Grrl Power #670 – Orbital bombardment obstacle course
Sydney’s speed upgrade was significant. She didn’t go from mach 4 to 5. I’ll leave the actual number for a fun reveal later when she challenges Maxima to a race or something.
Okay, it’s mach 16. I didn’t want to wait to tell you. She went from 4 to 16. It’s really fucking fast. Honestly it’s too fast for Sydney, because she may not have the reflexes she would need to avoid things like planes, buildings, other supers. Not an issue on this world so much, but still, it means she can circumnavigate the Earth (let’s assume this planet is within 10% of the same size) in about 12 minutes… assuming I did the math right. Historically I haven’t been great with that. But you can see how it might be a problem for her resolving something on the horizon and reacting to it before she’s on top of it, (or blowing through it) and near misses don’t count when you have the sort of wake she would generate.
Edit: NOPE! I screwed up the math as per usual. It would take her roughly 2 hours to circumnavigate the globe, not 12 minutes. Gah.
Honestly, come to think of it, mach 4 is a lot faster than she should be traveling, even with her map of air traffic.
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I remember that movie – Peter Faulk was in it – Serpentine serpentine!
The In-laws. And I could have sworn it is Faulk it’s Falk…
So, in conjunction with DaveB’s “bottom-border blurb,” one might say that those coastal fish are Faulked?
Agreed – and I saw what you did there… :-)
Beat me to it.
Peter Falk, Alan Arkin. Richard Libertini, wonderfully over the top as General Garcia. “The In-Laws”, one of my favorite comedies.
“Serpentine, Sheldon! Serpentine!”
I only knew the reference from the Archer episode…
Eureka!
Overkill seems to be a hobby for these guys. This can’t be good for the oceans….
To be fair, they’re facing a threat that took out waves pf fighters like they were nothing and also two kaiju. At this point, I’d imagine the discussion on the bridge of the mothership may have been something like:
“Nuke it from space”
“It’s the only way to be sure.”
…from orbit, actually.
But yeah, my thought exactly. ;-)
I stand corrected. I think it’s been over a decade since I ast saw that film…
“Are you SURE you got her!?!”
“… keep firing!!
So they’re pulling a Kylo Ren…
So, to sum it up, https://youtu.be/IEGo41443iI?t=41s ?
Smash it!
Don’t forget: This isn’t even their planet. They probably aren’t worried about the oceans.
I believe it was the Alarian(?sp) home planet. … and they decimated the land. The oceans had it coming.
Yeah, that much damage on land is eventually going to wipe out the oceans too.
This is the accelerated decay program in action…
Am I the only one wondering at the pattern here? This seems to be a mix of she tries to run away and they attack her she’s unable to run away she turns back and kills them. Then she tries to run away again when they upped the ante on her and if she can’t get away she turns back and kills some more. Then again probably missing something here
I don’t see any turning back in this page. To me it reads like Sydney is trying to flee from the remaining two creatures after blowing up the cyclops but her (straight) flight path gets interrupted by the explosions so she has to snake between them.
Actually I was referring to in the first Kaiju appear she and her group was trying to run away. When she fell to escape after they got through the portal home she tried to flee to space that didn’t work so she decided to attack. Eventually she killed the first one three more came she tried to escape and able to escape she killed the one that was preventing her from escaping as trying to escape again. The way I see her next actions going to be to turn back and take out the one that’s trying to bombard her from a distance
For the first one when the whole group was there running was the better option, they had a way home and they didn’t have any information about the situation.
When she was stuck alone with the Kaiju it seemed reasonable to attack it and secure the area/gain some points for her orbs.
When three more showed up she decided to be careful and not fight them all (especially since chances are 5 more would show up after she killed them). The one then tractor-beamed her so she had to fight to escape and then she ran once again.
Unless she can find some cover that hides her from that orbital bombardment then yes her only choice will be to fight again.
Or it could be nine after those three. Why stick to a linear curve when you can go exponential?
Hard to tell the difference between “enemy retreat” and “going for reinforcements”. If you have a reason to kill something, do it with extreme prejudice so it stays dead.
The creature she blasted is still alive. You can see it grabbing its facial area with what passes for arms in the background. Syd thought it would be smarter to flee when she had the chance than worry about trying to face three of those things at once.
Biologically speaking (if that even applies here), a creature that size would still have control signals traversing its nervous system even after it’s head got melted, while it’s possible it survived (is it even alive to begin with?) you can’t be certain just from seeing it raise its hands that shortly after it got it’s head liquefied.
That’s ignoring the possibility that what we are seeing isn’t just a spinal reaction to pain. A creature that size might even have more reactionary nerve clusters all over its body so it can react faster to pain, meaning it might be twitching from pains up until the muscles get oxygen starved.
