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SVTPerformance's Chain of Restaurants
Road Side Pub
Any avid golfers in here?
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<blockquote data-quote="James Snover" data-source="post: 16679225" data-attributes="member: 67454"><p>A bit of golf related fiction for a story I wrote. TThen it didn't fit the rest of the story, so it got cut. I'll probably put it one story or another, eventually.</p><p></p><p></p><p>1961:</p><p></p><p></p><p>In the depths of the Cold War era, BOMARC missile sites were built all over the United States. The BOMARC missile was a supersonic guided missile the size of an F-15 fighter jet with a range of 440 miles, at 65,000 feet, traveling at Mach 2.5. Most BOMARC missile sites were built on the East and West coasts of the U.S. But for long forgotten reasons, one site was built on Galveston Island, Texas, on the far West end of the island. When the BOMARC program was shut down, the Galveston site was forgotten. Active and forgotten, it spent the decades in its standby state, waiting for further instructions, waiting for guidance from its SAGE control system, the giant computer complex that was designed to guide it to its destination.</p><p></p><p>And it waited.</p><p></p><p>And waited.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The Secret Service decided that Rex Mason would be less dangerous if he had a hobby. By some cosmic stroke of inconceivably bad logic, they decided he should learn to play golf. Not least because Agent Berry was, himself, a golf fanatic. Having a job where you required your charge to be out on the golf course every day seemed like it would be heaven on Earth.</p><p></p><p>Or so he thought.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>2012</p><p>Rex Mason had a problem. He had been assigned to play golf. He hated golf. It was slow. But still, every day the secret service would drag him out to the links and demand he hit the little ball with the clubs. He was bored out of his skull, and frustrated by the general lack of speed of the whole game, and he began to search for ways to make the game more interesting. In other words, how to go fast and make stuff explode. Or, how to make the game big, loud and fast? But it was just golf. You hit the ball, you walked to where it landed, and you hit it again. It was a hopelessly boring game.</p><p></p><p>He decided to alter the game.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>CRACK!</p><p></p><p>The first clue that Agent Berry had that Rex was up to something is when he started hitting six-hundred yard drives. He overshot the green, he overshot the far end of the driving range, he nearly, but not quite, overshot the club house, which his errant, golf ball impacted at supersonic speeds, knocking a hole in its brick wall and then ricocheting around the kitchen. There had been hell to pay over that.</p><p></p><p>"Rex, how are you hitting these balls so hard?" he asked.</p><p></p><p>Always ready to tell everyone what he was up to, Rex said, "I coated the ball and the club face with a binary explosive. When they come in contact with each other they explode, giving my swing a lot of extra power. The "crack" sound you hear when I hit the ball? That's the sound of the ball going supersonic! Neat, huh?"</p><p></p><p>Agent Berry was torn. On the one hand, this made a mockery of the game of golf, which he dearly loved. On the other hand … those balls really flew!</p><p></p><p>"Rex … can I try one of those?" He hated himself, even as he said the words.</p><p></p><p>"Sure! It's a two-part deal, you need a ball and an unused club."</p><p></p><p>"I guess that explains why your bag has all drivers in it, then."</p><p></p><p>"There are other clubs?" Agent berry ignored this question. Half the trick to learning how to deal with Rex was learning when not to answer his questions. Answers only gave him more ideas.</p><p></p><p>Agent Berry took a swing. It was like nothing he had ever felt before.</p><p></p><p>"I think you just hit the club house," Rex observed.</p><p></p><p>"It's ok, it was evacuated after your first strike."</p><p></p><p>"Makes the game more interesting, doesn't it?"</p><p></p><p>"Yeah … but it's wrong," Agent Berry said. "You're not supposed to try and improve the game."</p><p></p><p>"Well, that's a shame, this game needs all the improvement it can get."