[CrackMonkey] Fight AND Flight.

[Nick Moffitt]

----- Forwarded message from glen mccready <gkm at blackdown.org> -----


Forwarded-by: Nev Dull <nev at bostic.com>
Forwarded-by: Peter Langston <psl at acm.org>
Forwarded-by: "Travis J.I. Corcoran"

http://www.fourmilab.to/documents/spaceguns/

...

Virtually no information was available about the military Salyuts
until recently, when access was opened up to a full-scale training
model at the Moscow Aviation Institute. Well, guess what--Salyut 3 had
a machine gun.  The station had a 23 mm rapid-fire cannon mounted on
the outside, along the long axis of the station "for defence against
US space-based inspectors/interceptors". Combat engagements would have
been leisurely by Star Wars or fighter jet standards, since the only
way to aim the cannon was to point the entire station at the target,
using its attitude gyros.  A periscope connected to a visor on the
main control panel allowed drawing a bead on the intended target.

As Professor Newton pointed out some years ago, if you fire a cannon
in space, you're going to end up going in the opposite direction with
some haste. While permitting one to avoid a "fight or flight" decision
by simultaneously exercising both options, it would be disconcerting
to discover that in the heat of combat you had accidentally deorbited
your battle station.  So, the station was equipped with orbital
maneuvering engines which automatically fired when the cannon was
blazing away to cancel its recoil thrust.


----- End forwarded message -----

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