Grrl Power #1028 – Nope field
You would think that force fields would change warfare considerably, but honestly I think at most they would cause a fairly temporary disruption. The first ironclads and tanks probably had a few months of feeling pretty invincible, but really all they did was force someone to invent a better canon or landmine or armor piercing whatsit. A force field is the next step. They just raise the bar higher for anyone on offense, so instead of the lone insurgent being able to take down a blackhawk or whatever with a lucky RPG, now it takes three hits in rapid succession, or five, or two RPG’s followed by a TOW or whatever, depending entirely on the properties of the shield.
It’s got to be wildly demoralizing to score a direct hit on something and not even fuck up the paint job. A lot of people would probably jump straight to movies like War of the Worlds or Independence Day where the shields are effectively invincible. Eventually they’ll figure out how much damage a shield can take, and the problem won’t seem as insurmountable. They’ll be downright surmountable, or I dare say, mountable, especially once people get their hands on the inevitable next generation pew pews.
As many of you mentioned in the comments under the previous page, locks do in fact exist for raising and lowering ships. Thank you to the 270th person to point that out. I’m well aware, and so are Deus and Sydney, but Sydney was trying to picture something compatible with structures like the Hoover Dam. A single lock that could elevate a super shipping container that far in a single go would be a far more impressive engineering feat than the dam itself. It would be possible to do in a series of enormous yet shallower locks, but at a certain point, it’s probably more efficient to offload the ship, move the shipping containers up an elevator, and reload them on another ship that just travels between locks, or really, once you get to that point, just stick ’em on a train.
And yes, you can totally get power out of a river without having to build something as crazy as the Hoover. A series of smaller dams is probably geographically much more realistic for the Zambezi anyway. It’s just when you’re talking about dams around Sydney, the first and probably only thing she’s going to picture is the Hoover dam. She’s not especially worldly or well traveled, and the Hoover dam has been blown up and earthquaked in movies plenty of times, so that’s her mental image of a dam.
Man, it is so hard to type “dam” without typing “damn” and then having to erase the “n.” I guess I don’t have that much cause to talk about dams that much online.
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Yeah. No. No no no no no. All the nos. I could accept force fields on a tank. I could even accept personal force fields. But jets have this little thing called a flight profile, and the flight profile of an aerodynamic jet that has to move air aside is vastly different from a giant potato.
So if it’s always on, congratulations, you’ve made a comet! That’s assuming it doesn’t just starve itself and flame out, or use uber magic tech propulsion energy. But the air resistance slamming into the front of this thing would create a massive ball of plasma. Radiation goes through force fields, so this would cook the front of the jet. Oh! What if it’s frictionless? Wonderful question. It would still form a wall of plasma! Because while the forcefield itself might be frictionless, the air hitting it wouldn’t be, and you’d have air hitting other air trying really hard to get out of the way of this thing.
Ohh! But what about if it just turns on for a few seconds? Once again. Wall of plasma… that you slam into every time the shield drops. It doesn’t take a lot to turn your jet into ‘metal potato with squished pilot inside’. Oh, but what if it just makes a SMALL shield? Well now you’ve just introduced a small fireball that’s free to pile up against the shield, get white hot, and cook your airframe as it piles off. But even better, The drag of that small shield is far, far higher than the drag of the rest of the jet. You just introduced torque to your airframe. Airframes do not like rotational forces, because they already point their least restrictive flight profile and every other profile is just going to increase the torque. This is why whenever you see a jet spinning through the air, it’s usually followed by an explosion.
OOH! So what if we make the forcefield profile the same as the jet profile! Well if it’s frictionless, you’re not a jet. Those wings wouldn’t provide any lift and you’d fall out of the sky. It’s the friction between the wings and the air that provide the lift to counteract gravity. If they do have friction, you might have lift but not control, because every jet has a complex arrangement of control surfaces used to direct how it moves in flight. So you could be trying to turn, but with the forcefield on, your jet just became a dead rudder. OH! But what if you put the control surfaces IN the forcefield?
THEN WHY HAVE IT JET SHAPED AT ALL!?
Seriously, this comic is approaching Sinfest levels of frustration. Every time Deus trots out the comic gets stupid and frustrating. I’d rather Deus be in one comic, Syndey in another, and maybe have a crossover ever 1-2 years.
There are ways in which this can still work, albeit with some consequent side-effects. One way would be for example to have the shield only react locally and on proximity. This would still disturb the jet flight, but nowhere near as catastrophically as an always-on, all-around shield. The shield might also be designed so that it only prevents sufficiently large or hot matter from passing through, which might lead to some interesting changes in warfare, as colder and smaller projectiles get developed to work around the shield limitations.
See paragraph 3. unequally distributed drag = torque = spin = really big problems. My problem isn’t the shield. my problem is a shield on an object meant to move several hundred to thousands of miles per hour. Put this thing on a tank, a person, or a building… sure. whatever. But a jet is a very dynamic balance of forces all too ready to tear itself apart and turn into a fireball when those forces are messed with.
My favorite IRL story of a jet suddenly experiencing unanticipated forces. Kinda happy this came up two comics in a row.