Again, all this is assuming it follows any carbon based lifeform and central nervous system rules that apply to all living things on Earth.
Yeah, something that big I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s nervous system isn’t centralized.
or uses something faster than earthly neurochemistry for reactions. Like mebbe electricity
Or even natural fiber-optics?
or maybe the giant creatures are actually some sort of giant bio-mecha and the pilot is safe? after all, Dave did mention a few strips ago that they “suit up” maybe I`m looking into it too much but it COULD be a possibility?
EVA Units from Evangelion, maybe?
What’s to wonder? Apart from the bit where she was looking to level up by swatting fighters, she’s been consistently trying to stay out of trouble… the first one pinned her down with gunfire, until she killed it… the second one caught her in a tractor beam, so she had to kill that one too.
Well the Swarm Fighters did seem like an invitation to chaos. Though she could just as easily have been trying to get there to ask for directions since she found out she obviously could not easily leave the planet under her own power. The first one attacking first and asking questions never seemed to set the tone for how she would decide to deal with the Invaders when confrontation happened.
You have a point. Sydney might try taking refuge inside the force field of one of the remaining kaiju. At least then she’d have two force fields to protect her, and the firing might stop entirely unless the ship gives not a single fuck about the kaiju. And if her guardian kaiju is fired on she can still dart away at mach 16.
I got two hours and change, but I was lazy.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=circumfrence+of+the+earth+%2F+(mach16)
Same here. Just looked up what Mach 16 would be in MPH, found the circumference of the earth, divided that by the speed. 122.67 minutes.
that sounds closer to right… Dave probably moved the decimal point.
Still means you can deploy to anywhere in the earth in just over an hour. That’s amazing.
That still makes her only about two-thirds as fast as the ISS (~Mach 23). So much for her deciding to fly there when she gets back.
The ISS is farther up in space, with less dense atmosphere (yes the ISS experiences some small amount of atmospheric drag), depending on how her speed limit works, those could be easily attainable speeds in those conditions, given the power output to maintain Mach 16 at sea level.
It’s looking more and more that her speed isn’t limited by thrust but by some sort of governor, IIRC Dave said she was only doing Mach 4 even in space.
… didn’t he changed mind later?
He might have, I could have easily missed that.
If so then the thrust needed for Mach 4 at sea level would get her to the moon in 8 seconds with no drag, that includes braking time.
She doesn’t have to fly faster than ISS, simply fly to where it’s going to be and then play “Bug on the windshield”
This assumes that her shield can bounce/stick without causing any damage to it, rather than rip through it and make a Gravity film situation. She should rather minimize her impact by flying away from it as fast as she can, and hope the impact minimizes damages and doesn’t slow it down enough to start freefalling.
Or… sit not in it’s direct flight path, wait for it to get close, and Molestorb it and hang on tight
Mach numbers only apply in an atmosphere. Mach 1 is the speed of sound, which varies by altitude. No atmosphere means no sound, therefore no Mach numbers.
Just over 2 hours, but still that’s faster than any other method currently available, eexcept maybe an ICBM.
Her air traffic thing would still help since she really needs a hole at both ends. She flies straight up from wherever she is to 50-62 mile altitude (what geek wouldn’t want astronaut wings), does her transit at Mach 16, then flies straight down. Places along the way she stops accellerating and grabs the air freshener. From that height the fall is a long time and she is in no danger hitting anything since commercial flight tops out around 12 miles. the SR71 only officially flew to around 85000 feet(16miles). Unless stratospheric sky jumps become much more common she won’t need to worry about anything except the occasional rocket launch at that altitude.
In just over 2 hours, she can be back where she started from. So to get to any point on the globe from wherever she is only takes an hour; the other hour is for getting back.
So she should avoid Florida and the Ukraine to avoid the transiting spacecraft.
Just for the record, IRL they just recently hit mach 10 (9.6 but up to 10) nearly 7000 MPH
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.html
Remember that Mach speeds aren’t directly convertible to MPH. It is based on the speed of sound in air (Mach 1) and that varies depending on your altitude (changes in thinner air) or what planet you happen to be on.
Okay so I googled mach 16, got 12276.3 MPH.
Aaaand it already is obvious where I screwed up. Geeze.
I divided 12276.3 by 360 to see how many miles per second that was, and not 3600. I got 34 miles per second, not 3.4. Geeze.
Seeing as the dismal point isn’t where you wanted it to be will there be a ‘turbo’ to her flight orb?
Maybe she should have double-clicked.
(Yes I typed ‘dismal’. Change my mind.)
