On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 1:14:42 AM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> On 4/26/2022 8:08 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
> > On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 18:33:42 -0500, Lynn McGuire
> > <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 4/25/2022 5:44 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> >>> On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 16:07:18 -0500, Lynn McGuire
> >>> <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On 4/25/2022 2:45 PM, Magewolf wrote:
> >>>>> On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 10:02:35 -0700, Robert Woodward wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> In article <4f7e90f4-216b-4f82...@googlegroups.com>,
> >>>>>> Butch Malahide <fred....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 3:37:21 PM UTC-5, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> <SNIP! re: "Cold Equations">
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I don't know about any "Weird Science" story. I thought the precedent
> >>>>>>> for "The Cold Equations" was the 1952 story "Precedent" by E. C. Tubb
> >>>>>>> (two years earlier), which you can read at the Internet Archive:
> >>>>>>> https://archive.org/details/New_Worlds_015v05_1952-05/page/n29/mode/2up
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> It seems that every fool and his brother can tell us what's wrong with
> >>>>>>> Tom Godwin's attempt to write a stowaway-must-die story, but they never
> >>>>>>> bother to tell us how they would have done it better. Doesn't seem very
> >>>>>>> constructive to me.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Well, I have thought over the matter and my suggested improvement is to
> >>>>>> delete all the previous stowaway attempts (and thus the orders to
> >>>>>> execute stowaways). Thus, the space liner had procedures to drop off the
> >>>>>> shuttles for unscheduled deliveries which had worked up perfectly. An
> >>>>>> author contrived interplanetary drive* for the shuttle plus complacency
> >>>>>> on the procedures to use the shuttles results in one stowaway doomed to
> >>>>>> die.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> *the narrow margin has to be an unescapable part of the design.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Another way to look at it is that "fault" really does not matter in the
> >>>>> end. It is the designers' fault,it is the starline's fault,it is the
> >>>>> pilot's fault or it is the stowaway's it still ends up the same way. My
> >>>>> take away always was that emotions or fault or intentions had no effect
> >>>>> on physics.
> >>>>
> >>>> After rereading the story, I have suddenly realized that the EDS was a
> >>>> one shot. It would forever be a part of wherever it landed as it did
> >>>> not have the fuel for takeoff. They were throwaway ships just landing
> >>>> on the target planet and would be discarded once the pilot and the cargo
> >>>> left the EDS.
> >>>> https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-
> >>>> equations/
> >>>>
> >>>> "Some method of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency
> >>>> occurred on a world not scheduled for a visit had been needed, and the
> >>>> Emergency Dispatch Ships had been the answer. Small and collapsible,
> >>>> they occupied little room in the hold of the cruiser; made of light
> >>>> metal and plastics, they were driven by a small rocket drive that
> >>>> consumed relatively little fuel. Each cruiser carried four EDSs, and
> >>>> when a call for aid was received, the nearest cruiser would drop into
> >>>> normal space long enough to launch an EDS with the needed supplies or
> >>>> personnel, then vanish again as it continued on its course."
> >>>>
> >>>> If the EDS carried extra fuel then it could be too heavy to land properly.
> >>>
> >>> I'm sorry, but the numbers in that story just make no sense at all.
> >>> There's not enough information given to model it, but it's all
> >>> armwavium.
> >>>
> >>> He's going to a planet with an atmosphere. Fuel is in short supply.
> >>> But they'd rather waste this limited supply of fuel than provide a
> >>> heat shield and parachutes that would cut the amount of fuel required
> >>> significantly.
> >>>
> >>> Then there's that whole business of running at .1 g for two hours on
> >>> chemical rockets. That's a quite wide throttle range and it's
> >>> difficult to believe that they would be as efficient throttled back
> >>> that far as at their design thrust, so again he's wasting this
> >>> precious commodity of fuel.
> >>>
> >>> It's craptastic engineering at its finest.
> >>
> >> He is having to slow down with that 0.1 g. The space liner had a high
> >> delta V coming out of FTL.
> >
> > His engines can throttle up to something in excess of 1 g or
> > propulsive landing is not an option. So he's better off using them at
> > their most efficient setting, which is likely full throttle, than
> > throttled way back.
> >
> >> If the EDS is collapsible, then it probably does not weigh very much.
> >> Maybe only a couple of hundred lbs. Like I said, a one shot space ship,
> >> not much to it.
> >
> > Doesn't alter the fact that a heat shield and enough structure to
> > support it is lighter than 7 miles/sec of chemical fuel.
> Again, that means that you can only land on planets with a significant
> atmosphere. So, Mars and Europa would be out.