For a RL example, on Jan 25, 1966 the SR-71 literally tore itself apart at mach 3.2. Even though the air is pretty thin at 78K feet the sudden loss of an engine initiated a RUD. Link is to a very interesting and detailed account by Bill weaver, the test pilot who miraculously survived.
https://roadrunnersinternationale.com/weaver_sr71_bailout.html
Keep in mind this is science fiction not fact plus we have seen that the shields on Cora’s ship can stop way more firepower than a rocket launcher has and still allow Max to blast the Fel ship and drop it in one hit.
Just because Sydney hasn’t the know-how to adjust her shield doesn’t mean it can’t be set to stop high energy impacts and still allow air to flow through normally.
Clearly the concept is to stop Earth-normal armament while permitting air flow through we’re talking about technology that can create “hard light” clothing and armor out of photons not plasma.
there is also the user oversight possibility, that the beings that made the orbs don’t need to breathe so making the shield able to pass air wasn’t an issue…or they had more than two limbs and could use the life support orb…or the bio-ship theory and the orbs were part of a control panel the force field around the ship wasn’t an issue with life support inside the ship.
RL is RL. Fiction is fiction.
Most physicsts say that Star Trek warp drives and transporters are utterly impossible. There there are the inertial dampeners, inertialess and reactionless impulse engines, phasers, etc.
Some kind of shielding would be required for long term space flight due to cosmic radiation among other things. People have been looking into it since the first manned space flights. We still have no real idea how to do such a thing, but ‘deflector shields’ or something similar are much easier to portray in fiction (Especially on TV) than massive vats of water or sheets of ice surrounding spacecraft.
Now as to whether they would work on craft designed to travel through the air instead of space? I have no idea and will leave that to people smarter than I am. There would be problems, of course. But in the end, would they be insurmountable? Ask the Wright brothers and Gustave Whitehead.
In RL they are saying warp drive is possible however the energy requirements are far beyond our current technology plus they have successfully transported light but simple photons are not as complicated as living tissue and “shields” are closer to being created than gravity plating and inertial dampeners both require a generated field that effects the laws of physics so yeah…
wasn’t there a more recent accidental discovery that suggests warp drive could be achieved at a lower energy cost than previously expected; however as warp drive isn’t what their experiments are about or being paid to study they aren’t pursuing it at this time but have made the basic data available so others can work on it.
two articles on it,
https://thedebrief.org/darpa-funded-researchers-accidentally-create-the-worlds-first-warp-bubble/
https://coffeeordie.com/alcubierre-white-warp-drive/
the energy requirement is probably still too high, but baby steps.
although this is like the baby trying to crawl, tripping and going into an olympic run for a second before falling back over and going back to scooting around the floor lol.
I mean sure, except that’s clearly not how barriers work in this setting. Its been well established that magic (or tech) wards can be *set* to allow or block different things to pass through. Setting the ward to allow air through shouldn’t be difficult.
If it makes you this salty, just stop reading? Seriously, it’s not worth a 3 paragraph rant.
Is this magic or science, cause if it’s magic then see paragraph 5. And I care because I actually like the premise of the comic. It’s Deux-Stu I can’t stand.
But… but Deux-Stu is the protagonist of this entire harem fantasy!
Once he wins over Maxima, it’s only a matter of time before he collects them all.
Paragraph 5 is “THEN WHY HAVE IT JET SHAPED AT ALL!?” ??
I think it is probably a ward or other spell, rather than technology, based on the reaction of the stripes on the aircraft. seems like a very “magic” thing to have stripes light up where the impact is being diffused, though I suppose technology could be responsible, and might require a bright strip to light up…
to answer the question: Perhaps the shield is not jet shaped? Doesn’t look jet shaped to me, as drawn… hmmm…. might not even be “on” a jet-shaped-object
Frankly, it appears we’re only assuming this is a jet probably because of what looks like front landing gear and the cockpit being reminiscent of “real” earth jets… but we don’t even see wings on the thing, much less jet engines of any sort, control surfaces, or anything else that relies on a shield not being there to make the thing fly…
I guess Deus might try to slap a shield on a standard jet, but I would find it strange for him to not have found / stumbled upon a propulsion/flight technology that works quite well with shields.
That’s not how “barriers” work. That is how Sydney’s super advanced Nth level tech orbs work.
Whatever Deus has, it is vastly inferior to that.
I agree with you and in my books forcefields are capable of being shaped increasing the aerodynamics of anything flying or moving through air, water, or space. Removing or greatly reducing drag increases potential speed of said object.
Presumably the force field can turn on and off, and is only “on” when something is about to impact the ship. It means a loss of aerodynamics at the point of impact, but should still allow normal flight otherwise.
What if the jet is designed around the force field? Like, you make the frictioned, always on, field there to take some hits and if it goes down, then the jet is just a regular jet? It has the control surfaces (like a vehicle with a friggen force field needs em?) and assume it isn’t using some kind of repulsion tech as well. It probably still looks like a jet and not a brick or two pronged plate because people will recognize a jet as a weapon of war. Dues seems REAL big on branding and appearance after all.
Great engineering analysis, but not bothering me enough to care. Superpowers. Realism is optional.
Best bet is the inherent need of all shielding tech to have a level of discernment.
Either it blocks EVERYTHING ala Sid’s shield and means you have a ticking clock on your breathable air, or it’s going to allow some amount of transmission and have conditions onto what gets filtered and what doesn’t.
Also, it’s downright cruel to compare anything to that fascist TERF bullshit over at Sinfest.
Does is block visible light? How about lasers?
We already had this discussion in-comic, you know.
