Re: "Rogue" black holes in SF?

David DeLaney wrote:

> They did know about Schwarzschild solutions ever since the early years
of
> that century, they just didn't manage to make enough sense out of them
to
> convince people that they'd possibly exist until the middle of it. And
> "escape velocity > c" went back way before Einstein - he just showed it
> had some nasty _meaning_ attached. So 'dark star' would probably have
been
> as good a description as any in those intervening decades. On the other
hand,
> didn't the Skylarks comfortably exceed the speed of light without even
> trying much? So it wouldn't have been the same sort of issue for them
that
> it is now...

	As with so many other things, Doc was not behind his time here 
either. While he'd assumed a tremendously (impossibly) amazing 
acceleration compensation device, it was clear that there were still 
limits, and if you got too close to the black star you couldn't 
survive the acceleration you'd need to pull free. The Skylarkers 
BARELY managed to escape, and without both Seaton and DuQuesne 
available to run the tandem rig, they couldn't have done it at all.


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