(urth) The Apu-Punchau Eclipse

[Jeff Wilson]

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> Tzadkiel's Ship -- *counting its sails*, is significantly bigger than a mile
> in diameter, at least for purposes of shadow-casting. Solar sails have
> to be (a) very very large and (b) quite opaque in order to be effective.

LEO velocity is about 5 miles per second, so each second of eclipse is 5 
miles worth of ship, plus the penumbra penalty (altitude times twice the 
tangent of the sun's arc width (0.5 degrees)). There would also need to 
be some means of maneuvering the entire ship within a moment or a 
massive number of crew available to trim the sails in a like period of time.

The mentioned but not seen tender could also have been used, as it seems 
to have some indefinite capacity and size.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >