Coil guns vs. mass drivers

I would love to see the length being wrong.

The problems you mentioned for Australia are also true for Canada.
Transportation in Canadian Praries might be slightly better, but its
not the interstate system the U.S has.

It may not be as big a political nightmare here, because the area is
mostly private property, but is very sparsely populated.

In reality it becomes a question of how much is space based technology
worth to the planet?

Bill

--- In spacesettlers@egroups.com, "Darren Brown" wrote:
> --- In spacesettlers@egroups.com, "bill t" wrote:
> >
> > escape velocity = 11.2 km/s
> >
> > ad = 1/2 (v0^2 - v1^2 ) v1=0 (stationary)
> >
> > a= 5m/s^2
> > 5d=1/2(11 200^2)
> > d= 1.254x10^7 m ~ 1250 km
> >
> > Where to put it? Australian desert, Sahara desert, Canadian
praries.
> > Siberia? I personally like floating on kilometer wide balloons.
> >
> > Why would you care if you live beside it? Realistially most of it
> > would probably be buried anyway. If it to be built, what I imagine
> is
> > a strip of land 1 km long by 1500 km wide restricted area,
possibly
> > with overpasses for highways. People live beside railway tracks.
> >
> > Its a hard sell for the US because there is little uninhabited
> areas.
> >
> > You can literally drive a 1000 km along the Canadian praries
between
> > winnipeg and regina without ever seeing signs of life. It is one
big
> > wheat field. Becoming the space hub of the planet would be a
fairly
> > easy sell to Sasketchwan.
> >
> > Bill
> >
> Bill,
>
> Right now I'm really pressed for time but something still seems out
> of wack to me, so when I get a few seconds, I'll drag out my
> reference book from under the house, blow off the decades of dust
and
> see if the misty dim equation I'm remembering is even near right.
> But a few points first, I now see that this is in reference to the
> file you uploaded and I've only just opened, so I'll read the rest
of
> that before getting back to you. Next, let me tell you, the local
> concerned citizens groups would set up a gibbet in the town square
> with a noose just your size if you mentioned building something like
> that, even out where the only one to notice are frill necked lizards
> and goannas. The Federal government is trying to build a new
airport
> for Sydney and are finding the political price way too high, plus
> changes to the laws here a while back means that you would need to
> get the governments, federal/state/local on side as well as any
> aboriginal land councils + groups with an histroical connection to
> the area and any property owners on side and anybody with mineral
> rights (not always the property owner), a big ask, very big, also
you
> couldn't put any part near the old testing grounds or rocket ranges
> or the joint defence stations or anything underground near the
> artesian basin , that cut out a big area, in fact I'm not sure you
> could get 1500 km in a line without running foul of one of the above
> but I could be wrong. Then you would need to overcome a major
> problem that has always plagued us in Australia, take a look at a
> good map and see how many roads there are near the centre and then
> look how far it is from us to anywhere else in the world,
> infrastructure and distance are killers. And just before I go a
> quick calculation gives me a speed about 6 time more that you need
to
> get to LEO from your 1500 Km long coil gun, ~11 Km/sec for escape
~5-