All successful Mars landers to date have shed the majority of their
speed by using heatshields and parachutes, relying on the planet's
atmosphere.

Europa has a near vacuum.

pt

On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:38:06 PM UTC-4, J. Clarke wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 14:22:40 -0700 (PDT), Ross Presser
> <rpre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 4:33:30 PM UTC-4, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> >> J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> schrieb:
> >> > On Sun, 24 Apr 2022 12:53:13 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
> >> >>I never really thought too much about that aspect of it. Apparently,
> >> >>democracy failed, and so they tried to preserve something as close
> >> >>to democracy as possible.
> >> >
> >> > It's a democracy. _Anybody_ can get the vote. They just have to (a)
> >> > want it badly enough, (b) be able to understand the rules, (c) show
> >> > that they are capable of following them, and (d) be lucky enough to
> >> > not die in the process.
> >> and (e) be lucky enough not to be cashiered.
> There's no luck involved. If you understand the rules and follow
> them, they can't cashier you. Everyone who left the service in the
> book did it either voluntarily or as the result of a major violation
> of the regulations.
> >> There is a bit of an
> >> inconsistency in the novel - on the one hand, it is stated that
> >> everybody who cares can join the service and vote, and there's
> >> at least one member thrown out of the MI with a remark "another
> >> civilian who will hate us for the rest of his life".
> I have searched the entire text of the novel using the keyword "hate"
> and separately the keyword "civilian" and can't find a statement to
> that effect.

The line is by Frankel, towards the end of basic training:

"and will wind up with one more civilian who will be against us for the rest of his days".

William Hyde

On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 4:33:30 PM UTC-4, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> schrieb:
> > On Sun, 24 Apr 2022 12:53:13 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
> >>I never really thought too much about that aspect of it. Apparently,
> >>democracy failed, and so they tried to preserve something as close
> >>to democracy as possible.
> >
> > It's a democracy. _Anybody_ can get the vote. They just have to (a)
> > want it badly enough, (b) be able to understand the rules, (c) show
> > that they are capable of following them, and (d) be lucky enough to
> > not die in the process.
> and (e) be lucky enough not to be cashiered. There is a bit of an
> inconsistency in the novel - on the one hand, it is stated that
> everybody who cares can join the service and vote, and there's
> at least one member thrown out of the MI with a remark "another
> civilian who will hate us for the rest of his life".

It's only an inconsistency if you accept Rico's view of how the world works. And as Heinlein makes
clear on a number of occasions, Rico isn't particularly sharp. Hendricks' "History and moral
philosophy" teacher (a course you had to take but didn't have to pass) would have alerted
the authorities to his political ideas. He was never going to get the franchise. Luckily he made
it easy for them.