In case it comes up:
New time to the moon is 19 hours 41 minutes 24.78 seconds
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+to+the+moon+%2F+(mach16)
Hmmm. With the right CO2 scrubbers, she could make that trip pretty easily.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/how-long-can-one-live-in-a-sealed-room.685796/
Well, no need for scrubber since Green orb is an atmospheric control.
When she uses the air orb does it suck in stale air and blow out fresh air?
In other words, the Air Orb is performing Gas Mix, CO2 scrubbing, pressurization and humidification/dehumidification / heating/cooling (when in use)?
I would think that would not be instantaneous or quiet.
It’s alien-tech-magic-superhero-pseudo-super-science, it does all that.
Or, it COULD do all that. It only has one pip in it, if I remember correctly. Besides the ‘come when needed’ pip.
Remember that self same or created a self-contained bubble of air beneath surface of the training pool out it simply rushing away from her
Actually, no, that first air bubble seemed to make a spherical area of breathable air that stayed in place around her. The second time she used it, it rose up to surprise Harem but that was what she wanted it to do.
True it did seem to change based upon her wants and needs at the time. When she first activated is what I was talking about because her to keep her safe and breathing
Problem. When Sydney falls asleep, the orbs deactivate. So even if she makes it to the moon, she’ll have to stay awake in order to keep her Shield and atmosphere up. And she cannot take the times for intergalactic travel!
Bigger problem – at that speed her impact energy is higher than pretty much every artillery shell ever and she should be leaving a trail of burning atmosphere like a spaceship re-entry, but at ground level, plus if she ever dropped the shield she’d splat. but since she clearly has inertial dampeners she “should” be ok if she hits something. Although any nearby city would be kinda F’d.
So basically she’s a massive railgun slug.
Eeeeh, I suppose the shield prevents that. The orbs seem to be designed with 20% more magic than expected, as the Orb of Makes the Air kept the big bubble around Sydney underwater instead of just making a constant stream of bubbles etc… her shield is definitely not entry-level as Dabbler said, so maybe it has a synergy with the flight orb? My guess would be the redistribution of matter, to reduce strain on the user and their immediate surroundings. Same as how the teleportation orb doesn’t make Sydney overlap with matter that’s already there, and even inside the shield the air pressure presumably didn’t double, so all the matter that was already there gets pushed out of the way, etc… I think basically the whole set is prevented from breaking everything ever, in a “fast-talking your DM into breaking the story is impossible, they talk faster than you” fashion.
love the comic, you do awesome work
although, i think it’s ‘coastal’ fish :} I could be wrong
You didnt, I’m afraid. 121,5 minutes to circumnavigate, with some variation for temperature, humidity etc.
Let’s see.
Mach 16 is 5488 m/s. Let’s call that V.
The circumference of the Earth is 40075 km, or 40075000 m. In this equation, it’s X.
We know that V = X/T.
So T= X/V = 40075000/5488 = 7302.29592 s
Finally T(min) = T(s)/60 = 121.704932 min.
Sorry, but I don’t think I made any mistakes.
You didn’t do the math right.
Low-orbit velocity is 90 minutes to complete an orbit (fascinating fact: it’s about 90 minutes around any rocky planet, regardless of size). On Earth, that’s about mach 25 (give or take — the speed of sound changes with air temperature).
The speed of sound on an Earth-like planet is around 1200 km/h at sea level, or about two hours at mach 16 for a circumnavigation.
On Earth, the amount of time it would take to circumnavigate the Earth is significantly less if you’re traveling east-bound…
You know, the speed & direction of a planet’s axial spin in relationship with the speed & direction of travel makes a big difference.
But overall, I’m thinking Sydney might have an easier time of dodging those explosions if she were working with 3D space instead of 2D…Get some altitude with your attitude, girl!
Not really. Any time spent moving directly away from or directly towards the ship is time she isn’t changing her target location. And anything partially either is still slowing her change of vector.
Unless they are firing fused charges (i.e. set to explode at a specific distance away from the ship) and not just blasting away with your typical phaser beam.
Given her newfound speed, she might try hiding in the shadow of the planet. The ship should be able to move faster than that, but a lot of sci fi settings have large differences between interstellar and in-system speeds, so it’s worth a try.
Given physics, if they are blasting away with your typical phaser beam they should be hitting Sydney constantly. The speed of light trumps mach 16 by enormous orders of magnitude. They would have to have really crappy targeting computers to be missing her at all.
