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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She needs the FTL upgrade. She better not get any upgrades while in space tho, that may be bad.
Surely the orbs wouldn’t upgrade without warning at an inconvenient time when she’s in the middle of using them and most needs them! No one save software developers would be THAT obnoxious!
Few software devs are malicious, there are just so many people involved in so many capacities. It’s a problem that’s been going on for decades, which is why there are now various careers devoted specifically to keeping projects on track and functional (e.g. software project managers, business analysts, quality assurance / testers of all sorts).
It also doesn’t help that many programmers are paid “by the line” (or used to be), so they had an incentive to write 10 lines of code when 3 would work. I think it was either Windows 95 or Windows 98 that someone did just that kind of study about, and found things that even “year one” programmers would have known how to do more efficiently.
Unfortunately, adding all that verbose code makes it easier to overlook little things, especially when you have code calling code… oops, were you using that same memory block? Well, let’s just BSoD, shall we?
It’s always been obvious to programmers (and their immediate management) that scoring coders by LOC was an extraordinarily flawed idea. 70’s and 80’s were spent by business managers trying to refine LOC counting into workablelity, but eventually, ideas like COCOMO, agile and test driven development and many others won out, providing metrics that were at least somewhat useful.
Did someone say Cocomo?
That’s where we wanna go. Way down in Cocomo.
My father always expressed it as:
“Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence or apathy.”
or
“Most apparent mistakes really are just that.”
I will add Laziness. people will fight tooth and nail if it it makes their job more complicated. even at the sacrifice of best practices or security.
like in the middle of the fight with the power stealing robot. so lucky it waited until the fight was over to ping up the skill tree
It may not be so useful on situational hazards, as that takes a certain level of comprehension and awareness.
Environmental hazards on the other hand are easy to deal with.
As to the aliens(?) that made(?) the orbs, either they have pretty close to the same environmental needs as humans do, or it senses it’s bonded users bio enough to tailor it’s settings for them.
I also doubt something like the orbs was written by a stable of underpaid and over worked techies with a management that probably doesn’t understand any of it and pushes for output and a marketing division that doesn’t care if it’s right, it needs to go to market right now and you plebes can patch it later, if we have to.
Then again, you never really know about alien minds… ;)
I can just imagine the orbs spinning with her holding them XD “I’d like to get off the ride NOW!” lol
Both times she has gotten an upgrade it was when she wasn’t holding any of the orbs for at least a minute or two. I think as long as she is holding one, there is no fear of it locking her out until she picks an upgrade. She probably even has a minute+ leeway where she can let go of them all before she has to grab another to keep it from prompting for an upgrade. I almost guarantee once she does let go for a sufficient amount of time, she is going to be prompted.
I’d be terrified that all that stands between me and the cold void of space, is sweaty hands.
Same here. Lucky thing she doesn’t seem to get very nervous about this sort of thing anymore.
Yeah. If I remember, the utility belt has duct tape (or some kind of tape. and why would you have any other kind?) Time to bust that out and make sure that orb doesn’t go anywhere. Or rather, that her hand doesn’t.
What about Toilet paper? A little over 3 days to the moon is a long way to go without a break.
That’s what duct tape is for
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ee/af/db/eeafdb032d724c65c51cda621b0dcd0d.jpg
Toilet orb. Gotta be one of the unknown ones.
Drop some blue Ice on the alien ship :)
Surprised she has not pulled out her smart phone and taken a few pics for reference.
Beside at that altitude you also get a good look at bodies of water, possible cities to scavenge for food and water etc.
Just watch out for that can of ‘pet chow’ :)
With what hand? If she drops the shield, she dies. If she drops her flight, she falls.
On the planet – she know she can breath it, she knows Sciona probably ate earth food (very higgh probability) so it’s really the only local place she could safely drop both and scavange. Mind you, i would try on the other side of the planet, that would only take about 4hrs to get there (at near ground level)
It’s kind of a running joke in mad Max game (dog food) :)
am i the only one that’s noticed the stupidly tall tower in panel 14? yes, i know, alari are a magical race, bend physics blah blah but the logistical difficulties of building a tower that tall, and shaped like an icicle at that (broader at the top by orders of magnitude than at the base) are mind-bendingly impossible. like, this isn’t just “nobody recognizes superman because of a pair of glasses” impossible, this is “the riddler captures a butterfly, and releases it in just the right spot for the flap of it’s wings to generate the wind needed to knock a building over and kill the batman” impossible. anyone that can build THAT is not to be trifled with.
That is no tower, it’s a space station…
…I mean it’s the space ship the thing attacking Sydney popped up in. Just from above this time…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2888
“That’s no tower…. that’s a space station.”
Well…. spaceship anyway. :)
Seems to be a space elevator? last I checked the physics on those work out.
As Screwball pointed out, we can be pretty sure that thing in the next to the last panel is the attacking ship.