My best bet? It focuses on how energetic the incident is. Basic Light? Nah, that can pass, not enough joules.
Laser Pointer? Probably the same, but pushing it. Actual offensive laser that would burn something? That gets blocked.
I actually have no idea what’s going on with Sinfest now. I perforce stopped reading and caring a goodly while ago.
“TERF” I only know as a SJW badword used against JK Rowling for a piece I didn’t find particularly offensive or objectionable. So my associations are like with “fascist”, that to various self-styled leftist groups mainly means “we don’t like your kind ’round here”. Quite unconsciously ironically too, given what fascism actually is all about, and what their ideologies tend to espouse.
Of the two, “TERF” is probably the worse label, as it paints an apostate rather than an unbeliever. How someone could be both in one go is one for the theologists. But neither has much to do with how frustrating reading the comic is, which is what the comparison was about.
I think the reason “TERF” is such a particularly bad label, particularly in regards to Sinfest, is that it’s associated with feminists who think the SCUM manifesto is a brilliant visionary treatise on how to create a utopian paradise. Given what happened with Sinfest, the way it went from “funny and occasionally sweet” to “incredibly unlikeable females talking about how evil men are,” it seems fairly appropriate.
(for those not in the know: the SCUM manifesto describes men as inferior, evil, and needing to be killed. After which women can replicate themselves through cloning technology, which was already more than capable of that in the 1960s. And the only good men are ones willing to help kill the others and then be killed themselves. It is incredibly hateful, ridiculously nonsensical, and the feminist movement was severely damaged when the leadership refused to denounce it and instead called it “satire” and claimed to find male reactions to the manifesto to be amusing.
It was written by Valerie Solanas, who made it clear she meant every word when she attempted to murder a famous artist named Andy Warhol: https://www.history.com/news/andy-warhol-shot-valerie-solanas-the-factory )
It’s not that at all. I can respect a webcomic that has a message I don’t like. I won’t READ it but I will at least respect it for being an artistic endeavor. Like I bitch about the scientific implications and political ramifications of Deus’s fighters, but only because I actually care about the comic. I like Sydney and want to see more super hero cop stuffs. But Sinfest doesn’t believe in anything. It swapped from mocking trumpers as zombies to mocking people who actually get vaccines as zombies to now criticizing women who don’t just take what they want. There’s no thematic consistency, and since I can’t tell what Sinfest believes, I can’t care about it. I can’t respect it.
Oh, Sinfest was mocking Trumpers and people who got vaccines? I wouldn’t know. I stopped reading it long before Trump was elected, back when they started the whole “young female hero on her Tricycle of Justice” thing, and the original characters were either twisted into bizzare new personas or no longer featured.
TERF as a basis stands for “Trans exlusionary radical feminist.” As someone who is in circles who use it by that definition, it’s entirely used to call out people who call themselves feminists, but have misandrist and/or misogynic, and transphobic views.
no idea what sinfest is so ngl I don’t know if it fits that defition or not.
Hmm… take the direct hit and probably lose the jet or just lose steering briefly and probably not lose the jet not really a tough choice. You’re also really overemphasizing the threat of plasma formation, given that the current fastest fighter jet goes Mach 3.2 and you don’t get really bad adiabatic compression until around or above Mach 5.
You don’t if you are flying a vehicle specifically designed to fly through the air with the greatest of ease, no. But we’re talking about a sphere, which is making a serious effort to be the WORSE thing to try to push through the air.
And the stress from the change in forces on the airframe from switching between Mach 3 & still air & back in a second or less? Forgetaboutit.
1. Doesn’t look like a sphere to me. We can see a rounded point in front of the nose of the jet with the remaining shape appearing to match the shape of the jet itself.
2. The stress changes could be a problem if you just went straight from 0% to 100% and back again. Having the shields ramp up or down basically can knock that back down to within an acceptable range of strain (basically equal to or less than what sharp evasive maneuvers would cause).
You’re remarkably confident for someone who’s completely wrong.
1. Unless this fighter is doing over mach 3, your “ball of plasma” is a completely irrelevant concern, and if it is, then it by necessity has to be able to resist those same temperatures on the skin of the aircraft.
2. Aircraft do not require friction with the air to function, on the contrary, inviscid flow would be incredibly desirable to reduce drag to a minimum.
3. If you’re so mad just leave. There’s no point consuming content you don’t enjoy anymore.
Consider doing the slightest amount of research before posting an ignorant rant next time.
Dude, really?
1. We’re talking about a sphere. At the point of the front, the air is going to be moving 50 or 100 times as fast as the shield (straight up, down, right, or left) just to get out of the way. FIERCE plasma ball will get going even at sub-mach speeds.
2. Buhahahahahahaha! Then how do they steer? Telepathy? These are _air_planes, not TIE fighters. They have no auxiliary trusters.
Incorrect. Here’s why.
1. Even airliners can be damaged by turbulence, which is why aerodynamics are necessary. The concord didn’t have the same flight profile as a 777 because it needs to minimize the impact of breaching the sound barrier. Putting up a forcefield wall only to slam into it repeatedly is going to wreck havoc on the performace of the aircraft, smashing into the pilot and the air craft with every drop. If this is a sub-sonic fighter, you don’t need fancy tech for that.
