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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I can’t help but Wonder do her orbs go dormant when she is asleep or when she is physically / mentally drained
They seem to run their default functions as soon as she grabs them (except the PPO, which has a safety switch, which threw her off at first). If she fell unconscious, she’d drop the orbs, but she has duct tape on her utility belt for that (and for any other problem, of course). She’s never tested this strategy, though.
We’ve actually seen her orbs go inactive when she sleeps – after the restaurant brawl she crashed out on the bed, and then all the orbs dulled and settled around her. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1628
Yeah, but she wasn’t holding any of them.
They were also asleep the first time she took them out before her recruitment at Archon HQ.
But they could have a power saving feature like a computer but keep certain critical function running.
Yeah that’s essentially what I was talking about. She was both physically and mentally exhausted to the point of passing out almost as soon as she hit the pillow and her orbs hovered for a moment before they drop down completely power down. I was wondering if it was her exhaustion that led to the orbs simply dropping like that
Mach 4 is 4 times the speed of sound in the air, so 4x340m/sec –> ~1Km/sec. The lunar distance is roughly 385Mm (384,400 Km), so with a constant speed of 1Km/sec, it would take her 385,000 seconds to reach the moon, i.e. roughly 4.5 days. However Sidney is probably accellerating, and in space where there’s no drag, she should be able to reach speeds much higher than mach 4 pretty fast. The question here is: what’s her maximum acceleration?
Ok, I’ll stop being a physics geek now.
iirc mach 4 was the highest they tested and they were both still accelerating even in atmosphere
Sydney was not able to accelerate past mach 4. You are mistaken.
We don’t know that was not able to accelerate past Mach 4, that was simply the speed she was going when they stopped
Yes we do kow that she was not able to accelerate past Mach 4, because it was literally stated that she TOPS OUT AT MACH 4. You don’t say someone ‘tops out’ at a certain speed if they might be able to go faster. That was her max speed. Mach 4. Look at the page I linked to again. It’s outright stated. Maxima doesn’t say ‘Okay, you were going Mach 4 when we decided to stop.’ She said ‘you top out at Mach 4, which makes you our second fastest flier.’
Not to mention she says so on THIS VERY PAGE.
Panel 6. “Just make sure this is cranked all the way…”
Panel 15 “I guess Mach 4 doesn’t impress space all that much.”
What can we discern from this? Mach 4 is her max speed, ‘cranked all the way.’ Which is further reinforced by what Maxima said back on Earth during testing.
Depending on how the flight orb works as an anti-grav technology; Syd may not be able to reach the moon in a timely fashion. If it needs to push against an ambient gravity field (repulsor type anti-grav) then her thrust would decrease the further she traveled from a gravity node.
Yes and no.
Not sure how far away it is, but regardless, she’s not getting there any time soon with her flight as is…
Either the last orb needs To be superluminal flight, or that needs to be the unlock for her upgrading the last node on the flight orb’s first set of speed increases…
Ok that link did NOT work.
Was supposed to be on the words “That is not our moon”
You got “That’s not our moon” as title/hover text instead :D
The way you need to use the tags is [a href=”link”] text [/a]. (except instead of [ and ])
Or if your text is your link you can just do [a]link[a].
That was supposed to be “except < and > (or angle brackets if these don’t work) instead of [ and ]”.
I was using the brackets listed below the commenting bubble when you are writing one.
I guess I should do a bit of digging first next time…
Thanks for the help!
Yeah you had the right brackets. You just needed to but the words of the text outside the tag (between the opening and closing tag) rather than in the title field.
Any species in a comic book universe capable of designing the orbs and using them seems unlikely to be utilizing what amounts to thruster speeds for interplanetary transit. My bet would be that the orbs have some form high speed travel Syndey has not discovered or unlocked. Possibly this would be a reasonable purpose for the unknown orbs. Likely forms of transit would be Portals, Teleportation of some variant, or the equivalent of hyperspace/warp speeds.
There is of course the possibility the orbs are designed as a personal environment suit rather than a ship.
Or they were never intended for interstellar travel and are just the equivalent of a shuttle craft or engineering pod.