</p><p></p><p></p><p>And so it went. Week after week, Rex would try some new angle to improve the game. Exploding cleats. Can't do that. Ultra-low aerodynamic drag clubs, can't do that. Rocket assisted-clubs, can't do that. Rocket propelled golf balls, can't do that. Liquid-oxygen fueled grills in the clubhouse kitchen, can't do that. High altitude golf balls that flew up to 65,000 feet, can't do that. Every week Rex tried something new, every week he was told that he couldn't do that, yet Agent Berry insisted they finish the game with that week's technology.</p><p></p><p>He drew the line, however, when Rex tried to bring a golf cart that he had designed himself.</p><p></p><p>"There's no way I'm letting you bring that on the green," he said.</p><p></p><p>"What's wrong with it?" Rex asked.</p><p></p><p>"It's got a V12, for one thing. No golf cart needs to be powered by a compound boosted Allison V12."</p><p></p><p>"This game sucks."</p><p></p><p>"You'll just have to think of something else." Agent Berry regretted the words the instant he said them, but there was no calling them back.</p><p></p><p>Smiling his mad inventor's grin, Rex said, "I will. You're going to love what I'm going to think up next."</p><p></p><p>And he wasn't kidding.</p><p></p><p>"Explain this again, Rex?"</p><p></p><p>"It' simple," Rex said, swinging and hitting another hole-in-one. His sixth of the day. "I put a guidance system in the ball. Since I only had a day to work this up, I decided to use the SAGE system you guys gave me access to."</p><p></p><p>"The missile guidance computer from the 1950's?" Agent Berry asked, incredulous. "What the Hell could you do with that?"</p><p></p><p>"Yep. You guys quit using it back in the mid-'80s, and it was just sitting there doing nothing. So I wrote a quick interface, fired up the SAGE computers-"</p><p></p><p>"What?" Agent Berry said. "All of them? Those things are six-acres big and require the power of a small nuclear power plant! And they're scattered all over the continental United States! Who's paying for that?"</p><p></p><p>"All twenty-seven of them," Rex said. "And I assumed it was coming out of your budget, since you gave me the damn thing. But that's not important, right now. You know what the difference is between this golf ball and a guided missile?"</p><p></p><p>"I'm afraid to ask."</p><p></p><p>"Basically, nothing."</p><p></p><p>"Can I play one of those?" Agent Berry asked.</p><p></p><p>"You bet!" Rex tossed him a ball, and he tee'd up.</p><p></p><p>Agent Berry made his swing and the ball lofted into the air, guided by the SAGE system, headed for the eighteenth hole.</p><p>What no one knew at the time, was the SAGE guidance system took a vote among its 27 peers, decided the flight path of the golf ball fit the profile of a Soviet bomber, and, well … it knew _exactly_ what to do about that!</p><p></p><p></p><p>On Galveston Island:</p><p>The BOMARC obtained it's "Go" code. The doors cycled, it lifted into place, launched on its solid-rocket motors, and began streaking towards Fort Davis, Texas at Mach 2.5.</p><p></p><p>The launch did not pass unnoticed, even on Galveston Island. Every one on the island saw the flash and heard the roar of the rocket ignition, and heard the twin sonic booms as it accelerated almost instantly up to its cruise speed.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The range of the BOMARC was 440 miles. It was 650 miles from Galveston Island to Fort Davis, Texas, and at 1,850 miles per hour, it didn't take the missile long to travel the distance. The missile was out of fuel for the last 200 miles, so it was gliding down to it target from 65,000 feet. Since supersonic travel incurs a lot of drag, it quickly decelerated from its powered Mach 2.5 cruise speed to a speed of 300 miles per hour. SAGE could deal with that. SAGE knew exactly how to handle this, and it handily recomputed a subsonic speed\glide ratio\ lift vs. drag solution to get the BOMARC warhead where it determined the Soviet bomber now resided.</p><p></p><p>It never even thought to ask itself why what it thought was a Soviet bomber was now in a stationary spot, four inches below ground level. It just figured out how to get there with what it had. And so, it did.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Agent Berry's phone rang.</p><p></p><p>"Agent Berry, here," he said.</p><p></p><p>He listened intently, a look of alarm growing on his face. "I see," he said. "We'll see what we can do." He hung up.</p><p></p><p>He thought for a moment, then said, "Rex, can you tell me why there is a BOMARC guided missile headed our way?"