A reusable atomic bomb, always handy.

Given that important fact, I would imagine that most civilized worlds would in general not permit supersonic flight within their airspace except for military and carefully licensed commercial use. The civilians only put up with so many broken windows and horse stampedes before the torches and pitchforks come out, let alone damage equivalent to a limited nuclear weapons exchange with another power.

-------- Original Message --------

On February 10, 2018 3:39 PM, Tim xxxxxx@little-possums.net wrote:

On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 05:45:08PM -0500, Caleuche wrote:

And setting aside acceleration, at 30km altitude my 800 Dton

spherical ship modeled here has a maximum velocity equal to about

Mach 45

Damage to structures on the surface (and people!) could be significant

if such a ship actually moved that fast within a hundred kilometres or

so of an inhabited area. The speed, size and altitude are comparable

with those of the Chelyabinsk meteor, except that the ship would not

break up but continue to dump kilotons of TNT per second power into

the atmosphere during its whole trajectory.