However, in panels one and two you can see a partially destroyed ship or space station. With it’s basic ring structure, my first guess leans towards station, but with the tech and magic available to that race, who knows…
As was stated elsewhere, that’s one of the Alari platforms, we saw a crashed one on the planet already
Eh – the “glasses as disguise” thing is stupidly effective IRL. It is actually common practice when doing spy, detective, or conman work. Not that effective against cameras, or in settings where someone is relaxed and has a reason to stare at your face. (ie – extended conversation) Superman didn’t exactly hang around and give interviews in the comics. Or at least not to the same set of people who talked with Clark Kent on a regular basis. Lois Lane did take a comically long time to figure it out but… most of that was ‘plot reasons’ and ‘comic time’ delay.
Have to also remember (or realise), while in the Clark disguise, Kal would wear loose fitting clothes, slouch, vibrate his face slightly and altered his voice an octave (or half an octave, not sure if it was up or down from his normal range), plus that whole ‘mild mannered’ shtick made those who saw a resemblance to go “Nah, can’t really be him, he’s too mild, he just looks like Superman, just like how Cousin Marvin looks like Cher, shame about his voice, and the beard”
The one thing I sort of thought when the signal went up and the explody thing went down, was that the ship was not targeting them, rather it was targeting the creature that sent the signal. It seems as though my first impression on that is wrong. Though not 100% sure of that yet. Have not read all the comments so not sure anyone else had same idea, if so apologize for repeating
A homing beacon that calls in artillery fire to your own position seems like something that natural selection would be actively working against. ;)
Even a device sending such a signal seems like a bad idea. Unless the screwship just happened to intercept an enemy call, I think it’s pretty safe to assume the original creature and the ship are allies.
I suspect that natural selection had nothing to do with the scanner squidbilly and the blaster squidbilly. They are far more likely to have been genetically engineered for their specific role within the squidbilly military hierarchy. Wouldn’t be the first time a science fiction story had genetically engineered alien soldiers.
I thought Cooter/Wymril was the squidbilly.
That’s not a tower. That’s the alien spaceship that showed up.
Here’s a plan stay in orbit a wait while for a “As the world turns” moment and drop back down on the other side of the planet from the effing nuke (ish) dropping bad guy.
That sounds like a decent if nothing else a short time breather.
I like this plan :)
But it is a spaceship that can travel from star system to system. It can probably keep up with basic atmospheric maneuverers.
Not to forget, there is possibly other ships stationed at other points around the planet
True, but is easier to find, a single armed opponent within visually as well as sensor range. Or a single moving/ hiding target you have to find on the other side of a planet.
And I’m betting Sydney can play a heck of a game of hide and seek.
There be others for sure but I’m betting Sydney’s next thoughts are, especially if planetary travel is not an option, is to hide and trying a completely different part of the planet is a good safe starting point. She’s already trying to put distance between them.
Yes, butt if she disappears from one area, they can notify the other ships to be on the alert for someone alive and possibly dangerous, so if they detect movement to report it in immediately
Mach 4 = 4939.2 km/h
Distance to moon 384,400 km
384,400 / 5000 = 76.8 hours
77 hours / 24 = 3.2 days
3 days 5 hours
it’d be a much better idea to either hide on the other side of the planet
or sneak aboard the alien ship and start killing aliens with her lasers.
they did attack her first, so it’s justified self defense
she’ll then have a space ship that can get her home.
Yeah, nah, that’s not how ‘self defense’ works: returning fire immediately after receiving fire is ‘self defense’, hunting them down well after the threat has passed is ‘escalating violence’
Depends. If she has reason to believe they are trying to kill her, and she has no place safe to go (moon out of reach, rest of planet uninhabitable), it might be her only option. Except that there is no reason to expect the spaceship is usable by humans (given the shape of the scout), or even useful for life support (again, scout – these might be some sort of chlorine breathers…).
But trying out the rest of the planet – which was populated by oxygen breathing humanoids – definitely should be the first option.
Again, that stops being ‘justified self defense’ if she becomes the aggressor
If something still wants to kill you, wouldn’t that qualify as justified self defense, for the sake of future safety? Sort of like how Rome attempted to conquer every country around it, not just for wealth, but because it assumed that there is no such thing as lasting peace.
Baring both Stellar Navigation and some sort of really good warp drive/stargate abilities on her orbs that she hasn’t figured out yet, Sidney’s best option is almost certainly returning to the planet. Although figuring out how to do so without getting shot at more would be good… although as for that, seeing as the whatever it was hasn’t followed her so far, I’m guessing that it’s going to have trouble following and/or tracking Sidney, so she could probably just double back to the surface and wait for it to go away, then return to the portal site. (assuming she can still find it, anyway… going all the way out to space, she’ll probably have some trouble retracing her steps… unless she uses the giant monster/spaceship/thing as a reference point and it hasn’t moved.
