Grrl Power #911 – The luxurious backhand
Sydney’s reaction legitimately started off as a runaway interaction between the serum and her ADHD, but did morph into an intentional stalling tactic.
This dude in the mask is a dick for aiming a gun at Sydney, but he’s hardly the first person on this world to wonder what happens to the orbs if she dies. You can be sure there were people above Maxima who gave it some thought, especially once they realized what an unfocused goof she can be. The fear of leaving someone like her with that much power is only baaaarely balanced out with the fact that no one knows what would happen. The orbs might go inert, leaving America/the Earth without one of the most powerful supers around to defend it. Some people might be willing to take that risk, but then someone pitched the idea that the orbs might react very badly to her death, and considering they obey her mental commands, it’s not inconceivable that the orbs could even understand the intent behind such an act, thereby increasing the likelihood of a bad outcome. It’s one of those “probably not, but is it really worth the risk” scenarios that keeps the heads of the off the books intelligence agencies up at night.
Guys, look… no spoilers, but fair warning, there is a teeeeeensy bit of gore on the next page. A skosh. A… soupçon, if you will. Barely worth mentioning. >cough<
So APPARENTLY, the previous page reminded some of you guys of a scene from a book series called the Vorkosigan Saga. I had never actually heard of the books, but I guess it must have been required reading or something, because about four hundred sixty of you mentioned it. For the three of you who didn’t, the 17 book series starts with Shards of Honor (Vorkosigan Saga) (Miles Vorkosigan Book 1) by Lois McMasters Bujold. (Whose name I always thought was Louis even though I knew she was a she.) And apparently the series has a plethora of piñatas awards. The first book is chronologically the second book, and the fourth book is chronologically the first, so I’ll leave you to figure out your own optimal reading order.
I saw that someone posted that Baen Publishing thought audiobooks wouldn’t be a big thing, but recorded a bunch of them as free promo material that would ship as a CD with certain hardback editions or something. So, hey, good on them for keeping them free even if their prediction about audiobooks didn’t pan out. So about 13 of the 17 books have free audiobooks. They won’t download through the desktop Audible app, but hey, listening to them through a tab in my browser won’t be too awful I guess. Glad my keyboard has those media keys.
Check the vote incentive to see Sydney not naked.
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You know… I keep forgetting her glasses aren’t Earth tech. Which is entirely relevant to this scenario.
Damn, nice going Sydney.
Max will be proud… after she’s finished being very angry at these people.
That’s not Max.
If it was Max he wouldn’t bleed.
He would either be turned to ash or subdued, but not bleed.
I think it’s Cora
Personally, I think it’s Peggy. Guns are her modus operandi.
Probably Cora, which explains the promised bloodbath.
Peggy wasn’t there.
All evidence points to Cora:
the glasses communication, Cora being pinged, Cora saying she has to go take care of something, Sydney’s comments to Concretia about growing a stone dick to get on someone’s good side.
Cora is the most likely person who just showed up, unnoticed by these people from behind in a building whose inner walls are behind them.
(this means its either Cora and/or Dabbler)
Don’t forget there’s a space-woof boyfriend. You want to see blood spatter? Get between a space-woof and his lady.
Guns are also Cora’s MO… But you know what isn’t Peggy’s MO? Killing people. Cora on the other hand might as well be named “Gore-a” for how much gore she gets all over everything.
Also, did you see the last two pages? It’s Cora.
I’m sure you’re right that it’s Cora, but Peggy is… a sniper. Killing people is kind of their deal.
Peggy sniping people wouldn’t answer the question of the hand in the final panel.
That’s the guy who was holding him in panel 5.
Just pointing out that killing people is in fact Peggy’s MO all day long. You might even say it’s her MOS.
Guided projectiles is Dabblers game. But if I was to REALLY put my money on it… The phone. Go back to 900. That phone is ultra protected and very likely being monitored. This would mean “random call while they’re in combat immediately after interruption of bio-monitor stats neckband results in a code red response unit deployment.” This is Peggy’s sniper shot start. Dabbler is using magic for communication.
How do I know this? Why did Halo lean right when she was slapped to her left? She’s leaning to let the shot go thru. But the position of the target changed so that isn’t needed anymore.
Finally notice the change? Punctuation returned. Verbal output and higher heart rate results in faster metabolism. The best way to burn out truth forcing is to be 100% truthful about absolutely nothing of importance. If they can’t ask you a question then you can’t accidentally give them an answer.
Good job Sydney.
You’re wrong…
First of all, Chekhov’s gun was set up in the last page. Cora was setting up to go somewhere right after getting a ping in her contact lens. Only explanation would be Sydney sending a message with her glasses.
Then, here’s the thing Sydney said “till she got here”. She didn’t say “till she got a clear shot”.
