{"id":51,"date":"2006-10-03T09:44:50","date_gmt":"2006-10-03T16:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/?p=51"},"modified":"2006-10-03T09:44:50","modified_gmt":"2006-10-03T16:44:50","slug":"earth-is-a-harsh-mistress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/2006\/10\/03\/earth-is-a-harsh-mistress\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth is a Harsh Mistress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientistspace.com\/article\/dn10180\">New Scientist<\/a> reports that an Air Force study suggests using an electromagnetic catapult to launch satellites into orbit or rocks at other cavemen. Gee&#8230;where have I heard that <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moon_is_a_Harsh_Mistress\">before<\/a>?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Proponents of the idea say it would be much cheaper than conventional rocket launches. But critics warn that the technology would be difficult to develop and that the intense <em>g<\/em> forces experienced during launch might damage the very satellites being lofted into space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, no, that wouldn&#8217;t work for people, except as a means of capital punishment.\u00c2\u00a0 Heinlein didn&#8217;t event the mass driver, but he suggested a great use for it: to fire raw materials into space. That would be handy when building structures in space.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, Heinlein also envisioned using it as a weapon, which can easily be an application of this device too. Still, nifty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Scientist reports that an Air Force study suggests using an electromagnetic catapult to launch satellites into orbit or rocks at other cavemen. Gee&#8230;where have I heard that before? Proponents of the idea say it would be much cheaper than conventional rocket launches. But critics warn that the technology would be difficult to develop and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7V2xo-P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}