Well taking a picture with her Cel phone would be a great start. Not to mention the bragging rights later. Right now would be a good time cause the squidy ship is pointing right at it ATM.
Self defense only counts for one engagement. Re-initiating combat after escape is not self defense. You could argue that attacking a previously hostile group with the intention of stealing supplies would be an act of self-preservation, but not defense.
Or being able to reach mach 4 means she has the power to accelerate with a certain amount of force….
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2918/comment-page-1#comment-690964
Which makes a moon trip take a little over 9 minutes.
I think even Sydney could stay on target for at least 5 minutes, which would put the moon appreciably closer, and the planet much farther away, so it would appear that the acceleration option is incorrect, and the ‘top speed’ theme is the situation she has to work with.
Sydney and focusing for a long time are not best friends :D
Comic book time is difficult to gauge, I parsed that as 30-60 seconds of flying, which would give about 1% difference in distance/apparent size of moon… I doubt I’d notice that. but sure if she was on her way for 4+ minutes it would have become noticeable closer…
I am pretty sure that “Mach 4” is only the orb’s limit inside an atmosphere. Once you’re in space, there is no air resistance, and all movement is relative. The only thing I can see that would limit her velocity in space would be her own subconscious. The only thing that matters in space is acceleration, which you could determine if you knew how long it took her to go from a standstill to Mach 4 inside an atmosphere.
Ahh, thankyou.
And then there’s logistics: time since Sidney last ate? Does she have a juice box in her utility belt? Sleep. How to poop, and be rid of said poop without going pop from explosive decompression?
Oh, I forgot about the poop thing. Astronauts get special traning for that.
And really it’d be a lot worse for Halo than even that, mach 4 is significantly lower than the escape velocity.
On Earth you need to reach a speed of 11.186 km/s, yes that’s per second, to even get out of orbit. That’s a bit more than mach 32 for comparison.
This alien planet isn’t earth, but it sure seems to have around the same gravity, which means the escape velocity would be around the same.
That’s because they are attempting to take the shortest path, which requires breaking the hold Earth has on the object, if they take a parabolic course and slowly reach outer atmosphere, then they can just quietly slip away
Hmmm, 3000 miles per hour, 100,000ish miles to go. Well, as long as she can stay awake for 33 hours or so. But what does one do when one reaches a moon which, if we’re being honest, is unlikely to have a breathable atmosphere. 33 hours back after realizing the rashness of the original plan is likely to be a tad painful.
Assuming said planetary satellite isn’t much more massive and further out than our own or something. Hm, how fast can the light-bee move? Was that ever tested? . . . Anyway, she should check the damaged space station she passed for survivors.
Stupid space! D minus!
Don’t forget: when she sleeps, the orbs go dark.
Tl;dr The Lightbee teleport might be a decent or amazing means of interstellar, Inter-galaxy, or time travel.
How fast does the Lightbee’s projection travel? Was it a hologram? Which might have mass mainly in photons. Or was it purely illusionary? Possibly lacking mass.
If it was made of photons it could approach or reach the speed of light.
If it was massless it might travel as fast as tachyons. Which is faster.
Either would allow for better travel through space than flight orb’s current Mach 4.
She could sit somewhere relatively safe in shield. Send out Lightbee. Teleports before air becomes an issue. Refill with life support. Then repeat till at desired location.
Main drawbacks are needing food, water, and sleep. Sleep could work by setting shield down on asteroids, comets, or other small gravity well to act as a tether. Taping shield in one hand and life support in the other hand. Hoping life support cover food and water needs.
Nitpick drawbacks are a weird reaction to light speed’s time dilation and possibly getting lost in time. She could see time moving at two rates. A normal rate at her body and a super slow-mo rate at Lightbee. Hope she could handle that or Com-orb has an upgrade for that. If Lightbee can travel anything like tachyons it could be sent backwards or forwards in time. If she figure that out she can still make it through the currently closed portal. Or reach Earth the long way before she left. Or travel back and bump herself into the portal. Or we could have “near infinite Halos”.
I’m hoping the last unknown orb is medbay. With possibly biological immortality upgrade. And auto resurrection upgrade. The only way to die then is wanting to die.
P.S. Sorry for any typos.
Since the lightbee’s movement is based on where Sydney is thinking of it going, I’m going to guess that it’s most likely travelling at the speed of thought, not the speed of light. Most human beings are simply not capable of thinking at the speed of light :) Maybe Maxima can, who knows – she can definitely think and react faster than other humans, including superhumans, in any case.
The speed of thought is roughly 270 miles an hour (120 meters per second) which is roughly how long it takes for a brain’s neurons to fire a message.
Two and a half pages of comments, and I can’t find anyone to have suggested that Sydney don her eyepatch, shout “YARRRRRR!”, and proceed to commandeer the screwship. I bet there’s a small exhaust vent that leads straight to the central power hub, just her size.
b-D
Because the commenters are all “SCREW THE SCREWSHIP! I’MMA BE A SPACESHIP OF ONE.”