And Dave saying the next page is going to be a bit Gorey… that’s Cora’s thing. I don’t know if you caught it when goons tried to jump her and Sydney on the space station, but Cora likes turning people into red mist.
Why would Cora use a mundane projectile weapon? Or a long range weapon at all?
Sydney is not dumb, if she said “till she got a clear shot” they would be looking for cover and ensuring Peggy didn’t get a clear shot
We don’t know whether this is a mundane projectile weapon. We know Dabbler uses projectile weapons and long range weapons tend to be used to avoid being the first one to draw blood and having to chase after enemies. She has shown to use guns(“gal-gal 8 shield” and “not a rib”).
Your second point is completely valid.
Because the introduction of a gun and possible death of Sydney was introduced to the equation before Cora had a chance to get there. So, if she can’t get there quickly enough to kill them in person, firing a projectile from range will close that gap nicely. If she can lock into Sydney’s glasses, she can target the bad guy remotely. :) Probably using guided ammunition like in that Tom Selleck movie ‘Runaway’.
Cora is more likely to be off to collect the two missing people. Fire head eyeball and the medic lizardman. They probably just sent off a ping to space and Cora wouldn’t miss that at any level.
*Throws a quatlu to Tokumei.
Peggy doesn’t VVVVVVP.
Peggy goes BANG-BANG.
Probably Cora. Maybe Frix, but that leads to cootie stuff that would only be on Patreon.
Having been downrange during sniper practice marking the hits on the targets befor patching the holes for the next rounds, can confirm that if subsonic the bullets go vvvvvip, supersonic rounds make pops or cracks, and we were way too far away to hear the actual muzzle blast even though it was aimed in our general direction. This was on the 1km range in the “pits”.
Is it just me or is Sydney’s expression in that next to last panel legitimately intimidating?
Also, I hope Cora remembers they need the leader alive to question about the location of Cora’s body as well as more intel on his organization (because he is *NOT* at the top of his food chain, he’s middle-management at best).
ArcLight and ArcDark are gonna have fun with him. And if he’s very, very lucky… they’ll quietly put him out of his misery when they’re done. If he’s not so lucky, they’ll give him to Concretia as a ‘signing bonus’.
Sydney has seen Cora at work. She knows what’s about to happen.
and that’s not the leader surviving to be questioned.
Yeah… I’m really hoping Sydney’s orbs decide to go into ‘Level-Up’ mode so they punch right through the rock they’re trapped in so they bad guy at least has a HOPE of surviving to questioning!
Peggy wasn’t there.
All evidence points to Cora:
the glasses communication, Cora being pinged, Cora saying she has to go take care of something, Sydney’s comments to Concretia about growing a stone dick to get on someone’s good side.
Cora is the most likely person who just showed up, unnoticed by these people from behind in a building whose inner walls are behind them.
(this means its either Cora and/or Dabbler)
this posted in the wrong spot somehow I was replying to someone else further up in a different string of comments.
nope.
cant be cora. no cora on the cast page.
No Peggy either, or anyone else except Cree and Sydney
The Cast Page is notoriously out of date, and the Who’s Who generally only credits speaking parts. While opening fire is technically a form of communication (“I don’t like you. Go down and stay down.”), it does lack the requisite nuance.
The leader was hit in the shoulder area right under the clavicle that is permanently and officially defined as “only a flesh wound”.
As for the location of Concretia’s body, she probably can sense it, she just can’t get away because it’s strapped down to a table in an area with no stone to possess. All they’d need to do is follow her “Ghost” back to her body.
Dabbler may also have a spell to detect it by tracing Concretia’s astral link.
Your comment, and that panel, actually flashed me back to part of the movie “Mr. Right” with Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell.
Martha (Kendrick) is being held hostage as bait and is being slapped around by two of the bad guys. One of them kicks the chair she’s tied to partway across the room into a wall and he yells at her about how does she feel now.
She looks up at him from under the hair that’s fallen over her face and says “I feel… I feel… motivated.” then starts laughing.
I never thought Anna Kendrick could look intimidating until that scene. You can watch a clip of it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTz9UMqCaEQ
I quite liked that movie :)
There’s a smart henchman (damn, that guy makes all the right decision in that movie), Anna Kendrick is marvelous (as always), and Sam Rockwell is perfect as the goofball/crazy killer.
I think you’re referring to “Shotgun Steve” (as he’s listed in the credits) played by RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Tim Roth did a great job in the movie showing why he’s one of the better “villain” actors in the game when he wants to be. Hopper was basically mentally the complete opposite of Frances and yet was pretty much almost his match.
