[LMB] (chat) new essay

[William A Wenrich]

Mark Mandel wrote
<quote>
If we're getting into the soletta, _that_ project is itself impossible. The
mirrors can't reflect more energy than they receive from Komarr's sun. If
the soletta reflects all its energy onto a planetary "footprint" with the
same area as the mirrors*, that footprint _and nowhere else_ will get full
one-sun insolation from the soletta in addition to whatever it gets directly
from the sun. If the reflection is spread out to cover the whole visible
(almost-)hemisphere, or indeed any significant fraction of the planet's
surface, it will fade to insignificance. I'm afraid Her Ladyship just made a
boo-boo here, and I can't see any reasonable way to fix it.

* ignoring issues of angle of incidence, which would make the reflected
insolation even weaker

</quote>

All we know about the size of the soletta is:
1)	The original seven mirror array was a major undertaking for a the
colony. Remembering that they had star travel and a lot of money coming in
from the wormholes (if not they wouldn't have been trying to terraform
anyway.
2)	It is small enough to receive major damage from the ore freighter
(ok it was really the wormhole imploder/grav pulse, but the orders of
magnitude couldn't have been that far off or Professor Vorthys would have
smelled a rat much earlier.)

Note to Nick Rosen on the lift tube/Perpetual motion machine: Aren't you
assuming that the power used by the lift tube is not proportional to the
weight lifted? If you don't count that, an ordinary elevator is a PM.


----------
William A. Wenrich
I am a Christian, husband, father, son, and American. Here I stand. I can do
no other. God help me!