I don’t think those are beams.. no light tube etc… I think they are large conventional(conventional as in projectiles that a-splode) cannons…just REALLY REALLY BIG ones…. fired from orbit…… out of the giant space ship…… that has an army of kajuu
If that’s what is happening, that ship hits like a girl. Look at the explosion radius in comparison to Sydney, and then look at the devastated planet. They didn’t devastate that planet with little girl explosions like we’re seeing here. They should be able to bracket Sydney with a few nukes (or whatever ‘high tech’ equivalent pseudo-science, photon torpedo, whatever) and call it a day. We’re now seeing that Sydney has some fairly large limitations on maneuvers (Baaaaaaaaaaaank!!!!!) while she is going mach 16, so there’s no real chance she could dodge a city sized explosion.
So they’re using the anti frigate/fighter armament instead of the true orbital bombardment weapons
In space you don’t have to worry about air friction heating up your hull that much, so higher speeds are possible. Also pure-space craft do not need to be aerodynamic. The Apollo LEM (the part of the Apollo missions that landed on the moon) was considered the first pure-space craft. It was designed with the needs of space travel in mind, but did not have to consider the effects of in-air travel, as it was riding inside an aerodynamic rocket shell.
The SR-71 Blackbird was made with titanium instead of aircraft aluminum because at the speeds it was designed to fly at, the air friction would melt an aluminum hull. And that was only Mach 3 or so.
By in-system I meant within the gravity well of a star, not within the atmosphere of a planet. Many fictional universes have a ‘star drive’ or ‘warp drive’ or whatever that cannot be used within some arbitrary distance of a massive object such as a star or a planet. Star Trek has this, it is canon that you cannot ‘go to warp’ until you have exited the solar system, but this is ignored by the writers any time it is convenient to the plot, which is unfortunately quite often.
Even if the ship isn’t limited in speed, Sydney may still have the advantage if she can break contact enough to get over the horizon. Speed and agility are very different things, especially when there’s a suitable body of cover to run around.
Nope, axial spin matters little in an environment where the air is moving approximately at the same rate as that spin. Unless your planet has strong Coriolis winds it won’t help/hamper that much.
At those speeds going up increases possible velocity (since there is less air in the way). However the speed of sound decreases at higher altitudes so then we have to go back to calculating possible thrust/drag ratios. Which can be done but assumes a lot, for instance that this max speed is not based on some global speed limiting etc.
It would actually be just under a hundred and twenty-two minutes. I think you messed up a decimal point. Note that orbital velocity for low-earth orbit is the equivalent of Mach 25 (sort of, except mach doesn’t exist in a vacuum because it’s the speed of sound and that require a permeable medium like an atmosphere; even then mach changes based on humidity, pressure, temperature, and composition), so Sydney is still only approaching space travel velocity capability.
In any event, I’m guessing we used the same internet calculator, where Sydney’s speed of Mach 16 is shown to be 12,276.3 miles per hour.
Well, its a question of altitude if you can go Mach 4 in common airspace. Otherwise, the military could not shoot rockets and lunch high-speed aircraft in such a short response time if it would have to check with every flight agency that MAYBE cross the path to the target that you don’t want to give a lot of time to react.
Keeping to low Earth orbit or something would probably be a good idea then it sounds like :P
It makes me wonder, do the speed upgrades also boost her perception and reaction times? Just like super strength would be a curse without an increase in durability, super speed without a boost in perception and reflexes is a one way ticket to going splat.
I mean she does have a handy shield to stop most splatting…? And I’m assuming that going at Mach 16 without a shield would be pretty dumb to start with.
Handy shield prevens her from splatting herself, but without super-reflexes she’d be splatting everything and everyone in her way. And probably everyone within 100 meters of her way, as at mach 16 sonic boom alone can crush bones.
I take it you watch Because Science as well?
There’s also a problem with breathing at high speeds, even at low altitudes where the air pressure is at its highest. Moving air is at a lower relative pressure than still air, the faster that air is moving around you, the lower the pressure. At a certain point, your diaphram just simply isn’t sufficient to get enough air into your lungs to keep you conscious & alive.
Not to mention the drag of flying at mach 16 will rip her skin right off if she dared try it unshielded.
Here’s an interview with a guy who ejected at 800mph (just over Mach 1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HecyxhXDepU
He survived but it killed his weapons officer immediately.
There was reference I found to a pair who ejected at Mach 3.25. They both survived the ejection but the one guy landed in the water, something went wrong and he wasn’t able to do anything about it (either unconscious or severely injured) and drown.
The difference with those guys who ejected at Mach 3 was that they were wearing pressure suits which provided them with some protection from the speed and altitude. With normal flight suits and helmets you’re limited to 50,000 ft altitude and (I think) subsonic speeds. That pilot in the video was right on the edge of the survivable ejection envelope and was fantastically lucky.
reason why i like the Expanse as well.
they mention what actually kills you when you’re in a High-G burn: A stroke.
Inertia’s a bitch.