Just her size? Is Sydney about as big as a womp rat?
To get a feel for the distance between Earth and Moon, picture a piece of ruled notebook paper that has about 30 lines. Imagine Earth just fitting between two lines at one end (about the size of one of the punched holes). The Moon is a quarter of the space between two lines, at the other end of the page.
Ha Ha Ha Ha, no. no it does not. The New Horizons probe traveled at least Mach 40 and still took 9 hours to reach Earths moon. Sydney you’re better off waiting where you are.
This is the *perfect* opportunity to level up *every* orb. Nobody’s you care about is around, there are hostiles, and you don’t have to worry about blowing things up because you have an entire planet of your very own to play on.
Was her Mach 4 limit caused by the atmosphere? Otherwise what is that Mach 4 relative too? In space, you generally have constant acceleration due to not having atmospheric drag (though it can still take a huge amount of time.)
The reason we can’t reach light speed (besides a few laws of physics) is the propulsion. As her limit is Mach 4, that means the propulsion she has is capped a little above Mach 4. I imagine magic things are happening to allow it to stay constant like that, but in real life, you will stop going faster when the object in question is moving as fast forward as the propulsion is moving back -minus flaws in the harnessing system of the propulsion funnel.
This is the reason we have a distinct speed limit for all our space craft. We can’t create a propulsion system that launches thing out faster. The only way NASA and other scientific agencies have figured out how to go faster so far is through solar sails, which can potentially go near the speed of light (or at close as matter can), if given a few hundred years. Because its propulsion is sunlight which is going light speed.
Actually, spacecraft are limited by the Delta V or Tsiolkovsky rocket equation where the maximum change in Velocity a spacecraft can have DeltaV is equal to the exhaust velocity of the propellant times the natural log of the ratio of the ship with fule to the empty ship. DelV = vexaust*ln(M0/M1). However, this only applies to ships that accelerate by throwing propellent out the back. The light sails you mentioned get around this by not using propellant.
The question is how does Sydney’s flight work. It appears to be a reactionless drive since we don’t see any fuel or exhaust. If the limit is the amount of force it applies to Sydney while making her fly (which would cause her atmospheric speed to top out at Mach 4 when the force of the flight sphere balances the force of air resistance) then she might be able to keep accelerating to incredible speeds outside of the atmosphere.
If on the other hand it is limited to a maximum velocity, the question is what is the velocity relative too?
Huh. So I got curious and did the maths. If that moon is at a similar distance from that planet as our Moon, and if her assumption of her speed is accurate then that would take her at least 3 DAYS to get there. Obviously #notallmoons are the same distance, could be less or more!
I don’t think I’m being too pedantic by pointing out that “top speed” inside the earth’s atmosphere doesn’t mean a whole lot when talking about speeds and travel times out of atmo and with less gravitational influence. What is important is thrust. And from what we’ve seen she has plenty of that, seeing as she can accelerate fast on earth.
Getting to a comfortable velocity to traverse space expediently shouldn’t take very long. The issue becomes navigation and whether or not her controlled deceleration matches her acceleration.
your right
unless the flight orb is hard capping her speed (which raises all sorts of questions) how fast syd can go is all a matter of delta v (we really dont know how much fuel/power the halo has / how it recharges … which are both really important considerations when planning interplanetary travel)
Let’s see, a little over 3,000mph at mach 4, the distance is about 238,900 miles give or take…it’ll take Sydney well over 3 days to get from Sciona’s homeworld’s surface (or at least where she was hovering when it was mega-cratered) to the surface of the moon. …She’s got a shield orb, an air orb, a flight orb…
She’s gonna need a bathroom orb for absolute sure.
I tried to read all three pages of comments, but some places I skimmed. I don’t think these points have been addressed.
Environment: Sydney is in space. What is keep the temperature from dropping to near-absolute zero? The environment orb is separate from the shield, and the shield might protect her from radiation and hold the atmosphere in, but I doubt it maintains the perfect, constant temperature she needs for survival.
If Sydney is flying line-of-sight at the moon, it’s a moving object. She isn’t traveling in a straight line, she’s following a strongly curved path. So, if this moon is nearly the quarter million miles away that Earth’s Moon is, Sydney might have to travel several times that distance depending upon the speed she’s traveling at. She needs to target where the Moon will be when she arrives for shortest distance & travel time.
When she lets go of the fly orb, she should be coasting at whatever speed. The acceleration vs. top speed argument is interesting. One factor: if she hits a top speed in space, she can let go of the fly orb and just cost. Holding onto it no longer makes a difference. Unless it provides constant acceleration, then she would want to hold onto it to keep it active at maximum thrust … in which case, she really could travel to the moon and back in a few hours or so. even id she’s flying at it rather than flying to where she needs to intercept.