I love that Francis has this completely amazing ability, but that while it allows him to win most of the time, he’s not invincible. (I also liked that he loved the simple fact that Steve was able to get the drop on him a couple of times and even hold his own for a while.)
Who doesn’t love Tim Roth ? :D
And, yes! Shotgun Steve! (I didn’t notice he was played by RZA… damn!)
Dang it, now I had to watch the movie again. Cute Movie and Anna Kendrick is hot
people keep thinking sydney and people like her somehow less brutal than everyone else… sydney has every reason to be very very mad at her captors. she also has the intelligence and experience to keep it under wraps and go on a motormouth attack. she is in a corner and aware of it. she has her inhibitions lowered which means her suspect poker face is even worse. her Brian is still in there working as we see. I don’t think Sydney feels Mr. remote is worth keeping alive. if Cora kills him, there isn’t as much paperwork to do. not to mention Sydney does not have to try and keep herself from killing him I know in her shoes… the ppo orb would be the first or second orb in line in the concrete prison they are in.
I’d go Lighthook, but I am notoriously inventive and unkind.
there is a time to use a spoon to scoop out an irritant, and a time to use both barrels of a 12 gage with slugs at very close range. then one has time to leisurely double tap. would not do to leave a job undone.
Painful lesson in why one performs interrogations *after* getting the target to a secure location has arrived.
Given what is going on, I doubt any location on earth would have qualified as secure.
Check out the app called Smart Audio Book. You should be able to drop those Baen books on your phone and use the app to listnen to them instead of audible.
That guy is an expensive villain: truth serum, goons, secret super case and memory wipium. Does he also have a vulcano base and a moon laser?
Volcano lairs are reserved for top-tier masterminds.
As an aside, I’d only seen a glass syringe like that once. They also have a glass marble inside of them to keep from injecting air. I asked the doctor if he was going to tell me this might pinch a little. He told me “No. It’s going to hurt like Hell.” He was right.
Contrary to medical mythology, injecting air isn’t really a big deal unless it’s fairly large amounts. As a doctor once explained to me when I pointed out the sizeable bubble going down the IV line to my arm.
“Doc, shouldn’t you clear that bubble from the line.”
Doc: ” Nah. Just a little extra O2 for your blood. Now that bube is the one I’d worry about.” *Walks out after doing nothing*
Actually, that does sound kind of like my oncologist. He was a real joker, probably stress relief given that better than half his patients were going to die unpleasantly in the near future.
Ya’ll would Despair of Living if you knew the kind of jokes we tell inside medical circles.
Or options we have for poetic justice.
not cora it either Arianna or peggy the sniper elite
Arianna? The Public Relations/Human Resources Honcho???
While it seems like it’s set up to be Cora, that shot really looked like a “O Hai!” from Peggy.
The odds of Ariana appearing on scene are nil…but I wouldn’t be shocked in the least to find out she knows her way around a tec 9.
Other bad outcome: “Nice galaxy you had there. Sorry it got exploded.”
Sounds like something Kai and Yuri might say. The WWWA assures it was an accidental catastrophic hypernova
Based on that bit about a tiny bit of gore I’m preparing for the next page to be full-on Mortal Kombat levels.
Finding that someone has harmed Sydney should be enough to put someone into a D&D Barbarian’s ‘berserker rage’.
Remember what happened to the mugger… And Mr. Amorphous at the bank.
Dave has done an excellent job of making us Really Really Disliking that particular badguy. I suspect his immediate future is going to be pretty horrible. Can’t wait!
We are all sitting in the Splash Zone.
Next comic:
First Panel: *Spray from the first wound hits Sydney in the face, glasses completely covered in blood*
Sydney: Aack!
*Next five panels are completely red, accented with sound effects of bones breaking and whimpers for mercy*
Sydney: Uh, hello?
Cora’s voice: Sydney, are you OK?
Sydney: Yeah, but I can’t see a thing!
Cora: Just use th- wait, hang on… *Cora touches the side of Sydney’s glasses, energy arcs burn away blood on glasses*
Sydney: Whoa, self-cleaning! That’s – *sees room clearly now* OH MY GOD CORA!! I mean, yeah, they were dickbags and totally deserved it, but now we can’t question them!!
Cora: They’re still alive, and questionable… you’d be surprised what people can live through…
*sigh* just noticed Sydney lost her glasses with the backhand. Oh well, it’s a good story anyway.
Just needs a slight edit:
*First six panels are a predominantly red blur with a lot of overlaid with sound effects*
Cora’s voice: Sydney, are you OK?
Sydney: Yeah, but I can’t see without my glasses!
Cora: Oh, here they are. *Cora puts glasses on Sydney’s face*
Sydney: OH MY GOD!
OTOH
“You’re taking all of this blood surprisingly well.”