Or an exploratory suit :)
Yeah, or self-contained Space-walk slash escape pod
I totally agree. She was supposed to unlock the next big branch of the florb before Sciona’s golem forced her to upgrade the PPO.
I think there might be FTL options in the next branch.
Maybe even some sort of autopilot/attitude holder in there somewhere if she need to let go of the orb to quickly use another one. IE: Life support.
I listened to the Apollo 13 Flight director loops and IIRC some of the velocities quoted were 34,000 plus feet per second… and still it took four days to reach the moon.
And the New Horizons Pluto explorer traveled that distance in under 9 hours. The Apollo missions needed to get there at just the right speed for their limited fuel to nudge them into Lunar orbit with the minimum amount of effort. This meant a longer travel time.
It is a little like those ‘Roller Bowler’ carnival games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osTUBR7nK6k
If the spacecraft is going too slow, it crashes into the Moon. Too fast, and it loops around back to Earth. Just right, and it stays in orbit.
Don’t forget that the astronauts used a ballistic trajectory, as opposed to Sydney’s straight line, though.
Plus, the ‘moon landings’ was new, and they couldn’t afford a screw-up (if anything went wrong, there wouldn’t be a rescue)
Until Apollo 13 :)
Where the rescue was partially because of duct tape.
Obviously was meaning a rescue team from Earth, not rescuing themselves with what they had onboard
I know. Just couldnt pass up the opportunity to mention that they were saved, at least in part, by using duct tape.:)
Hmm, based on this page I’m thinking her flight orb works via interaction with gravity, anchored to whatever is the strongest source nearby. If she made it out far enough I bet her max speed would increase, although if gravity is weaker maybe she actually starts to slow down.
Could be this mode isn’t meant for interplanetary travel. I mean, everyone knows that swirly mark means local trips only. Gawd Sydney, rtfm!
I think it is working in space it’s just that it’s very slow compared to the distances involved.
Yes but the speed was measured at Mach 4 (5,000 km/s) relative to the Earth’s surface. Earth’s moon is also traveling at 3,600km/s relative to Earth. The orbs may also have had to deal with air resistance.
There’s no air resistance in space. If you keep supplying acceleration then you just get faster and faster. However the orbs appear to be limiting the speed relative to the planet for some reason.
Gah! KM/H! Not second
it might be that sid has the halo in some sort of “atmospheric flight mode” which would make a certain amount of sense as flying past certain speeds in atmosphere would be ill advised to say the best.
Yeah it makes sense that she’s hitting a speed safety-limit at Mach 4 rather than a thrust limit.
I notice that there is still one orb listed as “unknown”. With any luck, whatever properties it has will be manifested in this story arc.
Not that I think it will be interplanetary travel. That might be too easy. Unless it comes with a “Lost in Space” kind of vibe.
Remember she was supposed to pick the last pip of five on one of the fly ball’s lines on her skill tree next?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1166
Wouldn’t surprise me at all if the four pips already glowing give her maximum velocity in mch’s (roughly. This would mean her max speed could be Mach 5, BUT, once that line of pips is fully activated, it seems to activate another line of pips that’s still greyed out now – maybe that gives her increasing FTL velocities? (Like Warp 1, 2, 3 etc?) There’s even a separate pip at the end – maybe some kind of instantaneous ‘hyperspace jump’? Too bad she had to pick her last upgrade while being attacked by huge construct…
All our speculation has been thwarted.
.
.
.
Curses, foiled again!
Would she not be able to accelerate constantly going faster and faster?. with no resistance and gravity
though the orbs just might have a fixed speed…
though if you could go into space and keep accelerating at mach 4 constantly just addding to it . you could go pretty fast eventually.
i forget where i saw it. but if you could accelerate for one year with 1 G constant acceleration you would leave the galaxy in 12 years. (from the ships perceive time), and 120000 years of the outside universes perceived time.
so if she can accelerate constantly towards the moon she could get there pretty fast – since she can accelerate constantly (with no fuel limits) where as normally we try to hit a specific speed and then coast there on that speed due to just how much fuel we can haul up there.
but her flight is weird.. if the orbs can only go “so” fast it is really really weird. like is her speed limited by gravity ?. when she hovers in the air are the orbs slowly flying (exerting energy to fight off gravity) because if thats the case she can go to the moon – really reaally fast. but she would have to know when to slow down again once she is at the midpoint of the travel.
