[TML] Guns in Space!

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 1 Sep 2007 at 17:55, Timothy Little wrote:

> Andrew Long wrote:
> > At some point in the mission, the pilots jettison their propulsion
> > unit in what they call the 'garbage burn' - just point it at Earth
> > and light the touch paper.
> 
> Hehe.  A far better "garbage burn" would be to point it 'behind' them.
> That would double the reduction of perigee.  It would also reduce the
> orbital period so that if it missed, they'd have vastly longer to deal
> with it.

The female commander points this out.

She also notes that they had picked up the bad habit during training 
in a low orbit station where things dumped that way *would* deorbit 
quickly from atmospheric drag. And theorizes that they had trainees 
"dump the garbage" that way *there*, because it's the one burn that 
they didn't have to worry about the trainees pointing it in the wrong 
direction (get the "backwards" burn flipped and you'll have a nasty 
problem half an orbit later).

> Of course, then there wouldn't be a story from it.

Oh, the author did a good job of justifying everything. 
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com