A calculation on page 2 of the comments was interesting, but 1) there is no drag in space and 2) the shield itself may present minimum-to-approaching-zero drag/friction even when in atmosphere. Recall she can travel Hellafast underwater, so the shield does appear to offer a near-frictionless surface. No heating effects observed in this capacity either. The shield would presumably keep extra heat from getting inside and cooking her, but at the speeds she’s traveling through atmosphere there would likely be an actual glow from heating and ionizing atmosphere in contact with the shield. So, more evidence the shield presents a frictionless interface with the outside world.
Some of these have been touched on somewhat, but need to be kept in mind:
Bathroom breaks. Food. Water. At least one free hand for any task, and it can’t be the one with the shield orb. If she isn’t freezing, then she better also hope she’s not sweating or her grip may become unstable. Muscle cramps from gripping at great lengths of time are also a problem.
Sleep. Even Sydney requires sleep. Maybe a future power-up will allow her to set some automatic/autonomic functions (shield and atmosphere replenish, for critical examples) to keep working while she sleeps. But currently those options are not in evidence.
In space you are more likely to have the problem of over heating, just fyi
A lack of particles to transfer thermal energy to is what’s preventing the temperature from dropping.
Space is an excellent insulator. Space is not really “cold” it’s “n/a”. Temperature is the average vibrational energy of all the particles in an area. The VERY few particles in space don’t vibrate much so if you really need to give a temperature to space near-absolute-zero is technically accurate. But things get cold because their particles bounce off the particles of a nearby colder area and transfer some of their energy to it.
Sydney’s problem is being in a sealed space and the human body produces heat. I don’t think this would happen fast enough to matter before she replaces all the air with her green orb though, and that would probably fix it.
There are two ways of defining the temperature of a location: one is to average the thermal energy of particles in that location; the other is to imagine dropping a sample black body into that location and measuring its equilibrium temperature. The former has problems with space (though if you average over a large enough volume you can still get a sensible result – which can vary widely depending how close you are to a heat source), while the latter picks up radiation as well as contact heat transfer – in sunlight, near the Earth, a test object (with good internal conduction) would be around 10C.
Of course, the shield is presumably selective about how much radiation it allows to penetrate, not just what types – otherwise, a fireball would still cook Sydney from the visible/infra-red radiation – so she should be safe from being cooked by sunlight…
to answer the environment question the shield orb is an airtight space
more importantly it appears to be an airtight space where the walls conduct little to no heat (Arianna standing right next to the wall after Maxima’s showstopper seems to support this supposition)
As Sydney is floating there she sees a small point of light moving against the background of stars.
We hear from her point of view:
“Maybe this is a ship. Let me see if my collar can contact it”
“Hello. This is Sydney Scoville of Earth. Can you hear me?”
….
“Oh, hello Mr. Groot. I really need a ride home.”
….
“OK. You already told me who you are. I want to know if you can help me.”
….
“Is this thing working. Can you hear me?”
….
“Yes, I KNOW. Is there someone else there I can talk to? Wait, am I hearing ‘ooga chaka’ in the background?”
+1
Everyone is assuming that Sydney’s flight works on thrust, given that when she is holding the Flight orb, she negates the effects of gravity on herself, suggesting that her flight works more on a repulsorlift/antigrav principle, which requires a gravity plane to push off against. So the further from a gravity plane she gets, the slower she’ll become. So the Flight Orb may have a secondary flight option for interplanetary/interstellar (intergalactic? trans-dimensional) movement which she hasn’t unlocked (or realised how to turn on yet).
Oops. Got caught out reading from the bottom up. Err, not yours. The comments page. Don’t have time for more.
Yea, what you said. :)
Sydney, the human hovercraft.
A) What’s a “gravity plane”?
B) Earth escape velocity is only 11.2kps; Solar escape velocity around Earth orbit is 42.1kps; galactic escape velocity is around 537kps. In terms of gravitational potential, going from Earth surface to high orbit gets about 125MJ/kg; going from Earth orbit to intergalactic space would get about 900MJ/kg. There’s still a lot of gravity around in interplanetary space…
So instead of explaining why I might be wrong, you spout a ton of technical jargon.
Could you please explain why you disagree?
We are working on the assumption that only the potential energy, relative to the target and destination bodies, is available. If Sydney stopped accelerating she would probably find that she has not achieved escape velocity yet. So she still has some potential energy available, as she would fall back to the planet, in due course.
This proposed propulsion drive is, of course, working on the assumption that her anti-gravity power can redirect the potential energy in whatever direction she chooses.
Whilst the further that she gets away from the planet, the more potential energy she gains, that is countered by the time delay in receiving the full amount. So the amount available to her, per second of propulsion use, would have to factor in how much energy she would gain per second of free-fall.
*hops into a tray of ink and stomps footprints all over a wide work area*
As per that equation. Err, I hope you are up to speed with canine astro-physics notation?