“Did I ever tell you about Sciona and the vault?”
I think the orbs would disappear without sydney, I believe (fan theory) they are her manifestation of her own innate powers, including but not limited to psychokinesis, teleportation, portals, psychic power blasts, and limited only to the scale of her imagination on what a power could be used for.
or it ammplifies her powers and only works in the present state with her, anyone else would have a shuffle of maximized powers, but without sidneys wild inteligence and imagination, they’d just be floating pretty stones.
but I think the first is more likely, and we’ll find that out in a much later arc when she meats a 1st one that happens to be alive, probably on mars, cause why not.
also, has no one realized, Sydney can litterly fly to mars?
Sydney flying to Mars? Depending on her method of transit, it could take quite a while. Mach 16 is not fast enough to establish an Earth-Mars transfer orbit, but if she could work out the wormhole mechanics, probably with a little help of those that know what they are doing, she could get there a lot faster.
That is part of the reason Starship is so big, so it can be loaded with enough fuel to make the transfer orbit to Mars. Oh well, that should make it relatively easy to hit the transfer orbit to the moon.
It is fast enough to get there. It will just take a long, long time. Escape velocity means the speed at which an object can escape the gravitational field of another object without any additional energy input. You can travel to the moon in ~ 30,000 hours at 10 mph. You won’t magically spring back to earth once you stop.
Just a slight correction:
Escape velocity is the speed you need to escape the gravity well *assuming* no further thrust/acceleration.
If you have a continual source of thrust, all it has to do is be strong enough to continually accelerate you away from Earth faster than Earth pulls you back (or other relevant celestial body). No specific relative velocity is required, other than “greater than zero relative to Earth’s surface”
Exactly. “The Mouse on the Moon” movie in the 1960s. Speed vs power. If you have a consistent source of power or velocity, you don’t have to have any particular velocity at all. Just keep getting farther away from the planet.
again, not privy to velocity ex machina. If she get to mach 16 in atmosphere, then she should really haul in the vacuum of space. At one gravity of acceleration, flipping over at midpoint, she could be at closest mars in 42 hours, max velocity being 730-ish kilometers/second.
It might be that the orbs have a velocity instead of an acceleration, meaning that they make you go Mach 16 regardless of the environment. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense from a physics POV, but they’re already way outside what our knowledge of physics allows and clearly have some serious AI running them[1], so the AI may simply cap your speed at a particular point.
[1] (e.g. the shield will stop lasers but not sunlight and maintains pressure at a constant level when you shrink / embiggen it.)
In the movie “Mouse On The Moon”, sequel to “The Mouse That Roared”, the spaceship launched by Grand Fenwick never reaches escape velocity. As explained by the scientist that built the spaceship they just continue moving with the minimal necessary propulsion until they get there rather than expending all of their fuel in one huge burst at liftoff.
Sounds like an interesting hypothesis. I wonder if it would actually work?
Yeah, you can do it that way, but only if you’ve got some incredibly powerful fuel, because it’s horribly inefficient. Chemical rockets are barely capable of getting into orbit from Earth as it is, doing everything perfectly.
If Earth had 50% higher gravity, it would be nuclear rockets or forget it.
Rocket fuels are actually rated according to hover time in 1 gravity, believe it or not. A really good fuel is in the 3-4 minute range.
thud and blunder spaceship in Footfall(Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle). to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Just to make what Brett said really clear: No, that’s typical movie inverse logic.
Fuel converts into energy at a constant rate of kg/erg. In order to get anywhere, you have to achieve an acceleration greater than the Earth’s pull. The pull of the Earth is 1/d^2, where d is the distance to the center of the Earth. If you are two Earth-radii out, you get 1/4th the pull that you get from the surface. Therefore, you want to get up as fast as possible.
The reason for two- and three-stage rockets is that the housing for the fuel & the engines are dead weight against the thrust coming from the fuel. Eventually, it’s like a garden hose trying to push a rail car.
In the Mouse that Roared, a central plot element is that the Grand Dutchy had, while invading NY to be defeated and get some of that help countries the US defeate used to get, ended up kidnapping a physicist who’d invented a very exotic source of power.
That the source of power used some obscure isotope that could be found in the Grand Dutchy’s famous wine worked out amazingly well.
So they had practically unlimited delta V, and actually could pull off the comfortable but insanely inefficient 1.1 g acceleration route. Worst case, they’d just break out another bottle.
No, its called escape velocity for a reason. its the minimal necessary thrust to escape from whatever gravity your tying to overcome.
no, escape velocity is the minimum speed you need to reach to escape Earth’s gravity
Assuming no more energy is applied.
If you had some sort of ridiculous magic staircase you could walk to orbit.
It would take Months, and you’d starve to death long before you got there,
but the physics work.
