🚀 go-pugleaf

snarfy,

You should have read the rest of Abell's book.

Your reasoning is flawed on at least two counts.

First, your math is based on a two-body problem.  The problem of
the "neutral point" is actually the "restricted three-body problem."
Your error is assuming that the only forces at work are the
gravitational forces of the Earth and the Moon.  There is another.
It's not the gravitational force of the spaceship (its mass is
so small in comparison to the Earth and Moon that it can be neglected,
which is why the problem is "restricted").  The third force is 
the centrifugal force of the spaceship.  Neglecting this will
significally change the calculated mass of the Moon.

BTW, there are five points in a two body system where these forces
balance.  They are called Lagrangian points in honor of their
discoverer.  But I digress.

Second, you are thinking one-dimensionally.  You assume that the
figure given by Time magazine and Von Braun is colinear with the
line drawn from the center of the Earth to the center of the Moon.
This is probably not the case.  A spacecraft travelling from the
Earth to the Moon does not traverse a straight line.  Its path
is hyperbolic, so the "revised" neutral point you quoted will
*not*, in any case, correspond to the Lagrangian Point (normally
called L2) you attempted to base your calculations on.

Back to the drawing board for you..
-- 

Anson Kennedy                                                  anson@netcom.com
Secretary of the Georgia Skeptics (but don't even THINK I speak for them!)

"If you don't watch the violence,   \           "If I had been the Virgin Mary,
you'll never get desensitized to it." \                I would have said 'No.'"
-Bart Simpson                           \  -Margaret "Stevie" Smith (1902-1971)