So, as you can see, the amount of propulsion Sydney has available, per second, diminishes rapidly as she leaves the planet (affected by an inverse square rule).
Whilst the amount she gains from the moon is really teeny, because it is far away. If we removed all other factors, barring Sydney and the moon, it would take a very long time for its gravity to cause her to impact on it. Ergo the amount of energy available, for her to redirect, from that source, is equally minute.
Likewise for the even further away (if more massive) sun. And for the Milky Way, as a whole.
I think her speed limit is based on the air resistance of a 6 foot diameter force bubble at 10,000 feet altitude. At Mach 4 the forces are equal and she can’t accelerate any more. Without air resistance her speed shouldn’t be limited.
But we don’t actually know what propels it. It seems most likely to be gravity manipulation, given that Halo clearly develops her own gravity field, in whatever direction she chooses.
Which may have the profound problem that Sydney’s flight speed could drop off drastically, as she exits the gravity well. The less gravity around, the less she would be able to turn it to her own uses. If that option is the correct one, then Halo may well be near her flight ceiling at the moment.
If not, then, yea, your comment is spot on, for the most likely alternative.
Ah, similar to the inverse-square relationship of the repulsion between two magnets of similar polarity. At half the distance, they repel each other 4 times as hard, if I remember high school physics correctly.
Or at least in line with the calculations of gravitational force.
I’d bet that her flight orb isn’t purely contra-grav, given that it easily imposes motion that is radial to the gravitational slope, (side to side) rather than simply parallel to it (up and down). Sydney may simply have not tried the correct control-glyph combination to result in constant acceleration in the absence of drag, rather than a capped velocity suitable for in-atmosphere usage.
*nods*
“Space is big, I mean really big! You may think its a long way down the street to the chemist, but that’s peanuts compared to space!”
It’s probably been said already, but I felt I had to say it.
Doesn’t she have to stop every 15 minutes or so and refresh her air supply? She has the air orb, but she can only use two at a time. And if she keeps on pumping O2 into the bubble without letting any air out, the air pressure is going to become pretty high after a while.
If you are referring to the trip to New York, fairly sure that was before Sydney discovered the Green Ball’s abilities or even gotten the rebreather from SmugD
None of them got wet when they took the deep-sea trip to the Reliquary
As Guesticus says.
Plus a body in motion does not stop, without a force acting upon it. So once fully clear of the gravity field Sydney would continue coasting, even whilst swapping over the flight orb, for the air orb. Which would only take a moment, before returning to the normal flyball/shield combination.
It would have been quite a hassle on the way up mind. But, at mach 4, that would not have taken too long. Anytime the air needed refreshing, in that part of the journey, Halo was well practised with that, from the flight from Archon HQ to try and catch up with Sciona. Whilst it was not detailed in-comic, the author did indicate in a blog how it was done.
Which roughly involved arcing upwards, whilst doing the swap-over, so not too much altitude was lost. Noting that was with horizontal flight. With Sydney just doing vertical flight here, she would not have even had to alter her course. So may have been able to do the air refresh fast enough that she lost no altitude at all, what with still being carried upwards by momentum.
But, even if she did drop back down, by being a bit tardy, it would be easy enough to recover.
Remember, once you’re in space, speed (except for the speed of light) is no longer an issue. ACCELERATION–and how LONG said acceleration can be MAINTAINED–is what determines speed. As Sydney leaves the atmosphere, her speed should pick up (less atmosphere = less resistance). Once out, presuming her flight orb gives her reactionless thrust, or don’t rely on a gravity well to operate at its current level, she can start accelerating like gangbusters. So, let’s say she can accelerate from 0-Mach 1 (@ 750 mph at sea level, I think) in a minute. (Before I go any further, I’ll say I am NOT a physicist!) So accelerating at 750mph a minute over a period of 1 hour (60 min) would have her going…45,000mph (I think?) or @ Mach 60. If she keeps constant acceleration, she’ll build up an insane amount of speed–she just has to allow for time to DECELERATE or she’ll just whiz past her destination.
Not a physicist either, but a couple of quick observations.
Mach is the speed of sound at sea level, so Mach 4 is between 2880 and 3044 miles per hour. This is a velocity, not an acceleration.
If this is a 1G world and she’s using antigravity, she can “fall” up at 32 feel per second per second. This is an acceleration. Sadly, it’s such a pitiful one that it will take several weeks to reach light speed, and years (centuries? millennia?) to reach earth thereafter. Without food or water, you don’t even get to lightspeed.
Plus, unless the air orb functions automatically without her needing to touch it, she’s going to have to stop accelerating every few minutes to refresh her supply. She won’t slow noticeably, but punctuated acceleration seriously extends flight times.
Yano, does the teleport function qualify as FTL? Could she compact the shield and fly through things at mach IV, it seems pretty inertialess inside the bubble. Etc….
What the heck is that thing flying around in the first two pannels. A ship?
