[extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Emlyn O'regan wrote:

> How about a pre-cooked eclair (maybe a little doey, it will get *hot*), with
> a really thick chocolate coating (3 or four meters?) which acts as an
> ablative re-entry shield. By the time it gets to Eugen's balcony, the shell
> should be down to sub-centimeter.

This requires a very fine interpretation.  After all we have a long
historical precedent for "let them eat cake".  I'm not sure that we
can morph this into "let them eat eclairs" and have quite the same
impact.

However, since the cake is targeted at Eugen's balcony for his
birthday and since he may be discourteous enough not to be out
on said balcony when the incoming cakes are arriving it makes
sense for them to have onboard nanocomputers that allow
retargeting.  Its always good to have Plan B.  That could
include Eliezer's house or Greg's house (don't know if they
have balconies) or Spike's front lawn which contains the
strange math symbols.

Perhaps Alex wrote:

> What would be the terminal velocity of a cake dropped from a low earth
> orbit?

Don't know -- this is a question for spike.

> How would it differ depending on the material, say Sponge or Fruitcake?

I would strongly suspect sponge and fruitcake would have similar properties.

> [snip] I therefore forward the notion that
> any orbital cake deployment be of the Eugene Seeking Self guiding variety.

A reasonable suggestion -- dealt with by the cake with onboard nanocomputers.

> Perhaps a large chocolate eclair would be ideal due to the superior
> aerodynamics. If deployed in a raw cakemix configuration, it should be
> nicely cooked by the time of impact.

Screw the aerodynamics.  What we are interested in is the display
and delivery of cake to Eugen on his birthday.  If that cannot be
made to work out then we have one or more "Plan B's".  I'm particularly
fond of that which might potentially "toast" Spike's front lawn.

R.