It’s not dependent on Earth. Escape velocity would be different on Mercury than it would be on Earth, for example. The reason escape velocity is important to this topic though is because fuel has both mass and volume, and you have to travel a VERY long distance to escape the planet’s gravitational pull.
If you tried to “Mouse on the Moon” your way off the planet, the only logical outcome would be that you would eventually run out of fuel and fall back to the earth. You might consider just adding more fuel but then you hit the paradox wherein the more fuel you add, the heavier and bulkier your ship becomes, requiring you to burn more fuel to make it move at all.
This is why rockets are designed the way they are. Turns out, rocket scientists are actually smart. It uses less fuel to launch a rocket with high intensity at the start, ditch the drained fuel containers, then coast off of momentum than it does to try to maintain the minimum force needed to keep moving upwards for the entire distance from the ground until you escape the planet’s gravitational pull.
Then… how do planes manage to reach the upper atmosphere?
The only reason they don’t go higher, is because of lack of oxygen required by the pilot(s)
You… Don’t know how airplanes work, do you? I’m sitting here debating whether or not to try to explain basic physics or Bernoulli’s principle… But it should be sufficient to say that wings require atmosphere to generate lift, and that the thinner the air gets, the less lift is generated. The atmosphere gets thinner as you go higher, and there’s a point at which a given airplane will not generate more lift than it weighs, and therefore cannot climb higher.
Please do, not being a troll, genuinely interested
In particular: how close to the upper atmosphere (and the ‘Edge of Space’) do the ‘Vomit Comet’ planes go to do their ‘imitate the affects of weightlessnessyness’ party trick?
Same with that guy who free fell from near-space last year? How close was he to leaving entirely?
You can do the weightlessness thing with an open cockpit biplane. Just not for very long. The “Vomit Comet” planes go for more altitude so that they have room to sustain the weightlessness arc for a longer period of time. Airliner/transports are used for this since they are pressurized and have more room to move around. Even flying at high altitude you only get about 20-30 seconds of weightlessness at a time. The “upper atmosphere” and the “edge of space” are terms that get used pretty loosely. At 30,000 feet you will pass out and die within seconds without supplemental oxygen. it is pretty close to the practical limit of flight with a pressurized cockpit. From 20,000 you start benefiting from turbochargers and jet engines. That is, engines that can draw in more than just ambient air. The higher you go the more specialized the engines and their required fuel becomes until you get into SR-71 land. As Torabi notes above there is a point where the air simply is too thin to generate enough lift to support the aircraft. As the air thins out the stall speed of the wing (the lowest speed at which a given wing will fly) increases. As an example the U-2 spy plane operated at such high altitudes that there was a window of only a few miles per hour between the stall speed of the airplane and its never exceed speed. One of the reasons the SR-71 is so fast is that it has to be to make enough lift to operate at such high altitudes. Once you get beyond about 120,000 feet in altitude you are getting to the limits of winged aircraft and into rocket powered ballistic trajectories. At that point you have more in common with a bullet than an airplane. The guy who jumped from the balloon broke 130,000 feet. Well into pressure suit territory but well below orbital altitudes. The edge of space is normally defined as 50 or 62 miles from the surface depending on who you ask. So balloon guy was actually a long way from the actual “Edge of Space”
Also, as Mgnostic was leading up to, Rockets carry both fuel and oxidizer (genrly liquid oxygen) to keep up the burn outside of the atmosphere.
Also, nutshell Bernoulli says that air flowing over specially shaped ‘wings’ make the wings go up. Faster you go, the more up. Screw up that shape or slow down, the wing stops going up or goes down.
Also, edge of atmosphere is just a few miles up; nearer than going to the next town over. Your gravity/weight is virtually the same. The guy at the edge of space was in NO danger of leaving Earth’s gravity well. Fer Heaven’s sake, the moon is trapped in Earth’s gravity well!
I think that covers the points it seemed that you were asking about.
The two primary ways wings generate lift is through Newton’s Third Law (For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction) and Bernoulli’s Principle (which… basically states that there’s an inverse relationship between how fast a fluid is flowing and how much pressure it exerts perpendicular to the flow). The bottom edge of the wing is shaped to push air downwards, and as a result, the air pushes the wing upwards. This is easily experienced by holding your hand out the window while riding in a moving vehicle. Wings are also shaped to induce the air passing over them to flow faster than the air beneath them, thus making the air below exert more pressure on the bottom of the wing than the air above does to the top.