…or she would slam into the planet at a pretty fast speed that might challenge her shield to much.
she would need to aim pretty precise at the planet and know when to slow down to reach “orbit” or a speed slow enough where she can once again fly normally
Even at that constant thrust the first little bit is going to be slow compared to the distance to the moon so this comic would look the same.
Also her orbs might not be thrust based but rather just “move” her in absolute terms which would mean her max speed is her max speed no matter which medium she’s in (I would both love to see mach 4 in water and also hate to see the damage she’d do).
But all speeds are relative to something else. Vacuum is not a “medium” that has a fixed frame of reference or zero point to calculate speed from. You could be moving 30k kps relative to the Earth and be moving 60k kps compared to another planet or the sun. Outside of an atmosphere or the immediate proximity of a celestial body there’s fixed frame of reference and no meaning to an absolute max speed.
Bloody heck, “there’s NO fixed frame of reference”…
The distance from the Earth to the Moon is 238,900 miles. Assuming Alari’s moon is anywhere similar, then even at Mach 4, it will take Sydney, travelling in a straight line, about 78 hours, or a little over 3 days straight.
Which is faster than the Apollo lunar landing, but only because they had to first do an orbit to build up speed, and were trying to shoot for orbit of the moon (after which they’d drop the lander down from lunar orbit), not just landing on it straight off.
Looking at the Skilltree, the link between flight and energy blast is already made. Maybe that gives additional propulsion?
Sidney, get a spacesuit.
/wild speculation.
I suspect that whoever designed the orbs had more than two manipulator limbs (and never considered ─or never gave a fuck about─ the posibility of them bounding with someone with less arms).
Seems to be the case.
Also the orb creator seemed to have a specific idea, about what suitable manipulators are, since hands are, but feet are not. With a bit of training you can do quite a lot with your feet.
Then again, Sidney has probably not trained that and the limitation could be on what that individual can do with those body parts. If that is so, Sidney might be able to go up to five. Hands, feet and mouth. All very capable manipulators with enough training.
Also their idea of a grasping limb is the light-hook tentacle rather than a claw thing or something.
There has been much talk today about measuring speed in relation to other things.
Here is a little something to put that into perspective.
The Galaxy Song
Monty Python
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you’ve had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It’s a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it’s just three thousand light-years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go ’round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!
Songwriters: John Du Prez / Eric Idle
Nice.
I counter that song with this song:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=f_J5rBxeTIk
Everybody lives on a street in a city
Or a village or a town for what it’s worth.
And they’re all inside a country which is part of a continent
That sits upon a planet known as Earth.
And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains
Which is out there spinning silently in space.
And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals
And also the entire human race.
It’s a great big universe
And we’re all really puny
We’re just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It’s big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It’s a big universe and it’s ours
And we’re part of a vast interplanetary system
Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.
With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth’s the only one
That has life on it, although we could be wrong.
Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids
Including meteors and Halley’s Comet too.
And there’s over fifty moons floating out there like balloons
In a panoramic trillion-mile view.
And still it’s all a speck amid a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
It’s sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other
And still that’s just a fraction of the way.
‘Cause there’s a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky
Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.
And still the universe extends to a place that never ends
Which is maybe just inside a little jar!
YW D : It’s a great big universe
And we’re all really puny
We’re just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
* Though we don’t know how it got here
* We’re an important part here
* It’s a bIg universe and it’s ours!
So until/unless she gets an upgrade she it less of a spaceship and more of a ‘planetary exploration craft’?
I’d like to point out that now that she’s exited the atmosphere, she’s totally lost even a general area of where she was. Even if they were to open the portal in the same vicinity, she wouldn’t likely be able to find it.
if you look at the planet you can see the ginourmous space ship… thing.. that appeared. she can always go back to that
Hm, I’m not a math person, but if the distance is the same, and she has a constant speed of mach 4, then it should take her nearly 13 days to get there.
