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From: bryan@druhi.UUCP (BryanJT)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Ringworld implausibilities
Message-ID: <1449@druhi.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Nov-86 10:27:47 EST
Article-I.D.: druhi.1449
Posted: Mon Nov 24 10:27:47 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Nov-86 22:44:34 EST
References: <383@rutgers.RUTGERS.EDU> <256@viper.UUCP> <336@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> <1735@ncoast.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information System Labs, Denver, Co
Lines: 24
Summary: Sorry

In article <1735@ncoast.UUCP>, allbery@ncoast.UUCP writes:
> Then of course, there's the superconducting cloth.  Room-temperature super-
> conductors are barely plausible; but cloth???  Anything flexible enough to
> qualify as a "cloth" would be too thin to handle the trick where they
> use a strip of cloth, one end in a lake and the other hanging over the Slaver
> sunflowers, to ``de-fang'' said sunflowers.

Sorry, but it was superconducting *wire* that they used in this case,
although the floating platform thingee was wrapped in superconducting
cloth.  That wire wouldn't have to be any stronger than a kite-string,
really; the platform was set to hover at some altitude so the string was
only to keep it from drifting away on the wind.  What's wrong with the
idea of making superconducting material in wires and then weaving the
wires into cloth, anyway?

-- 
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John T. Bryan              USENET:  ...!ihnp4!druhi!bryan
AT&T Information Systems   PHONE:   (303) 538-5172
12110 N. Pecos, #8C350     QUOTE:   I didn't mean what you thought I meant
Denver, CO  80234                   you said.
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