Rockets also produce lift using Newton’s Third Law, and the ‘Vomit Comet’ planes you mentioned angle themselves upward to the point where their jet engines produce a substantial amount of lift, rather than just horizontal velocity, to counter the loss of lift from the wings due to the thinner atmosphere. The weightlessness experienced on such a trip, however, is not due to actually leaving Earth’s gravity well, but to balancing the upwards acceleration against gravity, much like the momentary experience of weightlessness on some roller coasters. The height at which they travel is just to increase the duration of the experience, and even that is only about 34,000 feet. Most of Earth’s atmosphere is contained within the first 59,000 feet near the equator, though it gets thinner much faster at the poles, topping out at about 20,000 feet.
Thank you
Honestly thought it was possible to ‘arc-out’ of the gravity well: ie instead of going straight up, go the long way around by circling the planet gradually going higher until momentum helps push you beyond the final grasp of gravities grabby reach (no troll)
Or as it was explained to me, “Airplanes push against the air. No air, no traditional flight, no airplanes in space. Rockets push against their own fuel.”
Was just thinking of an alternative to getting them to space, after which they use the rockets
Can vaguely recall shuttles getting ‘piggy back rides’ on the back of airliners (one of the 7X7 range?)
It is certainly possible to take the long way out of a gravity well, it’s just, well, the long way. It would take significantly longer, and significantly more fuel.
Something interesting about traveling in high orbit is that speeding up actually slows you down, and vice-versa, because speeding up moves you into a higher orbit, and thus you have to travel a greater distance along the flight path to move the same distance along the ground. Slowing down makes you drop into a lower orbit, and thus a shorter path around.
I’m pretty sure, Torabi, that you’ve got this a bit wrong. It’s actually even more interesting.
“Speeding up”, that is, thrusting in the direction of travel, increases your kinetic energy & velocity. However, this increase in KE changes your orbit, therefore increasing the average d of the orbit to the center of the Earth. In this higher orbit, KE has been converted into potential energy. In fact, MORE PE has been added than the KE you just added–the average KE & velocity of this higher orbit is lower than KE & velocity of your original (lower orbit).
We’re not talking orbital time directly, although, as it happens, this also is effected.
“shuttles getting ‘piggy back rides’ on the back of airliners” “an alternative to getting them to space” – Guesticules
The Space Shuttle was carried on adapted Boeing 747s, but not as part of a launch. Instead, they were used to ferry the Shuttle from wherever it had landed to where it needed to be prepared for its next mission. The Soviets had a similar idea, developing the Antonov AN-225 to carry their Buran orbiter and its boosters to the site where they would be assembled for vertical launch.
Air-based launch is, if not a current capability, at least one that’s in serious development. After all, a satellite booster is technologically little different from a missile. Historically, it’s been easier to adapt ground-based missiles; they can be built bigger, and the load distribution is easier to design for. But for smaller payloads that don’t need any more infrastructure than the launch plane can carry, air launching allows that to be done from more places – both places to base the plane, and places to start the launch trajectory to miss inhabited areas.
I know Virgin are looking to air-launch small satellites using an adapted 747, operating out of Newquay in Cornwall and presumably going out over the Atlantic to launch. I would have thought the performance would be better using a military bomber type such as the supersonic B-1 (suitably weeded for sensitive systems), but presumably there are political issues with that.
Escape velocity is the speed a cannonball would need in order to escape Earth’s gravity if you ignore all the air in the way. An actual cannonball launched from ground level would need a lot more speed because it would lose so much energy to the atmosphere, while a rocket (that continues accelerating most of the way up) never needs to reach that speed any more than you need to reach escape velocity in order to reach the top of a mountain.
If you have the energy to burn, you could get to space at a constant 1m/s (roughly walking speed) in a bit over a day (27 hours, 46 minutes and 40 seconds to cover 100km to the Karman line if you start at sea level) – but to keep that constant upward velocity, you’d need to have an upward force exactly equal to the weight of your craft (including contents and fuel) from moment to moment to cancel gravity.
Note also that Escape Velocity is the upwards velocity required to completely leave a body’s gravitational influence. Humans have only done that a few dozen times, when we’ve sent probes to other planets. Most of the time, we only give the payload enough upward velocity to get part of the way up the gravity well, and a lot of tangential velocity so that it keeps missing the planet as it falls.
Such a thing _might_ work if you were using a space elevator – otherwise, countering Earth’s gravity, keeping your course stable, AND providing lift consumes a ridiculous amount of energy. It wouldn’t be the first time a sci-fi author (even a popular one) discarded the laws of physics to tell a good story.
NASA has been sponsoring annual competitions for people to design devices that could climb a space tether. The main obstacles they have found are in keeping the device on the tether line for 100 km and in powering the device.
Building a tether line is now a engineering rather than a scientific challenge. How do you fabricate that long of a line? How do you safely dissipate the enormous static electricity it would generate? It could have a heavy anchor in orbit for the far end. You use materials lifted along the line to add to the anchor’s mass.
