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Now that I think of it, once you have a reasonable ring going, new matter that coincides with it for a few decades (eg the cosmic blink of an eye) will be worn down with the efficiency of coarse sandpaper. Ejected particulate matter will benefit the ring. A win for everyone except, possibly, the captured planetoid

I don't have an equation and Amy's right... a small planet cannot sustain planetary rings however there's no reason some moon didn't have a collision and get powderized, forming rings that only last 2-3000 years

I did consider the rescue ship trying to match velocities with  Apollo... and you don't even want to see the equations (however, I can come up with an answer assuming we can give the relative initial speed). The troublesome factor is that the rescue ship is headed towards the engagement and the rescuee is headed away. This means that their relative velocities are doubled.

Now... just before you breathe a sigh of relief, there's a second problem: Their relative momentums are greatly different. The problem is the large mass of the giant rescue ship thrusting one way... and the relatively tiny rescuee puttering the other.

Imagine the Titanic or an air craft carrier attempting to turn and pursue some guy heading the opposite direction on a jet ski. The larger ship would probably take 10-15 minutes just to do a 180. That freak on the jet ski is going to be a speck in the horizon by then. The Law of Convervation of Momentum says that a ship 1000 times bigger must work 1000 times harder than the smaller ship to change direction. You have that working against you here.

PS: I'm okay that the characters think it.

http://picpaste.com/equation.jpg

I have a monitor with bad caps. Every time it flickers I think about pulling an njc and soldering replacements in

A Star Trek type shuttle would act to plug the leak with some filler material stored in microscopic bladders in a layer on the inside of the hull, which is no fun, so let's assume you don't have that.

Let's also assume your characters don't have a hardening foam gun (the ejected foam would find the leak wherever it is - one need not know that part).

I mention these two facts because the lack of spacesuits implies there are so many failsafes that the spacesuit is statistically useless. Much like the absence of seatbelts in Star Trek style ships implies they never need to brake fast enough to kill passengers.

If you want realism, the enemy shot should contain an active agent to increase the size of the leak. (I know it's an enemy shot due to the source material - I also think it was handled well enough that we can accept the outcome).

Dear England: Do better

@Janet: Nay... you're still ahead of me in reviews. I've just been buried with work (boo! hiss!) and can't read as much as I'd like

This detection... I presume it uses scanners that are faster-than-faster-than light?

Turning...
it's a problem that comes up in [K a j o]s story when they learn that Taylor can "turn" and travel curved trajectories in hyperspace. Travel through space -- applying force to create velocity -- it's a concept we might have to leave behind.

I mean... what mass driver can you put on your back that might possibly spew matter away fast enough to propel you forward at that rate?

By simple kinematics, and ignoring gravitation, we might suggest a 1kg object that wishes to travel 15m/s forward must eject 0.5kg of matter backwards at 30m/s.
(This is a dreadful oversimplification since I don't account for a, t, and elasticity)
(Imagine how much more effort it would take for a ship to do this)
(Somehow this long rambling speech boils down to me agrees with your starlanes. Then a stardrive is more of a "raft" that keeps the ship's particile energized enough for it to stay in the starlanes where all distances are shorter)

Agreed. A distraction.

Edit: With some exceptions. Inga is a 7-yr-old but she narrates like 18 (at least, that's the goal)