2. Yes you absolutely do, because as the air molecules encounter the surface of the wing, the boundry layer between the wing and the surrounding air bends the air around the wing in a viscous flow, allowing the low air pressure to form and push the aircraft aloft. A frictionless surface would lack this condition, resulting in a deflected wedge of air colliding with the air around it. You’re right that low friction, low drag wings can be quite advantageous… on subsonic GLIDERS, not on supersonicly displacing wings. A super sonic frictionless wing would generate ridiculous vortexes around the wing that would make it utterly worthless for lift.
3. No.
Rather than defending the fictional world, I’m just going to say I love this post for its scientific aspects.
Thank you!
IT IS A NICELY WRITTEN, FUNNY, SCI-FI COMIC!
Period!
If you want to nit-pick at something how about going at real life issues instead of complaining about a fictional sci-fi comic about super heros, aliens, and mythical creatures with some cheesecake/beefcake thrown in!
Dude, I wrote this for a forcefield on a jet. Do you have any concept the levels of bitchery I could engage in if I talked about real world shit? I could bitch a whole mountain range of real life issues that piss me off. Do not tempt god level bitchery! The only reason you are not smote by it is because I have not a single focus to begin on! That is all that saves you!
I am curious why you haven’t mentioned these complaints in regards to Sydney’s force field, particularly since she can travel faster than a jet. I am also curious how you’re so certain of you knowledge of force fields.
1. Sydney’s force field was never brought up in the comic. 2. Because Sydney isn’t a JET. She doesn’t care about aerodynamics. Cause she’s not a jet. She doesn’t have to worry about eating a shockwave because she isn’t a jet. What Sydney IS is a WMD. Even though she has a small cross section, she goes much much faster and the shockwave of her passage would cause wide spread damage over whatever she happens to fly over. Sydney’s a meteorite that never ablates. The energy from WHATEVER powers her flight would be adding to global temperatures simply by dint of her flying around at 16x the speed of sound. Personally, I suspect she flies at subsonic speeds where this isn’t an issue most of the time, but Sydney could oliberate Gallyn with a few fly bys at low altitute at max mach 16+
I would love to argue the Nth tech shield may absorb excess energy to avoid these problems, but then I remember the cracked window implying the shield deflects all force used against it.
and that other point, for all Deus’ postering one good S class super could strafe run that whole army into oblivion, and Archon basically has three…sort of…Maxima is a solid S class with some variables on the degree but always in the S range it looks like for her stats, Vehemence is a class shifter but looks to top off around S, and Sidney’s variable powers all over the place, but her portals are Omega (range classification for porting powers at any rate even if not in the other two porter classes), and her shield looks to be S class…and a deflector…so yeah have to agree, an S-class forefield of the deflector class is basically a Rodan fly by.
You must mean this page, and not the whole comic, but it doesn’t matter whether or not it was brought up. Her shield quite apparently doesn’t have the problems you’re complaining about, but you’re complaining as if those problems must necessarily apply to any force field. Also, Deus is irrelevant to this particular force field, since it’s most likely alien technology, so why bring him up?
Without touching on the other points… if you have a jet with a force field that can function as an airfoil and control surfaces, then the reason to have it still be shaped like a jet is so you can still fly if something goes wrong with the force field. Redundancy is good when you’re in something that’s getting shot at.
A big chunk of this discussion is why I’ve held since very early on that Syd + fly orb + shield orb = WMD. Even at Mach 4, let alone 16.
But shield on a jet? Pull the other one.
Until proven otherwise, however, I’m going with “This was a DEMO. That plane is never intended to fly.”
Who says that it’s not a gas permeable shield? Air flows as normal, missiles get stopped, plane has momentary turbulence. OR…..
You may be over thinking this. :-)
Blakes 7 had Vila confronted with a door that wasn’t really a door but a forcewall, designed to reflect light back in a certain spectrum so it looked like metal door.
Once the door was breached, by sliding a probe into the barrier (Very very slowly & not like a impact) a teleport terminal linked to a ship that was now landed on another planet, the air on that world was being passed through into the ship through a similar forcewall door protecting the open airlock.
Fire is made of very hot gases, so while this would prevent direct contact of the missile casing and debris, any detonation on the front of the plane (probably fairly common since it’s normally facing its target) could result in flying through a fireball. Some minor missile modifications to produce superheated flames instead of shrapnel, and that would easily wreck several of the critical instruments on a fighter, if not cause sufficient damage to compromise structural integrity.
Also shockwaves propagate through gases, and so even without shrapnel the explosion would still do a lot of direct damage. Unless the shield was somehow tuned to filter certain pressures, but with a craft moving from a standstill to multiples of Mach that would be pretty difficult to do and still let the plan fly normally.
…. Easy: Make a forcefield ghat only blocks solid objects. It already obviously doesn’t block light or sound, so why should it block air? Everything that will damage the plane is in the solid state, after all.
Ah, but what is a “solid object”?
How did Star Trek account for it?
By being in space and not dealing with air molecules forcefully impacting each other
They also had shielded shuttle craft that did atmospheric flight.
They often had missions that took them in-planet across the cosmos, even brought ships into Earth’s atmosphere on occasion.
Or maybe it could simply only react to solid matter, allowing gasses to freely transit the field…..
Of course, that would mean it couldn’t take off or land with the field on, but it should be fine otherwise.
What if its an active-analysis ocsilating field that allows air through but nothing else? Or it detects objects above certain speeds and trajectories and turns on for a 5th of a second right at impact?