It’s mostly a materials science problem. Even the best materials we can manufacture in gram quantities are kind of marginal for the job. Unlike Mars, where more ordinary materials would work, but you have to avoid having a moon “hurtle” through your cable.
Sky hooks really aren’t all that practical, barring enormous advances in material science. (In “Old Man’s War”, they’d built a skyhook, but only as a sort of “Don’t even bother unless you can do this” intimidatin tactic.)
Rotovators are where it’s at.
I imagine some hooded thugs are about to get eviscerated in the next few seconds.
On a side note, could someone clue me in on how to pronounce “soupçon?” My typical ‘Murican education alphabet didn’t include them fancy squiggly things. I understand what it means in context, but to me it looks like something chefs would go to to learn how to make a delightful cream of broccoli.
‘Soup-sssssssss-awn’, sort of. The accented ‘c’ sounds like an ‘s’. The ‘on’ is said like the French say it. The ‘n’ is silent.
It’s not silent, it’s merely decline.
the p is silent, and the n sounds a little bit like it’s diminishing into a g but not quite
The French “on” sound is one absent from English so not exactly
many french words end in a slight gagging sound. A friend got frustrated in Paris at the locals disrespecting his mastery of the local lingo. In anger, he started to greatly exaggerate the gagging sound. Oddly, that seemed to improve their understanding and heighten their understanding.
Also strange, lingua franca doesn’t mean french language, but is a polyglot common language in the Levant…..I guess more like esparanto.
So, three minutes has passed since Sydney was talking to the air.
Oh shit. What if they could turn henchwench?! All the powers of Arc-swat?!
Just Anvil + Harem would be fucking nuts. 5 Anvils with teleportation… Continous meteor bombardment… from any angle.
That’s what would be referred to as “the Nuclear Option”.
I don’t think Max would allow it, though. Because for one thing, it would allow Henchwench access to Max’s powers as well. And Xuriel’s.
You’d basically end up with five heroes who could easily go toe-to-toe with Superman Prime.
Even with that power granted by a simple contract, I don’t think she’d want to risk that. (Not to mention that it’s a government agency… which is usually contracted employment rather than “at-will” and the bureaucratic steps needed to properly fire her even if she goes mad with power…)
She could be gired as a short-term contractor with a clause that her employment may be terminated immediately at any time, verbally or otherwise, by any designated member of Archon, and carries strict penalties for breach of contract.
As a backup, all other members can quit or be fired for a 24 hour period at any time.
Whether she would be hired by a wholly owned subsidary or otherwise would depend on a few factors:
-Can she copy innate powers only or also tech (ie, Sydney).
-Does she have to know about people for the contract to take effect? EG, would she get Arclight powers?
-Is it only signatories that are affected, ie it is the physical contract itself with a specific person/people employer that gives her her powers? In her current role she seems to have had everyone sign the paper.
Hmm – it would be fascinating to see if she lost her powers at the point of firing or only when she becomes aware of it.
*hired. Late night typing after brain melt and trying to work off christmas dinners.
lolz…..joins the military so now works for the ppl….EVERY murcan’s power at hand now.
That would only work if Archon was branded as Villains
Wouldn’t be the first time they recruited a Villain.
She might not be able to duplicate Syd’s, since her powers come from an outside source.
Henchie would have to be hired directly by said-Villain: her powers only work if her employer is a villain, not just a colleague
And if she can be convinced that her powers can work up her chain of command instead? Make her a permanent punitive private, and sticker her under the command of whomever is most optimal for the mission at hand, shuffle the squads around so she has the right CoC, and tada: I win button.
Ah, yes. The “Times up, Jerkhole!” moment.
Always love these moments.
“Hang on, help is on its way / I’ll be there as fast as I can…”
Issue 9-1-1, the emergency response team shows up.
Baen giving away free stuff has been part of their business model for decades. The CDs in those hardcovers pretty much had a disclaimer saying “Don’t sell this content, but please share.” The first taste is free, and what a taste it is. They have sadly, from my understanding, had to discontinue the disks thanks to their publishing deal with Amazon. They still continue to give away ebooks for free, usually the first couple in a series, in the Free Library section on their website. And I think all ebooks on there are DRM free and available in multiple formats.
I have learned that if you load your Kindle with their freebies – it shows up on your purchases from Amazon after syncing and you can get it on your apps after that.
Amazing that someone who reads sci-fi has NOT read Bujold (hint – she also has some good fantasy, heck, if she wrote a cook book, I’d read it just for the way she turns a phrase)! She’s good….
