Saturday, March 17, 2012

If the Moon Is a Harsh Mistress Happened in a Universe with Our Physics

Page 294: Lunar rebellion fires first shot from Super Seekrit fusion powered second catapult.

Page 295: U.N. missile fired from Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1 vaporizes the catapult's unhidable radiator.

5 comments:

Hugh Knight said...

Right, because anyone capable of installing a rock thrower on the moon would be incapable of also protecting it with a missle defense.

Will McLean said...

As you may recall, in the MIAHM, that was the case. They lost the first catapult because to protect it, their missile defense needed to be 100% effective at intercepting every attack, and like most systems in the real world, it wasn't.

Anonymous said...

The location of the first catapult was known to the Powers on Earth. The second catapult was built in a secret location. Mike oiuldn't have all his 'eyes' open at one time as they'd be easily hit by Earth's ships. He had to 'blink' them open one (or a few?) at a time to get fixes on the enemy. As will said they did the best they could with the what they had.

starbird said...

Terra might not have seen the need to militarize L1. And if they had, Luna might have been able to take it away; after all, it's a much shorter climb for the Loonies.

But for the fact that RH specified the general location of the second catapult in the book, we could get around the other problem by building the thing on the back side of the moon, where it would never be visible either to Earth or to L1.

Will McLean said...

Even if L1 was not militarized at the start of the book, sending a cruiser there once the rebellion started would have been an obvious response, and easier than sending one to Lunar orbit.

Heinlein was quite specific that the Loonies had no ships of their own.

If the second catapult had been built on the farside (and remember that its approximate location was known) it should also have been an obvious tactic to send a second cruiser to L2, and perhaps to do so in any case, since Mike is blind on the farside.