A destroyed Alari orbital platform
Yeah daveb confirmed it was an Alari space defense platform – same as one in #639 that was grounded.
That could mean their are either more orbs out there or the orbs fuction more like some kind of individual mobile platform of a type I mean weapons. If you think of it those orbs could also function as a Battle platform or maybe an exploration suit.
Although if that last orb turns out to be translation it would be totally interesting if She managed to use it to talk her way onto the ship and get taken back to earth. For some reason I keep thinking of Halo accidentaly charming the guy in charge of the ship. It would be totally funny if someone like Galactus or who ever is on this ship which is a Destroyer of worlds suddenly get a sweet spot for the not as attractive looking as the other’s of her team and tries to show up in his scary ship causing probably several international insadents just to ask her out of a date.
I am wondering why the squid ship is not in pursuit. they obviously are trying to remove her from the equation with those 20Mton blasts.
Btw if they truly have lost her position, it would take about 4 hours to reach the other side of the planet, assuming Alari diameter same as earth – (approx 40Km), and Syd is skimming the surface.
Possibly because the ship doesn’t ‘fly’ like that. At least from how it arrived, it seemed to come via that beam of light that was fired up in the sky from the scout thing.
Or maybe it CAN fly normally, but t’s not that maneuverable.
Maybe it just me, but that shape doesn’t look like a spacecraft. It looks more like a landing craft / assault ship combo. Which would explain it sort of “beaming” into position. If that is a planetary or interplanetary range teleport Syd may be in big trouble. If its interstellar, probably no more than before.
On the other hand, if you can “beam” assault craft at interstellar ranges within seconds, you may not have conventional spacecraft; you wouldn’t need them except for resource gathering.
Two things:
1) We can still see the Screw-Ship of Doom from way up here. That thing is BIG.
2) What was that golden sparkly thing Halo passed by in the first two panels?
Never mind about #2.
re item #2 – DaveB answered it in this comments section – it is an Alari orbital defense platform – same as one depicted in #639 – One of them might be worth a look on the way back thou.
I was reminded of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmmHfhwFlQQ
Also Mach 4 isn’t even orbital velocity on Earth (3000 MPH compared to 17800 to achieve orbit) and is not even close to escape velocity required to get to the Moon (25K MPH). Assuming a similar distance to this moon I hope Sydney brought a snack, and a couple of spare uniforms because she’s looking at 3.5 days travel time. and that’s assuming the velocity stays the same while she sleeps.
You are making a BIG mistake. Acceleration does not equal velocity.
Sidney can fly mach 4, or 1,373 m/s likely due to to air resistance. At this speed she’s probably developing a plasma shockwave, since spheres are not aerodynamically sound shapes.
In space, acceleration is cumulative. What that means is in the first second she’s got a velocity of 1,400 m/s. In the second, she’s got a velocity of 2,800. Third is 4,200 mps, or 4.2kps. Fourth: 5.6 kps. And so on and so on. After one minute, she’d be travelling 84 kps. After 2 minutes. 168 kps. After 1 hour: 5,040 kps.
Under constant acceleration at mach 4, she can reach the moon in 10 minutes.
Now this assumes constant acceleration. Half way, she’s going to have to decelerate or imbed herself in the crust. That effectively doubles the time. So in 20 minutes, she’ll be on the moon.
Eat that, Apollo!
We know only her max velocity (from the test with Max), and very little about how long it took to reach that speed, i.e. acceleration. It took long enough to hit ‘only’ Mach 1 that they were having a conversation, so I’m not sure where you are getting the idea that she can produce acceleration sufficient to reach M4 in only 1 second.
It doesn’t matter. Even if she only accelerates at 9.8 m/s2 she could reach the moon in a little over two hours. This is because her acceleration is constant and reaction-less. Space magic. And given that she accelerated to mach 4 over the span of a conversation, it’s easily in excess of that.
Agreed with minor notes.
Mach 4 is not an acceleration, but I assume you meant acceleration from the thrust needed to maintain mach 4 in the atmosphere, which does seem a bit long to write.
The other small problem is that if you turn around and start to decelerate half way through the flight it will take closer to 4 times as long instead of twice as long since you both never get up to the same top speed, as well as slowing down on the second half.
One of the questions for the Interplanetary rating shuttlecraft license is to calculate the flipover point travelling from Earth to the Moon at 1g constant acceleration and it gave G as 9.8m/s^2 and the distance to the Moon in km (it was 22 years ago and I died once since then, so excuse my memory lapse). Your answer had to be +/- 5% to get credit for the question. One of the answer choices was half the distance divided by 9.8 m/s which is obviously wrong, but still gets picked surprisingly often.
