Striking force was non-negotiable.
Mass multiplied by the square of speed produced a scalar quantity that cared nothing for royal heraldry, gold-trimmed battle standards, or ancient noble lineage.
Sixty-two thousand metric tons of riveted iron moved through the air at twenty point five meters per second. Then, it possessed four point one gigajoules of destructive driving force.
If that energy met a rigid, unbending stone wall, both the ship and the wall would shatter into crushed debris.
Rigid materials failed catastrophically when subjected to instant dynamic point loading.
The blast wave propagated through crystal-clear grain boundaries faster than the core structure could distribute sideways tearing force, resulting in explosive brittle fracture.
Physics demanded that the driving force be faded away across distance and time.
To bring sixty-two thousand tons to a complete halt without exceeding the yield strength of the load-bearing granite, the slowdown distance had to be at least sixty feet.