William Hyde

On 4/28/2022 1:30 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 1:14:42 AM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>> On 4/26/2022 8:08 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
>>> On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 18:33:42 -0500, Lynn McGuire
>>> <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 4/25/2022 5:44 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 16:07:18 -0500, Lynn McGuire
>>>>> <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 4/25/2022 2:45 PM, Magewolf wrote:
>>>>>>> On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 10:02:35 -0700, Robert Woodward wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> In article <4f7e90f4-216b-4f82...@googlegroups.com>,
>>>>>>>> Butch Malahide <fred....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 3:37:21 PM UTC-5, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> <SNIP! re: "Cold Equations">
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I don't know about any "Weird Science" story. I thought the precedent
>>>>>>>>> for "The Cold Equations" was the 1952 story "Precedent" by E. C. Tubb
>>>>>>>>> (two years earlier), which you can read at the Internet Archive:
>>>>>>>>> https://archive.org/details/New_Worlds_015v05_1952-05/page/n29/mode/2up
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> It seems that every fool and his brother can tell us what's wrong with
>>>>>>>>> Tom Godwin's attempt to write a stowaway-must-die story, but they never
>>>>>>>>> bother to tell us how they would have done it better. Doesn't seem very
>>>>>>>>> constructive to me.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Well, I have thought over the matter and my suggested improvement is to
>>>>>>>> delete all the previous stowaway attempts (and thus the orders to
>>>>>>>> execute stowaways). Thus, the space liner had procedures to drop off the
>>>>>>>> shuttles for unscheduled deliveries which had worked up perfectly. An
>>>>>>>> author contrived interplanetary drive* for the shuttle plus complacency
>>>>>>>> on the procedures to use the shuttles results in one stowaway doomed to
>>>>>>>> die.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *the narrow margin has to be an unescapable part of the design.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Another way to look at it is that "fault" really does not matter in the
>>>>>>> end. It is the designers' fault,it is the starline's fault,it is the
>>>>>>> pilot's fault or it is the stowaway's it still ends up the same way. My
>>>>>>> take away always was that emotions or fault or intentions had no effect
>>>>>>> on physics.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> After rereading the story, I have suddenly realized that the EDS was a
>>>>>> one shot. It would forever be a part of wherever it landed as it did
>>>>>> not have the fuel for takeoff. They were throwaway ships just landing
>>>>>> on the target planet and would be discarded once the pilot and the cargo
>>>>>> left the EDS.
>>>>>> https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-
>>>>>> equations/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "Some method of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency
>>>>>> occurred on a world not scheduled for a visit had been needed, and the
>>>>>> Emergency Dispatch Ships had been the answer. Small and collapsible,
>>>>>> they occupied little room in the hold of the cruiser; made of light
>>>>>> metal and plastics, they were driven by a small rocket drive that
>>>>>> consumed relatively little fuel. Each cruiser carried four EDSs, and
>>>>>> when a call for aid was received, the nearest cruiser would drop into
>>>>>> normal space long enough to launch an EDS with the needed supplies or
>>>>>> personnel, then vanish again as it continued on its course."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If the EDS carried extra fuel then it could be too heavy to land properly.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm sorry, but the numbers in that story just make no sense at all.
>>>>> There's not enough information given to model it, but it's all
>>>>> armwavium.
>>>>>
>>>>> He's going to a planet with an atmosphere. Fuel is in short supply.
>>>>> But they'd rather waste this limited supply of fuel than provide a
>>>>> heat shield and parachutes that would cut the amount of fuel required
>>>>> significantly.
>>>>>
>>>>> Then there's that whole business of running at .1 g for two hours on
>>>>> chemical rockets. That's a quite wide throttle range and it's
>>>>> difficult to believe that they would be as efficient throttled back
>>>>> that far as at their design thrust, so again he's wasting this
>>>>> precious commodity of fuel.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's craptastic engineering at its finest.
>>>>
>>>> He is having to slow down with that 0.1 g. The space liner had a high
>>>> delta V coming out of FTL.
>>>
>>> His engines can throttle up to something in excess of 1 g or
>>> propulsive landing is not an option. So he's better off using them at
>>> their most efficient setting, which is likely full throttle, than
>>> throttled way back.
>>>
>>>> If the EDS is collapsible, then it probably does not weigh very much.
>>>> Maybe only a couple of hundred lbs. Like I said, a one shot space ship,
>>>> not much to it.
>>>
>>> Doesn't alter the fact that a heat shield and enough structure to
>>> support it is lighter than 7 miles/sec of chemical fuel.
>> Again, that means that you can only land on planets with a significant
>> atmosphere. So, Mars and Europa would be out.
>
> All successful Mars landers to date have shed the majority of their
> speed by using heatshields and parachutes, relying on the planet's
> atmosphere.
>
> Europa has a near vacuum.
>
> pt

All of Mars landers to date did not have a human inside of them.
Hitting the ground at 100 mph and bouncing is not an option here.

