On or about: 03-28-08  09:52, David Williams did engage Mark Lewis
regarding, but not limited to: here's one for ya...

 ->  DW> Certainly, the ISS is is darkness for a significant fraction of the 
 ->  DW> time, but that's no reason to waste the sunlight it does get.     
 ->  DW> I don't follow your "as much logic" argument.  
 
 -> where do you get "significant fraction" from? it takes 
 -> 90 minutes for the IS 
 -> to go around the earth... seems to me that 45 minutes of 
 -> that is in the ligh 
 -> and the other half in the dark ;) 
 
 -> )\/(ark 
 DW> 
 DW> So 1/2 is not a significant fraction? 
 DW> 
 DW> Actually, the ISS is in darkness for less than half the time. It's a 
 DW> few hundred kilometres above the surface fo the earth, so it receives 
 DW> sunlight when the ground below it is just in darkness. Suppose it's
 DW> 400  km up. The earth's diameter is about 13,000 km. So the length of
 DW> the  tangent from the surface to the station would be sqr(400 * 13400),
 DW> which is about 2300 km. That's about 1/20 of the circumference of the 
 DW> orbit. If my brain is working right, that means the station is in 
 DW> sunlight for about 60% of the time, when the sun is in the plane of 
 DW> the orbit. When it isn't, the fraction would be even higher. 

When the moon is eclipsed by the earth, a *very* short travel is spent in
totality. You dismissed the refracted sunlight, and ignored the diameter of
the sun.


... James

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