… And here I was merely laughing about those silly humans assuming force fields work like ablative armor. Well done!
All this… robust debate, over… nothing. Where is it even IMPLIED the force-field is for airborne usage?
As it stands — yes Pander, I’ll take a cup of Ginja — this is still a ground-breaking (!) development. Isn’t it nice to have a flight of fighters SAFELY parked on the ground which can take off as soon as the sky is clear? Aircraft which are protected from guerilla attacks? In fact, how about an impenetrable hangar?
Your pun is too subtle to warrant ninja. They aren’t cheap and I have to save the funds for the more gross violators, like Ro Jaws. Puns which are too subtle, or which are brilliantly executed are spared ninja hit squads.
For example:
Ahem…
Ro Jaws submitted ten puns to a pun contest, assuming that at least one would win a prize.
But no pun in ten did.
Actually on second thought I’m going to call a ninja hit squad on myself just so they can beat me up for that one.
Most planes are ground kills anyway. For forward deployed vehicles I know many a crew chief who would slaughter ect ect for something like this to protect the 100 million dollar jet. From dust much less airburst rockets or missles.
And that is not even mentioning the power requirements. How long can the shield be kept up before the battery or generator fails?
I don’t care much about the whole science stuff. I more care about the last sentence, that this comic gets more and more ridiculous as shit goes on. I stopped reading this comic for a quite a bit mostly just because I caught up and had to wait for live updates, I guess. A couple years later I’m back and read through all the archives. It feels like every time Maxima shows up she pulls some deus ex maxima out and gets even more powerful every damn time. She just kicked some demon lord’s ass no biggie, can literally anyone defeat her? Like at all? Probably only vehemence.
Might just be because I binged the pages, so maybe the pace feels different for me.
Either who tho, the comic is still great fun. Though these meetings are quite boring tho. :P
It’s almost like the narrative tension isn’t supposed to come from the combat, and the sheer lopsided distribution of power is supposed to make that clear.
I think DEUS is aware of this limitations and thus reverted to the cheat by a demonstration on the ground.
Consider this a alpha test version. Flying at mach 2 with shield will be the next project goal. As long as it sells, it is ok.
How did Sydney’s transparent shield block Hex’s lasers? https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-294-sydneys-mighty-need/
Clearly air particles can pass through the shield, because sound moves through the air, and the pilot shouted to Deus after turning the shield on.
Sound passes through Sydney’s shield even though air doesn’t. Also sound passes through a glass barrier where as air doesn’t.
Ergo don’t assume matter can if sound does.
Air doesn’t pass through Sydney’s shields. Same fight a couple of pages later she has to drop the shield to let in fresh air, just before the fighter with Vehemence.
How do Sydney’s shields block lasers while being transparent?
Clearly air particles can pass through the shield, because the major shouted back to Deus after turning them on, and sound travels through the air.
I think you’re making way too many assumptions here about the force field on the jet. For instance you’re assuming that it’s not similar to a Holtzman field, or one that’s more like a kinetic absorber or a kinetic dampener than Sydney’s Mr. Bubble. In the process it’s become a game of what ifs than one based on what we’ve observed.
All we’ve seen is that the jet plane can create a stationary partial field around the cockpit on one side. We don’t know it’s full capabilities, how the shield is affected by high speeds, if it’s one emitter/deflector field or has emitters around the entire profile, if “magic” is or isn’t involved here (See Arthur C. Clarke), or how the shields even work.
If you want to play what ifs, we can do that too. Just don’t go around assuming it’s BS because it breaks what you think you understand about how it works. It’s called Science Fiction for a reason.
Or, alternatively, the shield is usually skintight around the jet and the ‘bip boop’ was the pilot adjusting the shape and radius.
comics fiction logic in a comics world with alient tech thrown in. Where is Sydney’s distinct zooming through atmosphere profile with her shield
Okay whoa. Two things.
One, you have no idea what the flight profile of that shield is. It was an angled overhead shot, and actually looks like the shield might be some kind of rounded wedge shape.
Two, one of the reasons for “go fast” while in combat is to avoid being hit. If you have shields up, considerably slower flight is possible. This could actually be very beneficial. You will notice they turned the shield on with an internal control, its likely shut off for incredibly high airspeeds. Of which creating the level of plasma you are talking about would again require going far faster than would ever be actually necessary, or likely even is possible for that craft.
If the shields do affect the aerodynamics of the jet when they are activated, then the easiest solution to defeating the jet is to cause the shields to activate constantly. A laser (powerful enough to cause burn damage) would do the job, or just fire a buttload of AA flak. The shields go up, the jet goes down.
Because your force field isn’t ‘always on,’ as demonstrated by Deus needing to tell the major to turn it on. Perhaps due to power consumption, perhaps due to other reasons. But regardless, you still need a jet shaped jet.
But yeah, you make a lot of good, logical points grounded in some fairly basis physics.
Slow shields in DUNE were circumvented via new hand to hand combat techniques and weapon systems like missile guidance systems that braked when nearing impact.
An easy work around for those shields is to make a missile that can cloak itself in radio waves. After all they still need to communicate with ground control while in enemy territory so the frequency they are using for communication would be able to pass through the shields. Have one person using a laser designator that bounces all kinds of frequencies off the target in order lock onto whatever frequency they are using for communication then program that into the missile’s cloaking device and fire away.