Lynn

Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
>On 4/28/2022 1:30 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:

>>
>> Europa has a near vacuum.
>>
>> pt
>
>All of Mars landers to date did not have a human inside of them.
>Hitting the ground at 100 mph and bouncing is not an option here.
>

You're a bit behind the times. None of the last three landers
have "bounced".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4czjS9h4Fpg

On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:05:52 PM UTC-4, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> writes:
> >On 4/28/2022 1:30 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >>
> >> Europa has a near vacuum.
> >>
> >> pt
> >
> >All of Mars landers to date did not have a human inside of them.
> >Hitting the ground at 100 mph and bouncing is not an option here.
> >
> You're a bit behind the times. None of the last three landers
> have "bounced".
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4czjS9h4Fpg

Perseverance touched down at 1.7 mph, not 100.

However, it did hit some high gee forces during descent. A
human carrying flight would use a more gentle angle.

Pt

On 27/04/22 11:22, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <sbKdnaua4o5qy_X_nZ2dnZeNn_rNnZ2d@giganews.com>,
> Leif Roar Moldskred <leifm@huldreheim.Home> wrote:
>> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>> Well, I didn't consider _that_ possibility either. I figured it was
>>> the ghost of her nephew, because that's whose grave she
>>> was looking for - Mary Magdelene sought the grave of Jesus,
>>> and she met Jesus.
>>
>> I suppose the contextual clues doesn't land with the same "obviousness
>> in hindsight" for modern readers as they would have for the story's
>> original audience,
>
> Quite true. What's the date of the story? Between the World
> Wars, anyway; a great many more English people were Church of
> England in fact as well as in name. And were very much likelier
> to have "She thought he was the gardener" go off like Big Ben in
> their heads.
>
> but the story's rug-pull is that he had not been
>> her _nephew_.
>
> No more than John was Mary's son _strictu sensu_. But Jesus
> said, "There is your son; there is your mother," and they took
> him at his word and adopted each other.

No. Please don't shoot the messenger but that is completely irrelevant
as the whole point of the story was not Christ mistaken for the gardener
but God's revelation, (rug pull), that her 'nephew' was actually her son
and his forgiveness of her life of deceit. There would be no need for
such detail otherwise and the mysterious confrontation with the other
woman with a deceitful cover for visiting the graveyard would otherwise
make no sense.

On 29/04/2022 05:03, William Hyde wrote:
> On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:38:06 PM UTC-4, J. Clarke wrote:
>> On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 14:22:40 -0700 (PDT), Ross Presser
>> <rpre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 4:33:30 PM UTC-4, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>>> J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> schrieb:
>>>>> On Sun, 24 Apr 2022 12:53:13 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
>>>>>> I never really thought too much about that aspect of it. Apparently,
>>>>>> democracy failed, and so they tried to preserve something as close
>>>>>> to democracy as possible.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's a democracy. _Anybody_ can get the vote. They just have to (a)
>>>>> want it badly enough, (b) be able to understand the rules, (c) show
>>>>> that they are capable of following them, and (d) be lucky enough to
>>>>> not die in the process.
>>>> and (e) be lucky enough not to be cashiered.
>> There's no luck involved. If you understand the rules and follow
>> them, they can't cashier you. Everyone who left the service in the
>> book did it either voluntarily or as the result of a major violation
>> of the regulations.
>>>> There is a bit of an
>>>> inconsistency in the novel - on the one hand, it is stated that
>>>> everybody who cares can join the service and vote, and there's
>>>> at least one member thrown out of the MI with a remark "another
>>>> civilian who will hate us for the rest of his life".
>> I have searched the entire text of the novel using the keyword "hate"
>> and separately the keyword "civilian" and can't find a statement to
>> that effect.
>
>
> The line is by Frankel, towards the end of basic training:
>
> "and will wind up with one more civilian who will be against us for the rest of his days".
>
Here's the entire paragraph, Frankel to Zim when Zim comes back and asks
to be assigned to a combat position:

"You’d have to take your turn, I outrank you. What do you think I’ve
been wishing the past hour? What do you think I was afraid of from the
moment I saw you come in here sporting a shiner? I did my best to brush
it off with administrative punishment and the young fool wouldn’t let
well enough alone. But I never thought he would be crazy enough to blurt
out that he had hung one on you — he’sstupid ; you should have eased him
out of the outfit weeks ago... instead of nursing him along until he got
into trouble. But blurt it out he did, to me, in front of witnesses,
forcing me to take of official notice of it — and that licked us. No way
to get it off the record, no way to avoid a court... just go through the
whole dreary mess and take our medicine, and wind up with one more
civilian who’ll be against us the rest of his days. Because he has to be
flogged; neither you nor I can take it for him, even though the fault
was ours. Because the regiment has to see what happens when
nine-oh-eight-oh is violated. Our fault... but his lumps."