Hm, I’m not a math person, but if the distance is the same, and she has a constant speed of mach 4, then it should take her nearly 13 days to get there.
but should she not be able to accelerate constantly.
without gravity or resistance (i think her shield removed that resistance anyways so no biggy)
she would be able to constantly ramp up her speed (since she does not need a fuel source she can keep doing this) her speed would not be stuck at mach 4 – it would keep increasing incredibly fast infact.
she would have to take into account of midway starting to fly backwards to start slowing down. also she would need to aim pretty well at the planet while doing so, but the speed she would get to it would not matter much.
True. It really is VERY far away.
Obligatory.
https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
Thanks I’m loving that page.
Was just going to go find that, it’s an excellent visualization. All the things in space are just way too far far away from each other
Yikes. That’s awesome and kind of depressing.
It really is. I love all the little comments they hide in on the page that you’ll only ever see if you slowly scroll it using the right arrow.
Well that just filled the time for my 1 hour and 30 minute commute
I can easily see some Astronomy Teacher printing that Thinking this will blow those kids minds when they see it taped to the wall.
Way to big. You couldn’t lay it all out at once, and the sheer amount of black ink you would need would be punishing.
Yeah, that reminds me of “Frontier: Elite II”, after you entered a new system and dealt with the three obligatory pirates, there was literally nothing else to do for the next thirty minutes (or longer) as you travelled to your destination (still to this day can’t listen to “Hall of the Mountain King” without shuddering flashbacks)
Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space…
So I expect mach 4 may be cashews to space?
So what is that glowing thing Sydney is flying past in panels 1 and 2? Is it a burning area on the planet’s surface, or is it something orbital that she is passing? There seems to be some sort of an arch structure on one side of it. Maybe McDonald’s
hashad restaurants on the Alari homeworld. Either that, or Sydney is just outside of St. Louis.It’d have to be in orbit or very high altitude. Probably orbit and very big judging by how long it took to get out of view.
It does look like Alari design though: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2880
Not an orbit if she’s only going Mach 4 AND trying to go straight to the moon. For an orbit at that height she’d need to go 7-8 times faster, and be going around the planet.
It’s an orbital defense platform as seen on the page Mike linked. I kind of looks a lot like a Protoss Warp Pylon though. Oops.
I dont envy her the caffeine headache or other withdrawal symptoms she’s going to have. Debilitating headaches at the least.
Her real superpower seems to be surviving lethal levels of caffeine and hot sauce.
So does she plan on releasing the flight orb to grab the air supply orb every few minutes?
My first thought, which appears to be the case, is that that moon is really far away.
Which brings me to my second thought, which is that that moon is very large (to seem that large from very far away).
My third thought, is “That’s no moon!” (C’mon. We were all thinking it, right? I’m surprised Sydney didn’t say it.)
Why can she still only accelerate to Mach 4?
She’s in Space, as long as she can accelerate her top speed should only hit a roadbump around a high percentage of lightspeed…
i don’t think that is here limit. It’s just what Max estimated at the time they ended the test, due to having to be at a meeting. Even max said she might be able to go faster, but they would have to wait. to find out.
As for a limit on how fast she can go? I guess that may be limited by the Orb to be ‘safe’ in atmosphere.for the current level of pips she has in the skill tree. I also guess it might also be limited to how powerful her shield is at it’s skill tree level.
As to the debate on if it is current max speed or if the if the orb has constant level of acceleration is still up for grams. I suspect it it does not have an acceleration factor ATM. we have no way to tell how fast she can accelerate from 0 to say 5000m/s speed wise. When Syd is in the shield she does not seem to be affected by inertia – eg Max’s punches, the explosion, etc.
“i don’t think that is here limit.”
Yes, that is her limit. At least until she raises her skills more on the fly orb pips. Maxima outright stated it.
“It’s just what Max estimated at the time they ended the test, due to having to be at a meeting.”
