Darth Fluffy

I would think using a super cannon does. It's basically TMiaHM with a different launcher. Although, it is also conceivable that the author missed the point that the falling effect was significant, perhaps was just thinking, 'shoot cannon'. Also touches on real life, some dude was trying to build a super cannon, back in the 80s or 90s to launch satellites.

That makes sense. Most of these concepts are much older than culture suspects.

This was amusing.

Recall, the original scenario is speeding toward a red light. You are moving horizontally, not vertically. You are eight light minutes from the sun, from the point of view of a relatively stationary observer. You, at relativistic speeds do not experience eight minutes; but this is more than mitigated by several things. You are already dead for most of the trip. Your car is at best a ballistic object, the ability to influence your direction disappeared early on when your tires lost contact with the road due to A. vaporization, and B. trajectory. But you don't hit the sun unless you happened by chance to be aimed that way; and there is some incentive to have not been driving in the direction of the sun in the first place. Most likely whatever remains of your vehicle will speed it's way out of the solar system, and eventually out of the galaxy. Granted, you can build a story around tweets. Humans are good at finding patterns even if there isn't an intrinsic one. I view the noise of the far right much like a vinyl record skipping. There really isn't a sense that there was a tune being played, you're just lost in the repetition of a short segment that keeps repeating. Read this for a sense of what I mean. There is a story there, but the main player has made himself a sad pawn with little voice, hasn't he? The one guy close to him who has some sense about this is likely to be $#!t canned for telling him he's wrong. TMiaHM used ore in canisters. The accelerator was intended to put the ore in orbit. As someone pointed out, if you vaporize a meteor that is heading toward the earth, the earth gets hit by a bunch of hot gas, a substantial part of the mass of the original meteor (depends on how far away you intercept in and such). Arguably, if your big rock breaks up, you may do even more damage, spread over an area rather than dig a deep hole. The main reason of course is it's cheaper; the rocks are already there. In the case of TMisHM, so was the initial launcher. (They knew it was going to be taken out, so they built a second, secret one.) FWIW, our Sunday expanded comics pages when I was a kid had some smallish panel that was like science wonders. I do not recall much about it, but the only one I remember was about Project Thor, A.K.A Rods from God, Jerry Pournell's thing. I saw it there before I read TMiaHM, it may predate the book, but I don't know.

Diane: "It's like me!"

That is the first place I recall seeing it in Sci Fi.

Maybe not. The concept predated the novel; Jerry Pournelle is credited with creating the concept in the 1950s. I'm sure it was widely known in their community before TMiaHM.

You are a projectile. You have no time to react. You don't even have time to register that you might need to react. I can't believe we are still beating this dead horse. The window collapses due to pressure differential, almost instantly. Your head ablates faster than the baseball, albeit, there's more to ablate. Otherwise, the sheet metal and plastic do not last long. The engine and transmission will be among the last survivors, so might protect you feet for a while. You are also bathed in blue shifted radiation. The sky in front of you might become dark as the light shifted above the visible, if your eyes weren't among the first things to go. The more polished ones tell stories. We happen to have one in particular who likes to tweet. He's been having a field day with Covid-19. Neither one is precise if it's not precise. Both are precise if you make them precise. It is more difficult, takes more effort, to make a bombardment from lunar orbit precise than from an inner orbit. The payoff in terms of destructive power is greater.

If I recall correctly, Millennium uses a similar technique.

His use of the word 'incompetent' is incompetent, so it's true.

'Technically', the best kind of 'true' ... Point of fact, though, that those speeds, I don't think the word 'driving' applies. Note also, the baseball did not make it to home plate intact. I doubt if you leave the atmosphere as you. I like that. Would politicians be Pan Taurusfeces?

My huge one I managed to unload on Best Buy, who was still recycling them. When I moved a year or two later, I found a couple of CRT monitors; Best Buy would no longer take them. The one involved an hour long trip to the dump. The second one, my son in law said, "Leave it on the lawn, someone will take it." Within two days it was gone.

Just remember, if you drive at them fast enough, the red lights turn green.

Weird, I copied the link that appeared on the site, it should not have had a time encoded; it didn't change. Something with YouTube?

Yes, sharks are scary.

That makes sense and you are probably right. There is a local interpretation of how that works though; they may be completely out of touch with the home world, but have a representative government 'here' (could be in orbit or some such) to carry out what they believe are the cultural directives. It does seem implied that there is still contact. ... phone home.

How deep is the masquerade? Uryuoms work along side humans, they walk the streets, and they live here as permanent residents. Remember the sensitivity training comment, you don't set up sensitivity training if you are primarily not acknowledging existence. I would say that in certain contexts, the Uryuoms are acknowledged, and there is no masquerade. To the general public, as general knowledge, there is. It has never been spelled out, but the Uryuoms could be stuck here. They may not have FTL travel, a reasonable assumption, as at present, it appears to not be possible, so they may have arrived here in a generation ship. That in turn may have been one shot for various reasons, mostly having to do with they never intended it to return, so didn't factor that in to the design criteria. Although, they've been/visited here since ancient Egypt, so presumably breed slowly or manage their population growth. Or perhaps they were more widely known in the past and hunted to near extinction on the EGS Earth. Seems unlikely, but so do the other two options. And weirdly, they have a mechanism to breed with humans that is in some sense better though out than any hybridization on Star Trek. Conjecture; the existence of lion bears has something to do with them.

They didn't, the link was to a legal commentary. (The religious right chimes in with, "We don't want no Home Sapiens, only Hetero Sapiens.") ... which should allow the whales and such, right?

Different universe, some official knowledge of contact by an alien race, perhaps they've made accommodations.

Lolz. An oldie, but goodie.

Oh, yeah, good point.

I agree, I was assuming Europe. Pandora may not be giving a comprehensive list of places he's lived, but with lack of other evidence, I'd say that short list is mist likely. So, yeah, no Russia.

Was it spelled Blaike? I got hits like that for Blake.

It is generally meant that not knowing the law is no excuse if you ought to know it. It is not generally taken to mean, "We have this secret law, and if you violate it, you have no excuse". However ... My understanding is that DGB essentially is threat response, and operates outside the law. Of course, if Magus is as powerful as he seems to think he is, they may have a battle on their hands. I'm not seeing that as being in his normal repertoire. He saw Sirleck as pure aberration, and that is basically all Sirleck did. Even with Elliot and Ellen, he seemed to feel he'd incurred a debt. I don't see how his power particularly helps him in this case. Will, maybe, but Elliot is strong willed when others are in danger. I'm going to stick with 'it's an anomaly'. He retired once, that can mellow a person. I don't have enough information to agree or disagree. Why do you think, "Not Russia?" Where do you think he's from? His father's name, Blaike is similar to Scottish and English names, but no hits on the Google monster, one syllable, so likely to occur elsewhere. The setting looks fairly generic.

Bird? Bird?