Remember: Sydney’s ADHD gives her an initiative bonus… and I’m guessing reflexes, too, given how quickly she reacted to some stuff waaaaaay back at the start of the series. Still… reacting to stuff coming at her at MACH 4 was probably too much to expect to begin with, and now she would have a quarter of the time to react. So it’s kind of a moot point.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the orbs were not designed for Sydney’s use. She found them, she’s using them, but they weren’t MEANT for her. Presumably whichever species/archmage/demonic duck of some sort created the orbs knows what all their upgrades mean and would be able to provide both supporting/auxiliary equipment and/or train the intended user in the orbs’ use and recommend upgrades that work with what they need, rather than flailing at mostly-random on an unlabeled skill tree.
There is, in fact, nothing save plot armor stopping Sydney from killing herself through improper orb use. How do you suppose they might’ve ended up abandoned in that reef in the first place?
Maybe Archon should invetigate that spot to see if they can find more information about the last owner. Like its skeleton maybe? Or maybe the orb manual is still stuck in the coral somewhere?
Then there’s the question whether the real owners of the orbs are able to detect that they are active again. And how they will react when they find Sydney using them…
But yeah, she’s had some near- fatal accidents before, like when she let go of the wrong orb at the wrong time. (The fly orb while flying and the shield orb in the swimming pool are two examples. Fortunately, both times Maxima was nearby and would have saved her if she hadn’t done it herself.) Personal Lightweight Omnidirectional Tactical armor is the best kind of course… ;)
Whoo-hoo-hoo!
“Slalom! Slalom, baby!”
Nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
I think they’ve moved on to nuke the PLANET from orbit… She’s definitely proven to be a major threat.
“Sir… Accounting wants to know why we are exterminating the planet a second time?”
“Tell them we missed a spot… a REALLY fast one…”
“Better yet, tell Ted in accounting I’d like him to go down personally to verify what his budget cuts mean for the ground troops.”
Awesome. She should totally reference this sometime. And she really is a terrifying alien lifeform to these people!
I’m actually really quite chuffed to see space faring antagonists using orbital physics to attack. It’s been a pet irritation how many sci-fi invasion stories consist of nothing but ground battles, and sometimes interceptor duels. In real life, if a hostile enemy controls your orbit & you are reliant on fixed infrastructure then the war is over. Especially if their end goal is the end of your race, rather than occupation.
That came up in a Schlock Mercenary story. They’d send in troops to occupy and take prisoners but if the fighting got too hard they’d just fall back and the battleships would shoot the other troops. The Defenders were screwed because while they wanted them alive and their stuff intact they didn’t really want it that badly.
And there’s the escalation. Like I said, she really needs to deathstar that bloody mothership. Before they decide to glass the surface any more than they already have.
I Ditto that. I would also say after she can spend some points on shields and then PPO.
At this rate anybody who does open a portal for Syd would be in extreme danger of collateral damage.
Author uses Summon Math.
It’s Super Effective!
*Mathias appears on Alari planet*
“…?? Last thing I remember, I was watching Dabbler make…”
*looks down at cookie in hand*
“The smell of cookies is going to give me an erection from now on, isn’t it?”
Math uses Cookie in place of Viagra……..
It’s Super Effective!
Mach 16 at sea-level… what kind of heat must she be generating from punching through air at that speed? The ceramic tiles on the space shuttle reached 1600°C by doing mach 25 in the relatively-thin upper atmosphere… Sydney isn’t going quite so fast, but she’s doing it in a much, much, denser atmosphere…
The air in front of her should be white hot.
The shield is doing a great job managing the heat
and the Gamma Rays from those nuclear explosions.
Antimatter bombs?
Not sure how she can see through the shield with all
this going on.
Pretty sure her shield have optical filters to filter off blinding flashes. After all it can block lasers…
Well the SR-71 Blackbird has a max speed of 3540 and that could heat up to some 300 degrees Celcius on certain parts.
I was looking into this, and that depends a lot on shape, and material of the surface area.
We don’t actually know the surface friction of her shield, but I would wager its close to 0. There would be no ablation zone from her shield being eaten away, and the shield could indeed be absorbing a lot of heat… I mean if it just took that huge attack at the start of this fight, then it stands to reason that it can mitigate a lot of heat.
Although given its non-aerodynamic shape it would leave killer turbulence trail behind.
Just how dense is this atmosphere? All we know is that there’s enough oxygen to sustain human life, and that the pressure at sea level on Earth is similar enough to not crush Sciona’s lungs. That being said, Sciona might be supernaturally durable, even for Alari, and the team wasn’t there for very long (besides Sydney, who has her own sealed, self-refreshing air supply).