That wouldn’t work for the same reason that you can’t pass a missile through the walls of your house by making it emit wifi signals.
it would go through those shields but not the object being shielded. the purpose of a cloaking device is to make it invisible to whatever is looking for it. by matching the cloak to the frequency of the enemy communications channel, the shield will think it’s a message from ground control and let it pass through.
Just my 2 cents. Best use of shields/force fields made a distinction between one that protect physically and ones that protect from energy. Want to be protected from both, get layered shields, with multiple projectors and larger power source. Other wise your playing a bit of a guessing game for what your going to be hit with.
Big example is from the end of Stargate Destiny. They modified the Destiny’s shields to perfectly Pruett from the aliens weapons. But the aliens just started ramming the Destiny instead.
I’d figure the way around shielding tech would be overwhelming it. So something like a broader spectrum microwave blast would put a bunch of energy over a wide enough area that the shield would work itself into disaster if it tried to keep up.
Most shielding would have to like a net, compounding on a point of impact to negate the force. If it was just always putting out some level of repulsive energy on all sides, you’d wind up with an energy output that verges on insanity pretty quick.
I love the Team Rocket mascot hanging off the foregrip of the rocket launcher.
Now let Max and Sydney take a shot and see how well those shields work against their forms of attack.
We’ve already seen how Fel energy shields held up to Max (she focused the beam and punched clean through), and those were implied to be some of the stronger shields among the interstellar powers. And Sydney managed to circumvent the shields of the city destroyers on the Alari homeworld.
Actually, the fel shields held up to Maxima’s blast until she did it at her maximum possible power plus most focuded possible power. Basically at an implied power level Maxima had never done before but always wanted to try, according to her.
I just realized how tall Deus actually is when seeing him standing next to both Max and Anvil.
I trust everyone has noticed that Deus’ tie and kerchief are the same color as Maxima’s hair.
You talk about shields being surmountable, and sure, eventually they would be. But…
At the risk of bringing up an old B-movie, do you remember Independence Day? The first one. When the military launched their initial counterattack against the aliens, the places were shredded by shielded alien fighters. It’s entirely possible that the shields on those small ships could have been taken down with repeated hits, but in the madness of the dogfight it was nigh-impossible to do so.
That’s the value of a shield. Not that it makes you invincible, but it allows you to survive long enough to kill whatever is shooting at you, at which point it doesn’t matter how surmountable your shield potentially can be.
It WOULD change warfare: no unshielded force would dare go up against a shielded one, unless they possessed an utterly overwhelming advantage in firepower.
Hey, psa to everyone who thinks they’re smarter than the guy who invented forcefield
It’s fiction
There have been no details
If you’re so smart invent you’re own damn forcefields
Thank you.
The rant is justified, because these are exactly the questions Sidney would ask.
I mean, that shield blocked, mass and pressure, but not light? The pilot could see out and right before he could hear sound, so is there a min/max? None of the energy transferred through the shield at all, the plane didn’t move sideways across the tarmac, so does it block causality? Could you use it to fly straight through a mountain? The engine was not running and I didn’t see an APU, so does this thing run on batteries?
My big issue with shields is that they are usually author powered and that is highly unreliable as a source.
A few additions to that.
1) The blue stripes lit up on the plane, showing it has a standby internal power source for when it is parked. He had take steps to turn it on, so it is not infinite in capacity.
2) It is clear, so it may still be vulnerable to laser attacks.
3) The gases from the blast were blocked, meaning is de facto airtight. If it was deployed in flight you would have no moving airflow over the wing to provide lift. This would turn it into a ballistic bubble in the sky. Also being airtight, as it started falling to the ground the running engines would be sucking in all the enclosed air and spitting out exhaust fumes into the bubble. Eventually either the engines or the pilot would fail due to lack of oxygen.
safe to say from all the observations in the comments on the many points of failure either this was a demonstration of a shield to protect jets while they are on the ground, or that is not a jet but something like a Star Gate Puddle Jumper dressed up like a jet to fool observers.
“The engine was not running and I didn’t see an APU, so does this thing run on batteries? – Lord Stuart
We didn’t see definite absence of any secondary power source, either. The page only shows the nose end of the plane, which doesn’t rule out something being active further back. But my money would be on a umbilical power/data feed connecting the plane to the base systems – no sense burning fuel just to be able to download its systems status and upload the necessary maps etc. for the next mission.
Exponential force reduction.
The larger the force, the greater the reduction.
I am trying to decide if Deus matching Maxima’s hair color in his tie and pocket square is either a fanboy tribute or if he is trolling her. (or possibly the author not bothering to change the color palette in his brush)
PSA: Do not follow Lorlara’s example; kicking an armed and loaded anti-vehicular weapon does not follow proper gun safety rules.
“Guisarme” body spray!!!!!! ROFL DaveB!
I am assuming since it is still a jet and if it is still using jet propulsion then the shield has three points of weakness.
1: not interfere with the thrust, so either the shield is weak around those points or is the same kind Kora has and allows force to exit the shield…and I just thought of and explained away this potential weakness while typinh so never mind
but one weakness remains, if it is still flying as a jet flies then air flow is required, lift and all that, so air is passing through the shield. so the jet is still vulnerable to air currents, this isn’t a huge weakness in warfare, disrupting the air enough to be more than turbulence for a jet is harder than it looks but not impossible with an indirect shockwave.
