[LMB] authors goofs that bug me

[Ed Burkhead]

Adventure novelist Dale Brown writes techno-thrillers about advanced Air
Force projects and technologies.

But, he habitually got everything to do with satellite orbits wrong (up
until I stopped reading his stuff in frustration).

In particular, I was irritated by a Dale Brown novel that revolved around
Soviets killing low orbit satellites - which somehow were stationary above
them (rather than whirling around the world every 90+ minutes).

And, the ultimate bad is a novel called "Iron Rain" in which there's a
veritable rain of meteors from fist size up to car size falling on buildings
near the characters.  These larger meteors impact with the same energy as if
dropped from a cargo plane at very low altitude.  They show less energy than
a 2,000 lb. World War 1 bomb, demolishing a building as opposed to blasting
a crater the size of the entire town.  (I kept it on my shelf, marked
"Terrible," to insure I never bought it again by mistake.)

Ed