She is travelling at hypersonic speed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_speed
(apparently high-hypersonic).
At that speed, her shockwave is breaking the N2 and O2 in the air apart and plasmizing (probably not a word) it. Oxygen plasma has a deep blue glow, and nitrogen plasma has a pretty purple glow.
From the paper at https://ngpdlab.engin.umich.edu/hypersonics/hybrid-particle_continuum-method
it looks like there’s probably a bright plasma glow at the bow shock (in front of the bubble) and a wake of lightning behind it, as the electrons from the plasma rejoin the atoms.
Fun.
If her shield had zero friction that would reduce that somewhat compared to space-craft re-entry (though space craft re-entry is more compression than friction https://what-if.xkcd.com/28/ ). That said no matter what she’d be displacing air at that speed and it would be compressed and heat up.
I don’t think the slipperyness of her forcefield is doing much.
It’s the compressed air in front of her producing all the heat.
The forcefield is acting like a perfect white body?
(Is that a thing? I thought black bodies radiated infrared.)
Perhaps the shield teleports the air in front to behind the shield – no compression, no friction, just a moving locus of Sydney and the air surrounding her. In fact, that’d be a really, really neat upgrade to the florb.
One sci-fi story had that as a way to get rid of sonic booms. It wasn’t even for stealth missions it was for removing noise pollution.
Black body is when the only light emitted is due to heat being turned into photons. The more heat the higher frequency light that’s given off (from infrared up to gamma rays).
(https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/3223.html has a nice write-up about it.)
So a white body would be something that emits light but not due to heat being converted to photons, so he shield could be one (if it never glows more when it heats up) but it always would be.
And yes you are right that lack of friction would be a small amount of change (at those speeds it might be next to nothing compared to the compression).
Definitely needs more OMG speed effects to acknowledge how crazy high the energy she’s got now. If she clips a mountain at this speed the mountain comes off worse than she does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rmprF6e0RA
Damn… Sydney just parted the ocean like Jehovah did the Red Sea
[spoiler: Before anyone corrects me by saying that Moses parted it, he was just following God’s instructions (Exodus 14: 15,16) Also, just in case you didn’t know God’s name is יהוה, which translates to YHWH or Yahweh in Hebrew and JHVH or Jehovah in Latin]
Man, I really need to learn how to use the spoiler tag. Can someone explain it to me, please?
The format should be (delete the Q, it’s to prevent it from activating the tag) [Qspoiler]spoiler-y stuff[/Qspoiler]
If this works then that’s correct otherwise ignore me: BOO!
Agreed. All Moses did was raise his faith and his rod. God did all the real work. That would be similar to the Israelites’ view, except they were walking on the rocky ground at the bottom. So this would have been more like the Egyptians’ view, as the whole tunnel starts to collapse.
Isn’t there some issues with saying God’s name?
Nope, It’s just an old superstition that came from an over exaggeration of the Commandment: Do Not Take The Lord’s Name In Vain
Original Bible texts use Jehovah God’s name thousands of time
We don’t actually know which vowel sounds were used, it could have been “YaHooWaHoo”.
So she went from 4 to 16 and presumably maxed out the regular raw speed. Given the unlock on the prestige set of abilities on the orb, I’m guessing that the next set will be the warp drive function. She still needs navigation though.
When traveling at Mach 5+, the forcefield traveling through air will cause dissociation of air molecules. That is, molecules will break up in smaller particles, leaving a trail of ionized gas. The displaced gas should have enough kinetic energy that it would radiate heat, so in suitable conditions Sydney might leave a trail of glowing plasma.
Mach 16 is ~5.5 km/s. For comparison, a line of Primacord explosive has ~7 km/s detonation velocity.
Easy enough to make use of that speed, just set your direction on the GPS, fly up over all air traffic, say, 50,000 meters, go to destination as fast as possible, then drop back down. No sonic booms, because of some upper atmosphere phenomena that you can look up for yourself. I remember them coming up during some items on the scramjet, but I don’t have the references.
So basically No Many’s Sky location hopping.
If she flies the other direction would she be able to turn back time.
Only if she wears a Cher bodysuit and sits on a battleship :P
Maybe the specific bodysuit lets you access a particular decade…
If she can find a way…
If she was wearing a superman suit and cape.
I’d guess the flight orb must play fast and loose with Newton’s laws, otherwise the G-force of the turns she’s making at mach 16 would turn her guts to jelly.
Sydney experiences a stable gravity-field in relationship to herself while she’s inside of the force field. Yeah, that also compensates against a quickly-changing inertia so she doesn’t suffer anything from G-Forces.