No, she said Sydney seemed to top out at around Mach 4. She then wanted to test her flight ceiling, but Sydney mentioned not wanting to do that until they had equipment for high altitude, in case the shield didnt protect her. THEN they got called back for a meeting after a quick fly-for-fun.
“Even max said she might be able to go faster,”
No, she didn’t. Sydney said she might be able to go faster. Her words, were ‘with room to grow- see that not yet spent dot?’ Maxima didn’t say that.
Here’s the page link.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1856
Note panel #4
“It looks like you top out right at Mach 4, which places you firmly as our second fastest flier.”
Then Sydney says:
“With room to grow. See the grayed out one?”
Maxima: “You might be faster than me one day.”
Also here’s the page which shows that she has a spedometer. And she does NOT have infinite acceleration. You don’t have a spedometer for INFINITE.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1852
Precisely this, all the evidence so far points to flight speed being directly tied to Mach numbers (at least for currently unlocked abilities / UI).
Why is her top speed still only Mach 4?
She’s in space, as long as she can accelerate her top speed should only hit a road bump somewhere around a high percentage of light speed.
Because a lack of atmospheric friction foes not change a speed ceiling, it just changes the acceleration possible without generating heat.
Okay panel 1 and 2 some flaming/exoatmospheric debris looks like a small station or a ship…dmg’d and leaking air and or fire…
How long until she notices that again? That was a near object she passed for relativity and perspective sake or actually a point of interest?
So is her speed literally “mach 4” meaning she can’t move AT ALL in space? (because there is no air to have a speed of sound in?)
I’m not sure if she’d be able to tell due to the scale of the distance and objects involved, (the satellite she sees in panels 1 and 2 might be a good reference.) But it would be nice to get a clarification from the Author now that it’s come up. Does her Fly Ball currently give her: acceleration, velocity (compared to what?) or specifically mach speed (meaning her speed is reliant on the medium she is in and presumably she can’t move at all in space.)
I was wondering if anyone would say that. Maxima, being ex Air Force, would definitely know that the speed of Mach 1 varies with altitude.
Mach is a unit of measurement – it’s the speed of sound in air, which is roughly 768 mph. That does not mean that, if you are NOT travelling in air, that Mach suddenly becomes nothing. That’s not how measurements work, any more than saying the surface of the sun is 5500 degrees celsius means it has no heat, just because there’s no water on the surface of the sun (since celsius was derived by finding the boiling and freezing point of water at the standard atmosphere (the mean barometric pressure at the mean sea level on Earth).
If I told you the surface of the sun was 5500 degrees celsius, and you said ‘oh so it doesn’t give off any heat since there’s no water or atmosphere by the sun?’…. then I’d be within my rights to slap you upside the back of your head :)
Mach isn’t a set number or the speed of sound in air. It is the speed of sound in the current medium, (that’s usually air but it could technically apply to any fluid.) Even when dealing with just air on planet earth mach changes depending on altitude, (check my name’s link for a NASA calculator on it.) This is important because flying craft have to deal with different stresses below mach 1, near mach 1, and above mach 1. (There is also a “hypersonic” classification above mach 5 but I’m not sure that’s as significant.)
When dealing with space there are no fluid dynamics interactions to deal with so mach really doesn’t apply. (speed still does, but the mach number doesn’t apply to it.)
If I were Sydney I’d be terrified about my hands cramping up about now.
(There are a lot of comments already and I didn’t read them all)
So, this opens up an important question. If the Flight Orb doesn’t let Sydney fly at percent speed, then they probably didn’t get to Earth on their own to begin with, so how did they get there? Since we still assume aliens made them on some other planet then came here.
You know, maybe aliens did make them. But they made them on Earth, and planned to use them to leave but didn’t get a chance to!
Whatever that last orb is, it was active in the ballroom when she was initially interviewed, and it was active as well as Air. Passive effects? We know Air isn’t passive, but it just didn’t have a noticeable effect while already surrounded by air. Thank you Maxima for the pool idea. So, what sort of spaceship power would be functioning while no one notices anything no matter how many people stare at it?