-or there being supers if someone can find a high level aerokinetic they could still hit the planes directly with air blasts, possibly wind blade spells and such could work if the shield can’t detect pressurized air as a threat.
a bunch of what ifs, but if the shield does just deflect air then either the jet is jet shape for show and is actually a hover craft, hyper force flight, quantum lock adjuster, anti-grav, or other such tech; or else the shield is going to cause some issues with air friction as you have effectively created hyper sonic cannon ball.
-the simplest solution for air friction for a force field is inertia dampeners, momentum disrupters, soft deflection curves, and what not that move the air around the shield. This isn’t a problem with flying saucers, spell casters flying around in bubbles, and anything else that isn’t using thrust to fly; but a jet or plane that need air to come into physical contact with the object for lift.
-the other two weaknesses for clairity being can still be hit by air disruptions and still needs the air to fly.
I agree. For the shield to work on a jet plane, either it’s no longer a jet or that the shield can’t be a wall that blocks air coming in and out. Jet engines require air to propel themselves after all.
This means that it’s less likely to be a Mr. Bubble (See Sydney’s “Nth” tech) than for it to be some other contraption that says no to intense energy passing through in one direction. I say one direction as a decent military would want something that defends only one way. If you block offensive stuff from going out. Basically it defeats the purpose of the weapon/military vehicle.
Supers are a big weakness, as shown by when Maxima’s crew took out the vault guardian. They will always be a big weakness though. But the point Deus made earlier is that “his” stuff that he’s selling can help level that playing field. Yes he’s selling this stuff. That’s what Deus does.
Now I’ve never fired a rocket launcher, worn heels, or know if Alari physiology allows for increased strength, But I think it is incredibly impressive for her to fire a rocket launcher in heels and a pencil skirt. Nothing short of impressive this lady.
There shouldn’t be a lot of recoil force to handle, as there would be with a large gun. The back end of the tube is open; there’s nothing for the projectile exhaust to really push against, just enough to duct it safely past the firer’s shoulder. (This does of course mean that anyone standing directly behind the firer gets a full foosh in the face.) All that Lorlara would need to lift and brace against is the static weight, which would presumably be engineered as low as possible to aid portability.
It looks something like an M67 RCL which fired a 90mm HEAT or HE round.
If this was loaded with HE it would weigh around 20kg, so yeah kicking 20kg into the air is pretty impressive no matter what you’re wearing.
M67s are a late 50s design, phased out in US service in the 2010s and still used by ROK troops.
I would love to have cologne that made me smell of an old D&D manual, or freshly opened pack of MTG cards.
Looking at her outfit in conjunction with actions… I think Lorlara is loving human culture, fashion and her job.
Clever Deus. Sell the first generation shields, wait for them to become mainstream and sales to dip, then sell the first generation shield buster weaponry to make them redundant, wait for the weapons to be come mainstream and sales to dip, then sell the second generation shields… Repeat cycle
And she’s got the Say. It. With. Pride… down pat: “I’m an ALARI P.A.”
What I’d like to know is why the rocket would be LOADED and ARMED while in it’s carry case? That kinda sounds unsafe for transport.
And what does it say about me that THIS is what irks me about this page :p
Means this was set up before hand as a planned demonstration
Single-shot antitank weapons come that way.
Yeah, you DO NOT kick an armed explosive weapon, just in case, cos things made to go boom will go boom at the worst possible moment. An addendum to Murphys Rule.
When I was a wet behind the ears puke I picked up an expended M72 from our training range and I got such a chewing out that I remember it 40 years later.
I wish my employment contract included that!
There are designs that arent pursued because of low profit (at the moment) like having a ship tied on a strong flowing river with what basically amounts to a watermill in the ship to create power … you can have many of those and voila power without disrupting the flow.
What’s Sydney hissing at in the first panel? Is Douche’s misuse of science hurting her brain?
The sun, it’s a running gag that she hates sunly
I was assuming it was sudden exposure to bright sunlight, which is why she’s pulling down on her hat brim.
Upon careful consideration of the lighting effects in panels 5 and 6, I am forced to conclude that those heels are not necessarily the only weaponised part of Lorlara’s wardrobe.
Imagine the next time the ladies of Archon(Arianna,Dr.Chevy,Dr.Frost, and Max)get together for their annual tea,they invite Lorlara to join.
Midway into it,the Alaria P.A. sees some powder from the powdered donuts and a plastic straw cut in half.
She takes a knife to make straight rows of the powder and then takes the straw…Maybe this video clip might help some:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMUyfnvp2fc
If there wasn’t an arms race before, there certainly will be after this visit. Including a sudden and pressing need to leverage earth’s supernatural population for magic and magitech to offset the sudden presence of alien military and industrial tech in the hands of an explicitly expansionist power.
https://youtu.be/eqxdTxl4CXc Enjoy the future of both ships and power on same river.
The example they used looked like it would take about 17 days to charge a smartphone, but I guess if it can power some LED lights, then that’s definitely better than nothing.
Yeah just a tiny waterwheel, nothing particularly revolutionary – just very low profile. Because it’s tiny. And probably prone to clogging from algae, sediment, etc, or getting knocked loose by floodwaters.
In the right river, an array of them could probably trickle-charge batteries with enough power to open and close locks, etc, but the complexity of installing & maintaining a big enough array to compete with even a tiny dam wouldn’t be cost effective.
