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From: jim@randvax.UUCP (Jim Gillogly)
Newsgroups: net.tv.drwho
Subject: Re: Why is a TARDIS so big?
Message-ID: <2656@randvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Aug-85 08:45:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: randvax.2656
Posted: Mon Aug 19 08:45:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 05:42:05 EDT
References: <456@moncol.UUCP> <569@hou2a.UUCP> <3464@dartvax.UUCP> <103@pyrnj.uucp> <643@brl-tgr.ARPA>
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Organization: Banzai Institute
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In article <643@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-bmd.UUCP writes:
>In article <103@pyrnj.uucp> romain@pyrnj.uucp (Romain Kang) writes:
>>  The Doctor comes up with a
>>plan to eject 1/4 of the TARDIS's mass (17000 tons, velocity
>               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>unspecified) to produce the thrust to escape.
>
>Even though the *spatial* dimensions are tricky, with a small physical
>size in our world(s) but huge once you get inside, the MASS in our
>world(s) should be the full amount (does the above mean that 17,000
>tons is 1/4 the mass, or they ejected 1/4 of 17,000 tons? [and being
>British, it should be "tonnes", right? :-)]. So it should be immovable
>without a huge crane in our environment. Therefore, every time a story
>has it being moved, or sitting in a spaceship which has to then haul(*) the
>TARDIS's mass and its own payload, this is a failure of the writers to
>stay correct and consistent. All fans should flame the writers!

Not necessarily, as they say in innumerable Monty Python skits.  I don't
know precisely how the doctor ejected that mass; he may have had to rotate
it out of whatever dimension it was in before ejecting it.  Consider the
suitcase in Heinlein's "Glory Road": when folded it had the same mass
as an ordinary backpack, but when unfolded from its several dimensions it
was observed to contain objects totalling many times that mass; we were
just seeing the projection of the thing into our own 3 spatial dimensions,
and that's all the mass and inertia our universe was getting charged with.
Are Time Lords less advanced than the Twenty Universes?  Sure seems to me
like the Tardis has a similar technology.
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	{decvax, vortex}!randvax!jim
	jim@rand-unix.arpa