</p><p></p><p>At that point, the missile arrived, slamming itself into the eighteenth hole. Luckily, after all these decades, the warhead was inert. Still, the crash of a fifteen-thousand pound missile into a golf course did not go unnoticed.</p><p></p><p>As they crawled from the debris and dirt, and the splintered remains of the clubhouse, Rex said,</p><p></p><p>"I'm guessing you're going to make me out as the bad guy, on this one," Rex said.</p><p>"I think that's a given, yes," Agent Berry said.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James Snover, post: 16679225, member: 67454"] A bit of golf related fiction for a story I wrote. TThen it didn't fit the rest of the story, so it got cut. I'll probably put it one story or another, eventually. 1961: In the depths of the Cold War era, BOMARC missile sites were built all over the United States. The BOMARC missile was a supersonic guided missile the size of an F-15 fighter jet with a range of 440 miles, at 65,000 feet, traveling at Mach 2.5. Most BOMARC missile sites were built on the East and West coasts of the U.S. But for long forgotten reasons, one site was built on Galveston Island, Texas, on the far West end of the island. When the BOMARC program was shut down, the Galveston site was forgotten. Active and forgotten, it spent the decades in its standby state, waiting for further instructions, waiting for guidance from its SAGE control system, the giant computer complex that was designed to guide it to its destination. And it waited. And waited. The Secret Service decided that Rex Mason would be less dangerous if he had a hobby. By some cosmic stroke of inconceivably bad logic, they decided he should learn to play golf. Not least because Agent Berry was, himself, a golf fanatic. Having a job where you required your charge to be out on the golf course every day seemed like it would be heaven on Earth. Or so he thought. 2012 Rex Mason had a problem. He had been assigned to play golf. He hated golf. It was slow. But still, every day the secret service would drag him out to the links and demand he hit the little ball with the clubs. He was bored out of his skull, and frustrated by the general lack of speed of the whole game, and he began to search for ways to make the game more interesting. In other words, how to go fast and make stuff explode. Or, how to make the game big, loud and fast? But it was just golf. You hit the ball, you walked to where it landed, and you hit it again. It was a hopelessly boring game. He decided to alter the game. CRACK! The first clue that Agent Berry had that Rex was up to something is when he started hitting six-hundred yard drives. He overshot the green, he overshot the far end of the driving range, he nearly, but not quite, overshot the club house, which his errant, golf ball impacted at supersonic speeds, knocking a hole in its brick wall and then ricocheting around the kitchen. There had been hell to pay over that. "Rex, how are you hitting these balls so hard?" he asked. Always ready to tell everyone what he was up to, Rex said, "I coated the ball and the club face with a binary explosive. When they come in contact with each other they explode, giving my swing a lot of extra power. The "crack" sound you hear when I hit the ball? That's the sound of the ball going supersonic! Neat, huh?" Agent Berry was torn. On the one hand, this made a mockery of the game of golf, which he dearly loved. On the other hand … those balls really flew! "Rex … can I try one of those?" He hated himself, even as he said the words. "Sure! It's a two-part deal, you need a ball and an unused club." "I guess that explains why your bag has all drivers in it, then." "There are other clubs?" Agent berry ignored this question. Half the trick to learning how to deal with Rex was learning when not to answer his questions. Answers only gave him more ideas. Agent Berry took a swing. It was like nothing he had ever felt before. "I think you just hit the club house," Rex observed. "It's ok, it was evacuated after your first strike." "Makes the game more interesting, doesn't it?" "Yeah … but it's wrong," Agent Berry said. "You're not supposed to try and improve the game." "Well, that's a shame, this game needs all the improvement it can get." And so it went. Week after week, Rex would try some new angle to improve the game. Exploding cleats. Can't do that. Ultra-low aerodynamic drag clubs, can't do that. Rocket assisted-clubs, can't