The stable gravity-field that you mentioned is a feature of the flight orb (see here), but I’m not sure if it’s auto-orienting, or another part of the control she has over it – here her local gravity is orientated to match her head, but it would make more sense in most situations for it to auto-orient to her body…
To put it another way the flight orb moves every atom in her body at the same time so there’s no forces on her organs or blood relative to the rest of her so she doesn’t experience internal g-forces.
She might still have inertia as a whole and that might limit her turning radius but she won’t black out.
Is the orb trail a clever way to show her movements to the readers or is she now traceable?
It’s the spray from the water caused by the sonic boom.
It’s a way to indicate motion in a static medium.
Incidentally, those explosions are still “hot” even though they’ve expanded quite a bit. Must be some sort of ongoing “push” rather than a normal simple bang.
The big explosions I’ve seen at night generally go to a big purple dome shot with white streaks and collapse pretty quickly. Then you get the CHUUF past you a few seconds later.
Hold on a minute…
Are those explosions occurring underwater?
Fairly deep underwater??
Depth Charges / Anti Ship Mines??
Alari coastal defenses?
From the Nega-Squidward ships in orbit
Welcome to the jungle?
…again, these are the space Blue Helmets, and Sidney has apparently (assuming those ships were drones, and if not – holy fuck!) killed one of them, badly injured another, and just caused a massive incident in general, all while being from a planet isolated to the point of disguising visitors. We’d be better off if Wolverine decided to give Lilandra a swirlie.
Dabbler specifically mentioned that these are NOT the “Space Blue Helmets.” We don’t yet know who they are, or what they’re doing on this planet, aside from trying to blast Sydney to atoms.
Even if they were the “Space Blue Helmets,” they fired upon her first, unprovoked.
Everybody has the right to defend themselves from clear aggression, unless they’re the population of a particularly brutal dictatorship regime that charges its citizens with crimes for fighting back…
Except Sydney keeps putting herself into the combat shooting first (apart from the initial attack)
And worse, she’s treating it like a fucking game!!!
Yeah, like she’s not taking the situation seriously. Still, that may be the only way she can keep from losing control of herself. A while back right after she thought she was pierced by that shrapnel she was making a final entry (also the first ever) in her personal log. In other words, she didn’t think she was going to make it. She’s brave, but this is a situation that would even make a hardened veteran worry.
What Dabbler said is that this was unlike them, in a way that suggested that, despite being unlike them, this was indeed them.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2886
“Uh, Dabbler, is that one of the Xevoarchy?” “It definitely isn’t.”
Given that was in response to the appearance of the mini-mechacthulhu that scanned everyone and summoned ALL THE BACKUP upon seeing Sydney’s orbs, it’s fairly safe to assume that these guys aren’t the Xevoarchy.
I finally have time to flip through the archives, find the page and the quote, and you’ve already posted it…
… its weird man… its like that part on One Punch Man where he’s trying to swat that mosquito and she’s the mosquito…… but she’s also taken out 2 (or possibly one with another being hurt) so….she’s the One Punch one…. what’s the correct…thing here… is there a Wasp comic that explains the situation better?
Can Sydney survive this other dimensional world,or can this other dimensional world survive Sydney!?
Fuck those 72,351 fish in particular.
This reminds me of a “bombing run” from Airwolf. Take a look at this; the similar action starts at 5:30, but the beginning is cool too. They really did fly the helicopter through the dust from all those explosions (special-effect landmines not aerial bombardment) and had to do a major overhaul of both engines afterwards.
No surprise there. Airwolf was really just a Bell 222 with cosmetic bits added… I doubt all that grit getting sucked into the air intakes would have done the engines (a pair of LTS 101-750 engines rated at 592 shp) any good.
I think it is kind of cool that some of those cosmetic bits actually allowed the helicopter to fly better (like the extended nosecone) and Bell incorporated those improved parts into the next generation of the line. Take a look at the nose of a Bell 430 and tell me that is not inspired by Airwolf’s add-on nose. :)
Hrmm soo mach 16 = 5.5km/s. That is pretty close to railgun speed +7km/s.
I wonder what would happen if she rammed the mothership at that speed..
Hold up, mach 4 to mach 16? i would assume that since 4^2 = 16, that each level squares her current max speed? wait, no, that would not work since mach 1 is abour 330-340m/s, so squaring 4*340 would give a much bigger number.
Each level just a plain *4 then? let’s calculus that up a bit. Mach 1 = 343m/s, Mach 4 = 1372m/s, Mach 16 = 5488m/s.
She now has 5 more nodes in that new line. Assuming each node in that line also does *4 (weak asumption since it is a distinctly different line but still, we have nothing else).
so for each point in that line, wewould multiply 5488m/s with 4^x where x is the numer of points in the line.
