alt Hacker NewsNo, I understand, it's the claim from the very first sentence that "gravity itself seemed to forbid" (reiterated later in the text) that annoyed me. It's just making up a non-existent obstacle to hype up the result.
No, I understand, it's the claim from the very first sentence that "gravity itself seemed to forbid" (reiterated later in the text) that annoyed me. It's just making up a non-existent obstacle to hype up the result.
It's a bit clumsily written, but I'm pretty sure that's a reference to what Tom mentions in his video, that since g = 9.81m/s^2 you're not getting close to the speed of sound just from falling from a reasonable height, even ignoring air resistance.
Thus a traditional trebuchet design cannot reach that speed.