Maybe it acts like the Tetsusaiga’s black blade. If so, Sydney just needs to use that orb and Lighthook where Sciona’s portal once was, so she can see the wind scar, and slice it open to reactivate the portal.
They may have taken a very long time to get to Earth. That or there was some portals involved.
Or they were made on Earth by a precursor race. Or theyre from another dimension that touches part of space that happens to be on Earth:). Or a bunch of other possibilities :)
Whoever made Sydney’s orbs probably had full use of their powers. Sydney does not.
So I’ve done the math and (assuming I’ve done it right) Sydney can maintain almost 600 Gs of acceleration constantly in a vacuum if she can maintain mach 4 at sea level.
Here’s my math for double checking:
So based on the 3.3m by 1.7m elliptical shield (based on her being 5′ tall and counting pixels) when she hit mach 4 ( https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1856 ) she has a cross sectional area of 2.3m² and using the drag coefficient numbers from here: https://www.engineersedge.com/fluid_flow/ellipsoid_surface_drag_14047.htm I used a drag coefficient of 0.10 (since her ratio is 1.9).
Mach 4 is 1372m/s
Fluid density of air (at 1 atm pressure and all other perfect variables) is 1.225 kg/m³
The drag equation is D = Cd*A*p*(V²/2) (drag coefficient times cross-sectional area times fluid density of air times velocity relative to air squared over 2).
So plugging in the numbers I get the drag force of 261,699N (makes sense since jet engines are 500,000N and jets are bigger and heavier). Since she’s maxing out her speed that means her acceleration is now matched by drag so that’s her max acceleration.
261,699N of force on a 45kg (100lb) object is 5815 m/s² or 593 times the acceleration due to gravity (Gs).
Oh and at that acceleration it would take ~500 seconds to get from earth to the moon with a top speed of 1,495,090 m/s (accelerating half the way then decelerating the other half). That’s the time in perfect vacuum with no gravity wells.
1,495,090 m/s (3,344,421 mph) is less than .005c so relativity wouldn’t apply at those distances at least.
Seems Sydney is learning the hard way that the moon only looks big because it’s own reflection functions like a magnifying lens as well and is really really really far away (in comparison to things on Earth). Then again this isn’t Earth so maybe their moon is massive and even further away?
Huh? The moon looks big because it’s big. The only reason it doesn’t look bigger is because it’s far away.
Moon? That ain’t a moon. That is a bowling ball!
See if you can hit the Alari homeworld into their Sun. That probably will get a strike!
You know, if she buys the last dot of flight speed, I believe it will open up the FTL tree.
Well at least we only see one of those alien space ships (not sure about other side of the planet yet)
I was wondering if there was more of those drop ships.
So it seems Syd might be able to play ‘keep away’ from that thing by doing a orbit around Alari. maybe give herself some time to do a refresh of air and use her ‘upgrades’ she probably has ATM.
It might also give her a chance to fiddle with the last orb and see what it can do. LIke Max said it might be a prison, but you would not want to open it anywhere near earth. (inmates might be restless)
I just noticed that moon is blue…
Blue moon, you saw me stranded alone
Without a team at my side, without a leader of my own
Blue moon, who knew just why I was there for?
You heard me sayin’ a prayer for
A speed I really could care for
And then there suddenly appeared before me
Something to escape I was told
I heard myself scream “please come back for me”
And when I looked, no leader with skin of gold
Blue moon, wish I was no longer alone
With but a dream in my heart
For a saviour of my own
Nicely done. I suspect I’ll have an earworm for the rest of the day now though. :)
At the moons Average distance 77 hours at mach 4.
shortest distance to Venus….345 Days at mach 4
time she spent switching to Geico space insurance…
Right about now she should consider she needs the shield perm so duct tape, and she will need to interchange the air and flight ball frequently, or the smart thing just give up on this idea.
Yea, space is big. Like really, really, really big! Few works of fiction do a proper job of illustrating just how big it is and how limiting the speed of light is. Joshua Dalzelle’s Black Fleet is a hard mil si-fi series that does a pretty good job capturing it if anyone is interested. I never looked at other books attempts at describing space combat the same after reading it.