do that. Rocket propelled golf balls, can't do that. Liquid-oxygen fueled grills in the clubhouse kitchen, can't do that. High altitude golf balls that flew up to 65,000 feet, can't do that. Every week Rex tried something new, every week he was told that he couldn't do that, yet Agent Berry insisted they finish the game with that week's technology. He drew the line, however, when Rex tried to bring a golf cart that he had designed himself. "There's no way I'm letting you bring that on the green," he said. "What's wrong with it?" Rex asked. "It's got a V12, for one thing. No golf cart needs to be powered by a compound boosted Allison V12." "This game sucks." "You'll just have to think of something else." Agent Berry regretted the words the instant he said them, but there was no calling them back. Smiling his mad inventor's grin, Rex said, "I will. You're going to love what I'm going to think up next." And he wasn't kidding. "Explain this again, Rex?" "It' simple," Rex said, swinging and hitting another hole-in-one. His sixth of the day. "I put a guidance system in the ball. Since I only had a day to work this up, I decided to use the SAGE system you guys gave me access to." "The missile guidance computer from the 1950's?" Agent Berry asked, incredulous. "What the Hell could you do with that?" "Yep. You guys quit using it back in the mid-'80s, and it was just sitting there doing nothing. So I wrote a quick interface, fired up the SAGE computers-" "What?" Agent Berry said. "All of them? Those things are six-acres big and require the power of a small nuclear power plant! And they're scattered all over the continental United States! Who's paying for that?" "All twenty-seven of them," Rex said. "And I assumed it was coming out of your budget, since you gave me the damn thing. But that's not important, right now. You know what the difference is between this golf ball and a guided missile?" "I'm afraid to ask." "Basically, nothing." "Can I play one of those?" Agent Berry asked. "You bet!" Rex tossed him a ball, and he tee'd up. Agent Berry made his swing and the ball lofted into the air, guided by the SAGE system, headed for the eighteenth hole. What no one knew at the time, was the SAGE guidance system took a vote among its 27 peers, decided the flight path of the golf ball fit the profile of a Soviet bomber, and, well … it knew _exactly_ what to do about that! On Galveston Island: The BOMARC obtained it's "Go" code. The doors cycled, it lifted into place, launched on its solid-rocket motors, and began streaking towards Fort Davis, Texas at Mach 2.5. The launch did not pass unnoticed, even on Galveston Island. Every one on the island saw the flash and heard the roar of the rocket ignition, and heard the twin sonic booms as it accelerated almost instantly up to its cruise speed. The range of the BOMARC was 440 miles. It was 650 miles from Galveston Island to Fort Davis, Texas, and at 1,850 miles per hour, it didn't take the missile long to travel the distance. The missile was out of fuel for the last 200 miles, so it was gliding down to it target from 65,000 feet. Since supersonic travel incurs a lot of drag, it quickly decelerated from its powered Mach 2.5 cruise speed to a speed of 300 miles per hour. SAGE could deal with that. SAGE knew exactly how to handle this, and it handily recomputed a subsonic speed\glide ratio\ lift vs. drag solution to get the BOMARC warhead where it determined the Soviet bomber now resided. It never even thought to ask itself why what it thought was a Soviet bomber was now in a stationary spot, four inches below ground level. It just figured out how to get there with what it had. And so, it did. Agent Berry's phone rang. "Agent Berry, here," he said. He listened intently, a look of alarm growing on his face. "I see," he said. "We'll see what we can do." He hung up. He thought for a moment, then said, "Rex, can you tell me why there is a BOMARC guided missile headed our way?" At that point, the missile arrived, slamming itself into the eighteenth hole. Luckily, after all these decades, the warhead was inert. Still, the crash of a fifteen-thousand pound missile into a golf course did not go unnoticed. As they crawled from the debris and dirt, and the splintered remains of the clubhouse, Rex said, "I'm guessing you're going to make me out as the bad guy, on this one," Rex said. "I think that's a given, yes," Agent Berry said. [/QUOTE]
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