Grrl Power #653 – Fly me to the moon… eventually
You know all those diagrams of the Earth and the moon where the moon is about 6 Earth diameters from the Earth? Yeah, those are wrong. As adults we all basically understand this, but the image is hard to get out of our heads. The distance is more like 30 Earth diameters. Mach 4 is pretty impressive on Earth, but it doesn’t count for much when you’re talking about lunar distances.
The Alari homeworld has a similar lunar situation to Earth, so Sydney’s going to have to come up with another plan.
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Hm Maybe the Flight orb is currently functioning in ‘momentum drive’ mode.
Eg a method to directly alters the momentum of a particle(or set of them) Maybe that is why it does not affect her hair etc.It affects every particle of those inside the shield, or in the case of no shield all particles that are defined as “Sydney”(her self) and clothes/hair etc.
— ref
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum
The momentum of a particle is conventionally represented by the letter p. It is the product of two quantities, the particle’s mass (represented by the letter m) and its velocity (v):[1]
p=mv.
except that velocity is relative. It can only be measured in relation to something else. So in space, you can’t even tell if you are moving at all.
Or, alternatively, it’s directly restricted by the depth of the gravity well surrounding it, meaning that it might move progressively faster in space the further you get from a planet or star, although I more got the feeling that some of her unlock tree is literally just exponential speed growth for the orbs, rather than that.
Although, your explanation, while not incompatible with mine, might explain why she can’t just just abuse the lack of air resistance in space to accelerate indefinitely, which she either can’t do, or hasn’t thought of.
I just realized that she might be trying to get to the moon the wrong way.
It looks like she’s aiming for the moon instead of ahead of the moon,. If she’d aiming at the moon then it will take longer.
Not “longer”, forever. A force applied directly towards an orbital target will put you in orbit around the target. That is exactly what gravity does for us – pulls bodies directly towards each other.
No, she needs to aim for the moons’ orbit, because eventually it will return to its current position, so rather than chasing after a speeding ball of matter, go to where it is going to be, and wait, like you do when catching a bus or taxi
anyone got an aspirin?…. o.O
She really ought to be able to move faster out of the atmosphere.
She probably is, butt without something to measure against, it appears that she was barely even moving, until you stop and look at where she started out from (as visualized by the tiny dot in panel Long Way Down {14})
I have some thoughts about how Sydney’s flight orb works, posted at the last minute so no one will read it, wooo!!
I’ll try to account for all the evidence I’m aware of, which isn’t much. Basically, we have her hair when she fly’s upside down, and the fact that she doesn’t seem to be able to go faster than mach 4.
We can pretty safely assume she doesn’t use any kind of thrust, at least not the kind of thrust that works perfectly in space. It also seems likely that she isn’t applying a force to herself, at least, again, not one that works in space.
This leaves us in a bit of a pickle, because, by all rights, no matter what kind of flight method she uses, if it works at all in space, it should actually work in space.
The solution most likely lies in the intersection of our two known facts, gravity, and a fixed speed.
If the flight system works in conjunction with gravity, then it’s possible it’s effective velocity is somehow limited by local gravity. Perhaps it can only “push” against the local gravity enough to get it moving. Maybe it works something like the fire pole in (https://what-if.xkcd.com/157/) where its basically flinging you off of a “stationary” gravity field (yes, I know gravity doesn’t really work like that and I don’t care, this is more of a metaphor, like electron orbitals (also fiction)). In this way, Sydney is effectively limited to mach 4 relative to the nearest sufficiently large body.
The other possibility, is that it is basically authorial fiat drive, and works identically to Achilles invulnerability, i.e. it’s hard coded into the universe. The velocity would then be mach 4 (in air) relative to whatever the game engine decided was (0,0). Supporting this is Krona’s reaction to the orbs i.e. “Deep code of the universe laid bare” or w/e.
code of the universe laid bare
Since Sydney’s orbs are so deeply connected to the fundamental underpinnings of the universe, maybe the flight orb doesn’t move Sydney at all. She remains in one spot while the orbs move the universe around her.
thats the farnsworth drive from Futurama
The actual newtonian formula for gravitational acceleration at a given point is GM/R^2. Given that the only changing item is Sydney’s distance from the center of attraction, if the surface pull is about 1 g at one radius distance from center, then doubling the distance will give 1/4 the attraction. She doesn’t appear to be that far up by any means.
