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From: ccjcl@bu-cs.BU.EDU (John C. Lotz)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Ringworld implausibilities
Message-ID: <2691@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: Wed, 26-Nov-86 23:41:28 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.2691
Posted: Wed Nov 26 23:41:28 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Nov-86 01:57:20 EST
References: <383@rutgers.RUTGERS.EDU> <256@viper.UUCP> <336@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> <771@nike.UUCP>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 20
Keywords: Sinclair molecule chain, Protectors
Summary: Wire and chain

In article <771@nike.UUCP>, kaufman@nike.uucp (Bill Kaufman) writes:
> ***SPOILERS!!!*** (Nothing most of you ain't heard before, 'tho,...)
> 
> In article <1735@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) 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.
> 
> Waitaminit.  Wasn't that a molecule-chain they used, as in Ye Olde Sinclair
> Molecule Chain--the strongest (at least, as of Gil Hamilton's time) piece
> of thread known to man--not a superconuctor?  As I remember it, the 'chain
> was what held the night-making plates together. (For a while.)
> 
 I looked this up. They used both superconductor wire, and molecule chain.
The superconductor was needed to pass the heat. Louis Wu used the
molecule chain to hold the plate once it reached altitude (he wasn't sure how  strong the superconductor wire was). 

jcl