. That way it will be far too late to the party to have any sort of relevance.
You'll recall that my own explanation relied on the ship's artificial gravity, but magnetic acceleration would be better in that it would get the bombs going at faster than 9.8m/(s^2). But that brings up the question of whether one is shooting bombs instead of dropping them. And if the bombs are being shot out, are they still bombs? (At Dictionary.com, definition #1 for "bomb" suggests bombs are dropped; definition #2 calls bombs a type of "missile," suggesting they can be launched or shot.)
Most people probably think of bombs as being dropped--that is, accelerated by gravity--as opposed to accelerated through other means. However, if you think of it in a slightly different way, a bomb is basically a munition that is propelled by an external force, while a missile is a munition that propels itself. So, whether a munition is dropped and accelerated by gravity or accelerated by another external force, it is still a bomb. Although, technically, anything that is propelled is a "missile." It's all semantics, really.
(Incidentally, the idea of magnetic acceleration is not something that I came up with. The bombers in the film are MG-100 StarFortress SF-17s, and according to Wookieepedia, they accelerate their payload of proton bombs by passing them through "sequenced electromagnetic plates." Yes, I did way too much research for a review I never even ended up writing.)
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All your heroes are sad and old. And eating porg chops.
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough, though, the whole "bombs dropping straight down in space" was one of the few things that had a fairly straightforward and logical explanation--they were electromagnetically accelerated along the rails and just continued at their final accelerated velocity to their targets.
Alas, though, the time for that review I was going to write has come and gone. I still have all my notes and my outline, but it has been so long since I've seen it now that I don't think it would be fair to write it. If I do ever see it again, though, I definitely want to crank something out. That way it will be far too late to the party to have any sort of relevance.
You'll recall that my own explanation relied on the ship's artificial gravity, but magnetic acceleration would be better in that it would get the bombs going at faster than 9.8m/(s^2). But that brings up the question of whether one is shooting bombs instead of dropping them. And if the bombs are being shot out, are they still bombs? (At Dictionary.com, definition #1 for "bomb" suggests bombs are dropped; definition #2 calls bombs a type of "missile," suggesting they can be launched or shot.)
ReplyDeleteMost people probably think of bombs as being dropped--that is, accelerated by gravity--as opposed to accelerated through other means. However, if you think of it in a slightly different way, a bomb is basically a munition that is propelled by an external force, while a missile is a munition that propels itself. So, whether a munition is dropped and accelerated by gravity or accelerated by another external force, it is still a bomb. Although, technically, anything that is propelled is a "missile." It's all semantics, really.
ReplyDelete(Incidentally, the idea of magnetic acceleration is not something that I came up with. The bombers in the film are MG-100 StarFortress SF-17s, and according to Wookieepedia, they accelerate their payload of proton bombs by passing them through "sequenced electromagnetic plates." Yes, I did way too much research for a review I never even ended up writing.)
Derd,
ReplyDeleteYer sherd derfernertler wrert ther rerver. Er'd rerd ert fer sher.
Bert ert's bern ser lerng sernce er've sern ther dern ferm!
ReplyDelete