The problem with space is that it’s a lot of… space. Like, there’s hundreds of thousands of miles between the earth and moon – even at mach 4 speeds, it would take 3 days to cover that distance. Even moving at light speed, it can take hours to cross a single solar system (nearly 5 and a half between our sun and Pluto), to say nothing of the massive distances between stars (it’s about 4 years between the solar system and the nearest star – Alpha Centauri – at light speed) – Mach 4 really does do jack all for space travel.
Yeah, if Sydney really wants to be an alien spaceship, she needs to find the turbo (i.e. much faster relativistic movement speed) and/or warp* (i.e. some bullshit collection of pseudo-science words that sound impressive, since FTL speeds are not and will never be possible) button.
* Sciona had a form of bullshit “warp speed” because her portal allowed the team and herself to travel vast distances just by stepping through. Dabbler also must have something like that, magic or tech or a fusion or just bullshit, or as an alien (part alien?) she wouldn’t be on Earth in the first place. The simple reason that Earth has never been visited by aliens is that it would take far too long to get here and require far too much energy to be in any way practical. Those kinds of time and energy investments are probably never going to be possible for any species in the universe, ever. And if it ever is possible, it won’t be undertaken so that they can engage in a bit of crop circle planting, cattle mutilation, and buggery.
Granted I have not done the math. I did see a picture talking about how far the Moon is away from the Earth. It showed that all the other planets in the solar system could fit within the distance with room to spare. This article goes into the details. https://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/02/04/scale_of_space_can_you_fit_all_the_planets_between_the_earth_and_moon.html
thats the farnsworth drive from Futurama
inb4 sydney’s halo does some sort of emergency trans system feature
anyone got an aspirin?…. o.O
I read that Robert Asprin is good? *runs like crazy person after em*
Did anyone else notice the space station ?
anyone think she might find something useful there ?
Alternative to warp: What’s the range on the telepresence? If she can see the moon, maybe she can just telepresence there?
The light bee has to travel there through regular space first.
Getting into travel out of atmosphere, the question of how the flight orb moves Sydney starts to become an important consideration… If it has a maximum speed imposed by its very function, she’s screwed for space travel, but if it sets a maximum in atmosphere for safety/practicality or has a maximum in atmosphere due to friction/resistance, she may be able to work with an ever-increasing velocity if she only has maximum acceleration to worry about in space.
That’s an excellent observation. In fact I assume that the orb’s accelleration is lower than 1g as so far Sidney did not appear discomforted by it and anyway bumping into something would still send her flying against the shield fatally (except if the shield is actually a dimensional barrier, a layer of another reality that changes behavior of all that passes through it, which would explain many things).
Assuming it’s approximatevely a single g we could assume that interstellar travel would take one year to get out of the stellar system and another year for each light year. Assuming the orb is limited to light speed.
Some random musings:
regarding grinding, I would use the heck out of that true-sight orb – better than a metal detector when looking for lootz. Given that this planet uses magic, there’s a 99.999% chance there is still some good stuff around.
I bet Dabbler really wants to study that true-sight orb given her cybernetic eye. SHe a tinkerer, she probably wants i2.4 (no that is not an apple product)
Sydney is right now in a really good place( above the planet) to test out the true-sight orb and see what it shows her, and take a few pics (posterity) yes it would use some power, but when else you gonna take it if say the planet get blown up? she could also use the cellphone as crude binoculars with the included photo app
heck I use mine all the time to read fine print.
Orbiting: You’re falling, but like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target. :)
If you want to get Technical … if there is a road long enough a person could drive to space. So reaching escape velocity in a vehicle that can provide a constant velocity even in a vacuum is a little bit easier than using a rocket.
Sidney’s flight orb might not have its exp-atmospheric propulsion yet.
Maybe that mystery orb has some in-flight entertainment. It’s not like she has to hang onto the flight orb now; inertia isn’t standing in her way.