On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 17:09, David Scheidt <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 7:50 PM, Evyn MacDude <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > Your giving up butt-loads of mechanical advantage, just for the geewhiz > of > > a > > flying appliance. Or a small engine and transmission for much larger > > thrusters. It's a physics and engineering question. > > > > > anti-gravity is cheap and reliable. You gain the ability to till soil > that's too water logged to drive over. You can farm on ground that won't > support high ground pressure. I know people here, in northern Indiana, who > own land that can't be machine cultivated. It consists of a couple feet of > decent soil, and then a bottomless (well, only a few thousand feet to > bedrock, so not bottomless) muckpit. Gee you just described nearly any place there is permafrost..... > There are lots > of places like that on Earth; i'd imagine there are whole planets like > that. > Whole Planets? > Don't forget that one reason that tractors are huge is because the limiting > factor on how hard they can pull is the amount of friction they can > generate. And overcome. How do you down shift? > That's a function of normal force, i.e. their weight. if your > limit on force you can apply is your engine, you can be a whole lot > smaller. > I take you have never worked on a farm then? All I am saying for gross earth moving Grav is inefficient. But for modern industrial agriculture work Grav has a whole bunch of advantages, just not plowing. -- Evyn _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
