On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 1:52 AM, Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 11:55:33PM -0800, xxxxxx@shadowgard.com wrote:
> Earth's orbital velocity is about 30 km/sec.

As has been said many times before: per canon, your position at jump
exit relative to your intended target varies by much less than you
seem to believe.

There is also no basis for the calculation you keep seeming to want to
do.  Nothing in published material or any known physics requires that
jump emergence points be fixed relative to the star.  The planet's
velocity relative to the star is thus completely irrelevant.

It's not like Leonard to make a math mistake, so were you perhaps addressing me?

My position is that a suicide vessel could come out of jump ahead of a planet in it's orbit and with a converging vector, in order to become a kinetic WMD.  Of course, given the uncertainty of the emergence *time* (and thus the position relative to the planet), the ship would need a competent pilot of some sort to make the necessary corrections. Also, one would want the closing speed to be high but not too high, because a closing speed that was too high would not let you correct a significantly tangetial arrival before you would miss the planet.

--
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein
"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville (1843)
"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester
"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.