This would give us top speeds of 5488 * 4, 16, 64, 256 and 1024 for each level.
This totals to 21.952m/s, 87.808m/s, 351.232m/s, 1.404.928 m/s and 5.619.712m/s.
Just to give that some scale, the speed of light is 299.792.458m/s, so at the end of that line as we can currently see it, she could reach 1,8% the speed of light.
Holey rusted mettal batman! Sydney is not flying of that planet on her own, even with that line maxed out, but at this rate she will need to brush op on her relativity theory before long.
It’s x4 because the orb creators have 4 hands.
4? shouldn’t it be 7?
8! You need an extra hand to deal with any itches you might get when you have the shield up and you can’t use the molest-orb to scratch it.
Truth be told, supersonic speeds are not all that practical for anything close to urban areas and such, too many things concentrated in too short a space for comfort, i think.
So if [something] (I forgot how many pips are already in speed) = mach 4, and [something]+1 = mach 16, that could narrow down the creators by preferred counting base. Although seems like it probably isn’t a linear progression… next point puts it to mach 64? Or maybe some arbitrarily chosen thingy. However! Why it’s a leveling system and skill tree? Maybe it’s something ultra-powerful nth-dimensional entities use when playing video games set in this universe
Next pip starts a new column all together so it could use a new system of tracking.
Nuke her from orbit, its the only way to be sure.
RIP coastal fish. You were probably delicious.
I guess that they were… Deep fried…
Booo! Hissss!
*throws a handful of peanuts from the gallery*
BTW Cobra Commander, got any good dipping sauce?
Sadly, no. Oceans are not made of grease. And boiling something is saltwater is still boiling.
But, the water would probably be vaporized around the fish. So flash steamed maybe? the fish closer to the blast, would have the water vaporized around them and end up extra crispy, so “air fried” in water maybe?
She failed her last attempt at a lunar expedition. With her upgrade she can now make it there in under a day. (Earth day and Earth moon distance)
P.S. to actually orbit the Earth in 12 minutes you would need to be going Mach 160, not Mach 16. I would definitely call this speed ‘ludicrous’.
(And at that speed, she could be on the moon in 2 hours.)
I don’t think anyone has mention it yet, but her hair is in a ponytail in the first panel when on the rest of the page (and some on previous ones) it was down from her big tour-de-battle. Slight habitual error, methinks…
Earths circumference is 40,075 km and Mach 16 is 5488 m/s.
That puts the time to go around the world at 40075000 / 5488 = 7302.3 seconds.
Which would give you 7302.3 / 60 = 121.7 minutes
2 hours, or 10 times longer than your calculations got you. Still quite the speed, certainly wouldn’t want to skim the top of a building at that speed.
Just wanted to let you know so you can either increase it to Mach 160 if you wanted the 12 minutes for going around the world, or so you’d know it takes her less than an hour to get to where she needs to be (2 hours around the world, half that for any point on the globe).
Was just about to comment the same thing: with stick to Mach 16, but need 2 hours to traverse the earth, or move to Mach 160 for 12 mins to traverse the earth.
Either way (but especially if it turns out to be Mach 160), I’d love to see the race between Sydney and Max – especially if Max has to dump all her stats into speed… makes me think of the races between Superman and the Flash ^_^
If Max would you reach Mark 16 I don’t think her clothes would be around afterwards.
Max have some kind of forcefield protecting her clothes. After all she stood in her own explosion without damaging it. It’s not infallible, though, as Bombshell and Blood Golem had shown.
Actually, Max is different from your typical super in that she has a shared power pool between all her powers. When she was standing in her own blast radius, she probably had all power pushed into defense. (Like when she was getting strangled by Vehemence.)
So she would have a lower speed limit in atmosphere than in space. She would have to basically split all her power between speed and defense to go super fast. And she’d still likely end up with problems Sydney might not at say mach10+. And the faster she goes (in the atmosphere) the more she would have to pump into defense to survive the friction. Eventually, Max would hit a “hard cap” where she could go no faster. That cap would vary at different altitudes. Also if she wanted to shoot, that would also be a drain on her max speed.
Also, i just noticed that max has speed and flight as different stats. So maybe she’d need to split power 3 ways to go super fast.
Additional fun facts, it appears that Sydney is flying somewhere around 10 meters above the waves there. Assuming earth sized planet the distance to the horizon is 11.3 km, which she can fly in 2.05 seconds.
At such low altitude she wouldn’t spot a person swimming in the water until 2 seconds before she creates a mini-tsunami over them.
At a more comfortable 1km flight height she would see ~113 km which she can reach in a prompt 20-21 seconds.
Considering the bubble size and that energy is proportional to velocity squared…