Try Jack Campbell, the lost fleet series.
Also consider 4 books from E.E.”Doc” Smith (Edward Elmer Smith) A physicist turn sci-fi author: books: Skylark, Skylark 3, Skylark of Valeron, Skylakr DuQuesne.(lenman series too)
Very solid science wise too. just a bit of pseudo science – plausable
But they have space battles that are multi galaxy sized.
Fun stuff when things are not used as intended. Once clear of local landmarks, she has no real clues about either her acceleration or velocity relative to either the planet or the moon. The whole space travel idea is a terrible one, given what she has to work with. If she was stubborn and DID keep going at full acceleration to the moon, it wouldn’t take that long, but if she wasn’t VERY careful about decelerating, her shield would get quite a workout protecting her from a high-velocity impact….
By no means have I read all the comments, even just on Page 2…
However I haven’t noticed anybody else suggest this (so it might be a rare comment on Page 2?). Perhaps the flight orb (florb) does NOT provide acceleration, but instead a speed. If that were the case, we’d be waiting for another pip/orb unlock.
On that note, I’m still waiting for her to find somewhere to land and LET GO of the orbs, so that they can level up (hopefully).
But “speed” relative to what? The whole point of relativity is that speed is meaningless without context.
You know, Syd is pretty damn calm about exiting Earth’s atmosphere and being in space for the first time with only her life support system orb in her hand keeping her alive.
Not Earth.
A Burnt and bombed out planet won’t have the emotional connection
of our Big Blue Marble.
:-/ It’s not earth. But yes. Maybe she burned up all her “OMG Squee!” when she found out supers were real and she was one of them and all her “OMGWEREALLGONNADIE!” when running from the thing down on the planet.
What if the orb is a stellar cartography map with a point-and-click function that, in turn, is a wormhole generator to the desired location?
The last unknown orb, I ment.
If so, the UI had better have lot of zoom levels to get sufficiently close to where you actually want to go.
Let’s hope that the “home” function isn’t preset to the previous owner’s place.
Oooh that’s one of my favourite arcs in Schlock.
Going to the moon is nice: you can see your target. Traveling from Earth to Mars (for example) is much harder because you can’t necessarily tell which of those bright dots is your target – and going to the wrong one is … iconvenient. As others have said, however, she needs either constant acceleration or a warp drive of some kind if she’s to do more than go to the moon and back.
If you aim directly on the moon, you will miss it. Remember that it orbits, and quite fast. You need to aim where it WILL be.
That’s worse. If you manage to aim correctly and arrive where it will be, your relative velocity on arrival is going to be rather extreme….
No, that’s only if you aim at a fixed point, and not at the object you want, in this case, the moon: as the moon moves, so too would Sydney because she is focused on the target, like a semi-guided missile locked on the heat signature of an airliner (or like Dabbles’ ‘bondage-bullet’ that tracked the speedster no matter how fast he ran or dodged)
This is true, but the time taken depends an awful lot on the relative speeds of the objects – consider the fox and the duck puzzle, with Sydney as the duck. Yes, she’ll catch the moon eventually, but a radial/spiral pursuit path is going to take much longer than leading her shot.
Assuming the local system is the same as Earth’s, the moon is travelling about Mach 3, giving Sydney a relative top speed as low as Mach 1 (when it’s moving directly away). If she flies directly towards the moon, her path will be a long spiral and circle the world several times, whereas if she flies to where it’s going to be, it’s not much farther than a direct radial path.
Well yeah, was simply stating that this isn’t like a gunner who fires a dependant round as opposed to someone (or something) that can adjust their (its) trajectory
In a case of attempting to reach an orbiting object that is moving faster than you are, the best option is to aim for it’s orbit and wait for it to reach you
In other words, figure out the distance the moon is from Alaria and travel that distance, and then wait just a little short (you don’t want to become a bug on the windshield)
Another option is, instead of travelling in the same direction as your target, meaning you have to go faster, you travel opposite so that you meet in the middle