Rim Transport System

<< From: David Lesher wb8foz.TakeThisOut@panix.com >>


<< I recall the spill mountains as nowhere near that tall:
Ahh... Here it is...

It stood thirty miles tall against the base of the rim wall;
a half cone, with a weathered look.. >>

And in engineers, when they look at the wall in infrared before landing on the
spaceport, they watch the spill mountains go by and estimate them to be 30 to
40 miles tall.
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"ANIM8Rfsk" <anim8rfsk.DeleteThis@aol.comNOSPAM> wrote in message
news:20040918202317.22988.00000836@mb-m10.aol.com...
>
> It stood thirty miles tall against the base of the rim wall;
> a half cone, with a weathered look.. >>
>
> And in engineers, when they look at the wall in infrared before
landing on the
> spaceport, they watch the spill mountains go by and estimate them to
be 30 to
> 40 miles tall.

You know, the weird thing is, I was picturing the spill mountains as
tall as the rim walls. Go figure.

Have a great day!

Ami
"I have no need of friendship. Friendship causes pain. I am a rock." --
Simon & Garfinkel
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<< From: "Ami Fairchild" amif DeleteThis @delphidude.com >>


<< You know, the weird thing is, I was picturing the spill mountains as
tall as the rim walls. Go figure. >>

Well, it's hard to figure how the rim walls look like mountains at all. I
mean, they've got to be a uniform height. How can they look like anything but
a wall?
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"ANIM8Rfsk" <anim8rfsk DeleteThis @aol.comNOSPAM> wrote in message
news:20040919014241.25357.00000426@mb-m22.aol.com...
>
> Well, it's hard to figure how the rim walls look like mountains at
all. I
> mean, they've got to be a uniform height. How can they look like
anything but
> a wall?

I'm here thinking, "How do you respond to something like that?" You have
it exactly. There's the perfect response.

Have a great day!

Ami
"I have no need of friendship. Friendship causes pain. I am a rock." --
Simon & Garfinkel
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anim8rfsk.TakeThisOut@aol.comNOSPAM (ANIM8Rfsk) writes:




>Well, it's hard to figure how the rim walls look like mountains at all. I
>mean, they've got to be a uniform height. How can they look like anything but
>a wall?

There's ?1E6 miles? between them.


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is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
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<< From: David Lesher wb8foz RemoveThis @panix.com >>


<< >Well, it's hard to figure how the rim walls look like mountains at all. I
>mean, they've got to be a uniform height. How can they look like anything but
>a wall?

There's ?1E6 miles? between them. >>

Huh? The rim wall is continuous. You mean that the port and starboard are a
million miles apart? Why would that make them look less like walls?
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David Lesher wrote:
> anim8rfsk.DeleteThis@aol.comNOSPAM (ANIM8Rfsk) writes:
>
>
>
>
>
>>Well, it's hard to figure how the rim walls look like mountains at all. I
>>mean, they've got to be a uniform height. How can they look like anything but
>>a wall?
>
>
> There's ?1E6 miles? between them.
>
>



Could you explain the notation?

> ?1E6 miles?


tia,
TBerk
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"T" <tberk DeleteThis @sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:9jx3d.21641$UZ.9710@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com...
>
> Could you explain the notation?
>
> > ?1E6 miles?

It's computer-type scientific notation for 1,000,000. Also known as
1x10^6.

Have a great day!

Ami
"I have no need of friendship. Friendship causes pain. I am a rock." --
Simon & Garfinkel
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aidan.RemoveThis@abuse.demon.co.uk.invalidated writes:
> I don't think so. FoG is given as sticking up out of the
>sensible atmosphere, but depending on your definitions that could be as
>little as a couple of hundred km.

Actually, the height is stated in the book - FoG is a thousand miles tall.

>Off hand, can anyone remember the
>orbital altitude of Skylab?

268 miles. *
--
* PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
like corkscrews.
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In article <9jx3d.21641$UZ.9710@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com>, T wrote:
> Could you explain the notation?
>
> > ?1E6 miles?
>
It's short for "1 exponent 6", which actually means 10 raised to
it's 6th power. Viz 10 X 10 X 10 X 10 X 10 X 10 = 1,000,000. This is a
common computer-based representation for large (or small) numbers.
You'll also often see it represented as 1.0x10^6
You're familiar with units of measure such as kilograms and
grams? A kilogram is 1000 grams (originally) and so the name was
constructed from a Greek root for (something) and the original unit.
Similarly kilometer and meter and millimeter. There's a list of
standard multipliers at factors of 1000 so many times you'll see people
expressing a preference for expressing large numbers at these
particular powers. So you're more likely to see "radius of earth's
orbit = 146 X 10^12 metres" than you are to see the exactly equivalent
1.46 X 10^14 metres.
This is commonly referred to as "scientific notation".

--
Aidan Karley,
Aberdeen, Scotland,
Location: 57°10'11" N, 02°08'43" W (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233
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David Lesher <wb8foz RemoveThis @panix.com> writes:
 >Further confusion... how tall are the spill mountains? I seem to
 >recall them as being well below the wall...

Here's a little excerpt from Ringworld:

Nessus, standing in the doorway with his heads poised
above Speaker's shoulders, ordered, "Give us what magnification
you can."

The view expanded.

"Mountains," said Teela. "How lovely." For the rim wall was
irregular, sculptured like eroded rock, and was the color
of the Moon. "Mountains a thousand miles high."

"I can expand the view no further. For greater detail we must
approach closer."

You asked about the Spill Mountains specifically, and I think just for
practical reasons the spillpipes have to be a LOT lower than 1000 miles -
otherwise the flup will be constantly bombarding the ringworld at a couple
miles a second - not good for the Spill Mountain People.

But it appears that the walls *are* sculpted as continuous thousand mile
high mountains. With no horizon to block their view, they would be
soul-destroyingly tall for 10,000 miles or more from the ring wall. *
--
* PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
like corkscrews.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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<< From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) >>


<< But it appears that the walls *are* sculpted as continuous thousand mile
high mountains. >>

But the top is a straight line, what, 30 feet thick? At most the rim wall
might look like a curtain. I agree the BASE is sculpted to look like
mountains, but the top is translucent gray scrith reaching 1000 miles up and
terminating in a straight line.
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ANIM8Rfsk wrote:

 > But the top is a straight line, what, 30 feet thick? At most the rim
 > wall
 > might look like a curtain. I agree the BASE is sculpted to look like
 > mountains, but the top is translucent gray scrith reaching 1000 miles
 > up and
 > terminating in a straight line.

But you can't see the width of the rimwall from the surface, so that's
irrelevant. From the point of view of someone standing on the surface
near a rimwall, it would look like normal, rugged mountains, which segue
into a wall going up infinitely high.

It might seem strange for sphere dwellers, but the inhabitants of the
Ringworld are already used to the Arch and shadow squares. It's no more
artificial or different than those.

--
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