Starship Asterisk*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lover%27s_Leap wrote:
<<Lover's Leap (sometimes spelled as Lovers Leap), is a toponym given to a number of locations of varying height, usually isolated, with the risk of a fatal fall and the possibility of a deliberate jump. Legends of romantic tragedy are often associated with a Lovers' Leap.

The Lover's Leap in Hawk's Nest State Park, West Virginia, has a drop of 178 m from a high bluff overlooking the New River Gorge. The promontory was named "Lover's Leap" by settlers, and has acquired an urban legend involving two young Native Americans from different tribes.

Dovedale in the Peak District in the UK has a limestone promontory named Lover's Leap reached by a set of steps built by Italian prisoners of war captured in the Second World War. The local legend is that a young woman believed her lover had been killed in the Napoleonic war, so she threw herself off the top of the promontory. Later her family found out that her boyfriend was alive and well.

Blowing Rock Mountain, North Carolina, has a similar legend of a young lover leaping from the cliff and instead of plunging to his death, is saved. In this version the lover is saved by the blowing wind which sends him back into the arms of his sweetheart.

Wills Mountain has a Lover's Leap overlooking "the Narrows" at Cumberland, Maryland, USA. It is 504 m above sea level and made up of oddly squared projections of rock from its top all the way down to U.S. Rte. 40.

Jamaica has a Lover's Leap 520 m above the Caribbean Sea. Lovers' leap is named after two slave lovers from the 18th century, Mizzy and Tunkey. According to legend, their master, Chardley, liked Mizzy; so, in a bid to have her for himself, he arranged for her lover, Tunkey, to be sold to another estate. Mizzy and Tunkey fled to avoid being separated but were eventually chased to the edge of a large steep cliff. Rather than face being caught and separated, the lovers embraced and jumped over the cliff.>>

JohnD wrote:I fear that's still the wrong interpretation.

That Terran terminal velocity and the velocity that a falling body would reach down this cliff are the same is a coincidence. It's not even interesting, because it has no significance.

owlice wrote:
I am sooooooo not clicking on that!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic wrote:
<<Thomas Bishop joined the Massachusetts Infantry before the outbreak of war and compiled a popular set of lyrics titled "John Brown's Body", which became one of his unit's walking songs. Julia Ward Howe heard this song during a public review of the troops outside Washington on Upton's Hill, Virginia. Staying at the Willard Hotel in Washington on the night of November 18, 1861, Howe awoke with the words of the song in her mind and in near darkness wrote the verses to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Of the writing of the lyrics, Howe remembered:

I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, 'I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.' So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.>>

Chris Peterson wrote:

Amir wrote:I believe there would be no terminal velocity on Miranda. the objects won't be traveling through any fluid or medium.
because of lack of the atmosphere, there is no reason for being stopped at terminal velocity.

Correct... but I think you may be misunderstanding the previous comment. The coincidence is that if you jump from this cliff on Miranda, you'll hit the bottom at about the terminal velocity limited speed of any long fall on Earth.

C0ppert0p wrote:
The original JPL caption for that photograph reads, "...The fault may be 5 km (3 mi) high, or higher than the walls of the Grand Canyon on Earth.
When and or why did the estimate change to 20 km?

owlice wrote:
She wants wit that wants resolved will
To learn her wit to exchange the bad for better.

Darn it, neufer! I'd had "Officer Krupke" in my head for days and days, and it was finally gone... until I read your post. Thanks. Thanks a lot!

• You need an analyst's care.

Amir wrote:I believe there would be no terminal velocity on Miranda. the objects won't be traveling through any fluid or medium.
because of lack of the atmosphere, there is no reason for being stopped at terminal velocity.