There’s some real venture capitalist comedy going on in that video.
Can’t help noticing there’s no cord shown coming from that thing. A passive rotor like that is used in some aquarium filters, and they clog and stop like you would not believe. I’ve been keeping fish for decades, and that design is not fish safe as they claim. 1.3 billion people may not have access to electricity? But they also don’t have access to water.
Mmm, I love the smell of an old D&D manual in the morning!
Easy next vote incentive: panel 6 from the front ‘Bitches love canons’
So, I’m assuming the force field isn’t like Mr Bubble, and closer to a projected layer/wall of ERA/NERA that provides enough of a smack to detonate the (guessing here) AT4 equivalent, as opposed to something like a Javelin with tandem warheads. I think it’s likely something where the shield has a sensor and triggers either the whole thing or a small part when something passes the sensor component.
To explain that, ERA is explosive reactive armor, and NERA is the non explosive type (essentially, a pair of steel plates with a rubber blob between) to help dissipate direct impact force and act as spaced armor so the penetration mechanism has to travel farther and dissipate more energy (simplifying). One of the common ways around this is two sets of explosives on the projectile, a smaller one to try and set off any ERA/defenses, and then the primary one to actually try and smash through the vehicle armor to the tender engine parts.
I would be curious if a simple upgraded penetration profile would be enough to defeat the shield (and is something I prefer my fiction to do rather than just being flat immune to bullets). IE: if a sidewinder isn’t enough to get through fighter shields, would a harpoon or tomahawk, both capable of anti-ship warfare, do enough? Would a pure KE penetrator like an APFSDS go through it? The rocket launcher looks a smaller general purpose one like an AT4 or Karl Gustav as opposed to a Stinger or other proper ManPAD (if it’s for demonstration purposes, no point wasting the expensive guidance package).
Also, Dave, you’re forgetting that water wheels have been around for some time, and there’s also a wide variety of water turbines, including ones that look just like wind turbines just under water.
His cologne…
Ugh… I called it on the first page we saw him. I won’t spoil anything, but… when the time comes: I called it.
I’ll open with I skimmed most of the comments, but I have a little to add to the shield bit.
While we can start with the fact that the author tried to make it quite clear that he wasn’t a physicist, and as such the physics of the comic should be taken with a load of salt, it can also be argued that the dust and rocket both qualify as solid state matter. As such, given the ‘how’ of this tech was never actually mentioned, it could well be blocking solid matter yet not gas. Light is more energy than any state of matter, though hardlight would be plasma. This creates a simple explanation equal to the available information.
I’ll not be defending this idea as there isn’t a point, it’s just an idea, and this is only a comic.
I’M BACK FROM DEPLOYMENT BAY-BEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Ahem, a quick note for this Dave: One of the defining principles behind the US War method and one of the reasons why we’re so good at is every advancement we create, we create a way to beat it too.
A ultimate weapon is useless if you can’t defend yourself against it. A ultimate defense is only worthwhile till someone else comes up with a way to make it themselves or comes up with a way to beat it before you do.
Never make something you can’t kill.
Welcome back safe and sound
Wo I wanna know how exactly an alari stacks up against a human pshically
Can I suggest a ship elevator rather then locks, something patterned after the Falkirk Wheel would I think fit the aesthetic and while proven tech to make one that can handle a big container ship would probably require future tech.
https://www.scottishcanals.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Falkirk-Wheel-Copyright-Nick-Millson1.jpg
Picture to show what I mean.
I imagine that militaries will pay much MUCH more for exclusivity than they will for the weapons system alone.
So the US pays Deus several billion dollars for an exclusive contract for the shield tech.
Meanwhile Deus sells Japan exclusive rights to his cloaking tech. The Chinese can have exclusive rights to his railgun technology for a price.
Now a new and even more lucrative market exists selling sensors/shield piercing weapons/railgun resistant shields to everybody. With all the best toys kept for himself.
Anyone else thought about conflict freespace after reading the author comment?
When you first meet the shivans your sensors can’t lock on to their ships anx due to them having shielding technology your weapons are almost useless ( it is possible to beat that scoutship in that mission though)
A few missions later the shivans are still a dangerous force, but with weapon and sensor upgrades they don’t seem unbeatable anymore
Speaking as a former Air Force maintainer, I feel like one of the biggest things Force Fields *could* do is drastically reduce overall maintenance costs for aircraft. Depending on exactly how they work at least.
A ‘bubble’ shield like this still has to let air through for aerodynamic flight purposes unless there’s other tech radically altering how the bird flies, so you’ll still get wear and tear on the skin just from high-speed flight (which also introduces some potentially exciting new stall conditions if the field errors just right or the airframe otherwise exceeds speeds at which the field starts to register air as something moving with too much energy), but imagine never getting birdstruck again just for one example.
Depending on what all the field effectively protects the aircraft against it could be a real boon just to have navigational deflectors even before you start worrying about actual attempts to destroy the thing.
Yep the f 35 shows some serious wear on the nose and around the cockpit. The materials can’t take the maximum that the plane can put out.
All these people arguing over what they think is a jet. Clearly it is some strange foreign car. All we see is the front of the vehicle, so why are people just assuming its a jet?
Lorlala: Because I’m a ‘Personal Assistant’!
Sydney: …And?
Lorlala: AND?? It doesn’t GET any more ‘personal’ than a rocket launcher!!