At 1G you wouldn’t be going anywhere. You would be hovering over the surface. The chances of being caught in an atmospheric updraft or being handed a helium balloon would need to be taken into account to determine when the trip would start…
The reason Sidney has an apparent maximum speed of around Mach 4 in the Earth’s Atmosphere is because your “maximum speed” is a function of your thrust vs the friction it’s resisting. Sidney’s flight orb obviously obeys these basic rules of physics. Specifically, she does need to accelerate to reach her top speed, and when she enters a medium with greater friction her top speed is reduced… (as it’s shown when she tries to ‘fly’ underwater, she’s certainly not capable of moving Mach 4 in a denser medium!) Therefore, Sidney’s orbs obey at the minimum, those basic principles of flight.
Therefore, in a medium with less (or zero) friction, her “maximum” speed is only constrained by the next speed limit in place once friction is no longer part of the equation, ie, the speed of light.
By all the evidence we’ve seen so far, Sidney’s acceleration is (at the minimum) at least around 2 G’s or more. With that kind of acceleration, Sidney could reach pretty close to light speed in about half a year. So obviously interstellar travel would be all but impossible for her with just her orbs… the distances are just too vast. interplanetary travel, on the other hand, would be just barely feasible. Reaching the orbit of the Moon should be doable just with what she’s got on her… although without that Stellar Cartography orb figuring out what direction she should actually accelerate in, when she needs to start decelerating, etc… would be a matter of guesswork. Probably not very accurate guesswork given the distances involved and the speed of the orbit of the various bodies in question. I’d say she probably could make the trip before passing out from dehydration and exhaustion after over or undershooting her mark a few times and having to adjust her course dozens of times, wasting a ton of time coming in easy so that she doesn’t fly right by or risk crashing into the moon at a few thousand miles an hour or more.
Reaching any other planets in a regular solar system would be more along the line of days or weeks of travel, even with a 2 G acceleration and a good navigation computer… so obviously impossible unless she could somehow either keep her force field up while sleeping or if she found some sort of space worthy pod to carry along for the ride that she could hop into for sleep… and to carry the food and water she’d need for the trip.
So… with really good prep, sure. I wager Sidney could travel from planet to planet far faster than any conventional spacecraft… having a reactionless 2 G engine is nothing to sneeze at. But honestly… without some way of sleeping, getting water and food, those orbs are nothing more than a shuttlecraft for getting from your spaceship to a nearby planet before you die… or maybe traveling between two spacecraft, or between stuff in low orbit. Her orbs CAN’T be intended for interstellar or interplanetary travel unless they come with some functions we haven’t seen yet, like a warp drive or jump gate or something…
her Flight orb literally allows her to ignore the nearest Gravity well, while still maintaining a personalized gravity well. No reason that it doesn’t ignore air resistance as well, pretty sure she could still go at mach 4 under water, even with the higher resistance. Her max speed is set by the orb and what parts of it are unlocked, regardless if she is in water, air, or space. given that her shield is capable of with standing the equivalent of a nuclear blast, as well as maintain an atmosphere in the near vacuum of space, and under the pressure of an ocean.
Basically getting to the moon faster than 3 to 4 days is not possible for her, untill she upgrades her odometer on the flight sphere.But there are a lot of other options her powers open for her.
One she could try and search for a farm, forest, or jungle that has survived the planetary attack.
enlarge her shield to maximum size and set up camp till she can be rescued or plan her next course of actions.
Two she could expand the shield to maximum size, and from space be come a Mach 4 Battering ram and attack the Space ship, pretty sure she could cripple it easily. especially if she waited till the last moment to expand the shield making it harder for them to see the attack.
Three she could use her laser orb and attack the ship from space. At the distance she is, she has a large target to shoot at, while they will not be able to target her because she’s so small and in low orbit.
while in orbit she doesn’t need to hold the flight orb and can use the other orbs as needed.
these are her best options the moon is too far away, so she must either hide till the aliens leave, or help arrives, or attack the aliens in self defense, and hope she can get a starship or shuttle capable of faster than light travel so she can have some chance of seeing home again.
obviously we already know she makes it home as she’s telling the story to the audience after finishing a super hero RPG at the comic shop. and we have a few months [3 to 8 months] before the story catches up to the beginning of the comic.
Day 1 24 Hours was everything previous to 294
Day 2 48 hours 294 – 385
Day 3 72 hours 396 – 528
Day 4 96 hours 529 – 587
Day 5 120 hours 587 – 653 current
Sydney is having a really exciting week and it’s only day 5 for her.
it’s going to take forever to catch up the time line
If Sydney is a spaceship, could the power of the last orb be something similar to the power of Bege Capone´s devil fruit?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49wtKe7xqE4
Yes, please, be!
hmmm…the pattern has always been that whenever Sidney learns something about herself and her powers she gets an experience pip to use. I would say she’s learned something about herself and her powers several times during this last adventure. why no pip Dave?
Because one of the orbs functions is to only allow upgrades at a dramatically appropriate moment. She’ll get a pip only when it’s hilarious or life-threatening. Possibly both.
Panel 5: An entire natural satellite is added to THE LIST.