Quote:
Originally Posted by gyroscopeRaptor
Also, pushing the balls up may likely push them out of the court, incurring a foul under <G13>.
This makes any uber-fan idea flawed, IMO.
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Completely feasible, IMO. It's not a matter of generating tornado-strength winds here, it's simply about generating a directed draft that, for the fraction of a second that the ball is in the jet stream from the fan, apply a force that alters it's momentum to the side by a tiny amount. By the time the ball reaches the next, it'd have moved enough to possibly cause a missed shot.
A similar idea is with making space objects miss Earth; a small force early in flight can cause a huge gap later. For this, the fact that the shots need to be rather precise means that the fact that time in flight is short wouldn't matter if a decent amount of force is applied.
The balls weight will prevent any serious deflection, but a draft from a decently-sized fan (20"?) powered by a few motors should provide quite a bit of push necessary to move anything in it's way.'
Edit: And a brilliant idea just occurred to me: Why not have an active targeting system combined with the air knife idea?
I.E. A giant fan is always running when needed, producing a huge draft, which is then directed into a controlled funnel system that automatically turns towards and directs the air into the path of inbound basketballs. It'd have the force bonus of a funnel while being capable of constantly hitting the ball, drastically increasing the impulse given to the ball, changing it's course.