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LUCIFERS_HAM

                                                   March     6, 2004
                                          Revised: November 17, 2004

A scene from the Niven/Pournelle
novel "Lucifer's Hammer:

After the apocalyptic comet impact,
Hamner is driving cross-country in
some sort of SUV, with a woman asleep
next to him in the passenger seat,
dropped back in reclining position.

He comes to a huge ground fault, a drop-off
of several feet.  Is there any way he can
drive over this?

Throughout this story, despite being
the hotshot astronomer who first              (I have the weird feeling
observes the comet's approach, his            that this is some twisted
knowledge does him absolutely no              reflection of "Project X"
good.  He's put upon, chased away,            in _Atlas Shrugged_.)
and gets stuck just running for it,
just like everyone else.

When he encounters this problem
with the way blocked, he starts
doing calculations in his head,
solving the physics problem:

The trick is to realize that the front of the
car will drop like a free-falling object, and
the rear of the car is going to need to clear
the edge before the nose hits the ground.

Once that's understood, calculating
the minimum speed needed is fairly
simple classical physics.

He backs up, guns the engine, races              Needless to say,
over the edge, and makes it.  The car            you don't want to
bangs down on the ground, on all four            try this with an
wheels, and he keeps on driving.                 actual SUV.

The woman sleeping next to him is                STATISTICAL_INDIVIDUAL
so exhausted that she doesn't even
wake up.

   He has no audience.
   No one knows but him.

        The triumph of
        he who rules the
        equations...

          (He who is cold enough?)

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