[LMB] authors goofs that bug me

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ed Burkhead" <edburkhead at insightbb.com>


>
> 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).

euuw....

The Soviets had some satellites in highly elliptical "Molniya" orbits--12 
hours, spent most of their time hanging high above the USSR in the northern 
hemisphere, and perigee was in the southern hemisphere--but the USA didn't 
tend to much use that sort of orbit, and the apogees of that type of orbit 
were NOT low earth....

> 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

Snort.
Author should have have a copy of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress pounded on 
himer's head...

> 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.)