Cheers,
Gary B-)

On Fri, 29 Apr 2022 20:50:06 +1000, "Gary R. Schmidt"
<grschmidt@acm.org> wrote:

>On 29/04/2022 05:03, William Hyde wrote:
>> On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:38:06 PM UTC-4, J. Clarke wrote:
>>> On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 14:22:40 -0700 (PDT), Ross Presser
>>> <rpre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 4:33:30 PM UTC-4, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>>>> J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> schrieb:
>>>>>> On Sun, 24 Apr 2022 12:53:13 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
>>>>>>> I never really thought too much about that aspect of it. Apparently,
>>>>>>> democracy failed, and so they tried to preserve something as close
>>>>>>> to democracy as possible.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It's a democracy. _Anybody_ can get the vote. They just have to (a)
>>>>>> want it badly enough, (b) be able to understand the rules, (c) show
>>>>>> that they are capable of following them, and (d) be lucky enough to
>>>>>> not die in the process.
>>>>> and (e) be lucky enough not to be cashiered.
>>> There's no luck involved. If you understand the rules and follow
>>> them, they can't cashier you. Everyone who left the service in the
>>> book did it either voluntarily or as the result of a major violation
>>> of the regulations.
>>>>> There is a bit of an
>>>>> inconsistency in the novel - on the one hand, it is stated that
>>>>> everybody who cares can join the service and vote, and there's
>>>>> at least one member thrown out of the MI with a remark "another
>>>>> civilian who will hate us for the rest of his life".
>>> I have searched the entire text of the novel using the keyword "hate"
>>> and separately the keyword "civilian" and can't find a statement to
>>> that effect.
>>
>>
>> The line is by Frankel, towards the end of basic training:
>>
>> "and will wind up with one more civilian who will be against us for the rest of his days".
>>
>Here's the entire paragraph, Frankel to Zim when Zim comes back and asks
>to be assigned to a combat position:
>
>"You’d have to take your turn, I outrank you. What do you think I’ve
>been wishing the past hour? What do you think I was afraid of from the
>moment I saw you come in here sporting a shiner? I did my best to brush
>it off with administrative punishment and the young fool wouldn’t let
>well enough alone. But I never thought he would be crazy enough to blurt
>out that he had hung one on you — he’sstupid ; you should have eased him
>out of the outfit weeks ago... instead of nursing him along until he got
>into trouble. But blurt it out he did, to me, in front of witnesses,
>forcing me to take of official notice of it — and that licked us. No way
>to get it off the record, no way to avoid a court... just go through the
>whole dreary mess and take our medicine, and wind up with one more
>civilian who’ll be against us the rest of his days. Because he has to be
>flogged; neither you nor I can take it for him, even though the fault
>was ours. Because the regiment has to see what happens when
>nine-oh-eight-oh is violated. Our fault... but his lumps."

And that doesn't alter anything I said. He violated the rules in a
major way and after due process of law was separated from the service.
Nobody prevented him from joining. And if he had not been stupid
enough to (a) punch his sergeant, (b) refuse to accept administrative
discipline, and (c) stated in front of the sergeant's commanding
officer that he had punched said sergeant, therefore compelling said
commanding officer to take official notice of the fact, he would have
continued serving.

There's no inconsistency at all.

On Sat, 23 Apr 2022 02:03:25 -0600, David Johnston
<davidjohnston29@yahoo.com> wrote:

> The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin: The margins can't be that tight.
> They'd be dying all the time

Poor people do die all the time.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at centurylink dot net

On Thu, 05 May 2022 22:09:49 -0400, Joy Beeson
<jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:

>On Sat, 23 Apr 2022 02:03:25 -0600, David Johnston
><davidjohnston29@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin: The margins can't be that tight.
>> They'd be dying all the time
>
>Poor people do die all the time.

I wasn't aware that starship pilots were poor people.