But with my user name, you know how I feel. I also spent time in the military & DH is retired military (spent more time as a military dependent that I did as a dependent to my parents). I might be a little ADHD…
She’s terrifyingly good at writing. I started reading her for military space opera, and five books later realized I was reading her romance novels.
That kind of writing skill is scary.
If only they’d make major motion pictures of some of her novels.
> But with my user name, you know how I feel.
It sounds like you’re saying that your user name is based around really liking the Vorkosigan Saga? FYI, ‘vor’ is used in certain circles to refer to very edgy (and often smutty) writing that fetishizes eating things, often humans. When I saw VorFemme I assumed that it was a callout for eating women, either in the literal or figurative sense.
Damnit. ‘vore’, not ‘vor’. Typo.
I feel obliged to mention that the Vorkosigan CD is not available on the most common site for getting them, Fifth Imperium. That is by Bujold’s request. Authors were not asked permission to be included in the program and she’s noted that the one book that didn’t get into the collection (*Memory*) seeks three times as many copies, suggesting that, while this might drive sales, it’s probably to the detriment of overall author income.
I still believe in the model, but I respect her request to not reshare the CD further.
I believe the audiobooks you’re talking about are the ones from the Baen promo CDs, which are under a license that allows you to share them around without having to ask permission and you can download the ISOs from https://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ or the Internet Archive.
When I first read the bottom left panel, I misread it as asking if she could become a BONE golem and thought, yeah, bone has lots of calcium phosphate in it, she could probably steal a person’s skeleton! And then seeing the blood gushing in the next panel before I read the words, I thought she was taking over his bones and erupting through his body with them.
Do people here think she could become a bone golem? Take over a person’s body, or at least incapacitate them that way?
From the looks of it, she needs to have a certain amount of substance for her to make a body with it. So you’d need a bone that is roughly her size as it is unclear if she can make a single body out of multiple pieces of a substance, or even different substances.
Given a suitable size of bone and/or pile of bone bits, probably. But probably not taking over an articulated skeleton, especially one that someone else is using at the time. She does appear to need to be able to fit her whole body inside whatever she’s building from in order to ‘grab hold’ of it. Whether that needs to be a single solid object or can be a pile of pieces remains unproven; we’ve only seen her use bulk objects, but we don’t know that she can’t use looser bits.
When my leg was broken they had to use internal support, which was removed as soon as it was safe as 9/11 happened while I was in the hospital learning how to move my leg again and nobody thought about how my implant would interact with metal detectors made to find hidden metal objects. I only had to get one cavity search after not finding anything on the strip search to get them to take my Gamma Nail out.
Anyway how this is pertinent is I grew calcite crystals in and on the implant and they broke 2 cordless drills just getting to the screw threads for the slide hammer because I have so much calcium in my bones. So if Concretia needs actual rocks to build her body from, I have actual rocks where most people have bones.
Also, we saw C use the asphaltic concrete paving in the parking lot to build a body from so “collection of rocks” has been demonstrated.
It’s not terribly uncommon to use concrete paving for parking lots, so it’s not clear what her bodies were made of there (though I haven’t read that sequence in a while). But asphalt and concrete are both just little rocks stuck together into a conglomerate, so I can’t imagine why her powers wouldn’t work on either. Unless they’re specifically tied to the lime in concrete or something, but that seems like an odd choice for Dave to make.
“and nobody thought about how my implant would interact with metal detectors”
Yeah, I had some hardware in my leg at one time, too. Made flying a real pain, fortunately it was just my ankle, and there are obvious surgical scars, so I didn’t have to strip far to satisfy them.
Got it taken out a year later, because the screw heads were printing through my skin when I laced up my boots. Still have that plate and screws in a jar in the library.
Nobody takes his mother shopping – she went into “town” to get her husband a mid-winter present – came back with the head of (no spoilers) someone who pissed both of them and most of the planet off….yeah.
She has some really good lines – that would join the likes of “Yippie kay aye” and “I’ll be back” in movie quotes – if they’d just make the books into movies. They would need a GOOD actress, though.
If you’re talking about Bujold, I quite agree. Though my favorite character in the Vorkosigan books is actually Mark. He didn’t accomplish as much as Miles did – but he accomplished it with a fraction of the resources, and with those who should have been helping him instead betraying him (I have a hard time seeing Eli Quinn as likeable after how she abandoned Mark to Ryoval. Hell, even Miles was pissed about it).
I absolutely fell in love when someone finally showed him some sympathy after everything – and he responded with a vicious snarl, “Don’t you DARE pity me. I WON!”
did you read Cryoburn? Mark achieved his goal (mostly). the clone trade will become much rarer now if not vanish entirely. and the butter bugs… lets just say that neither Mark nor his Partner (hint Lois is a big fan of Jane Austen) need fear poverty any time soon. and even with the 3 or 4 wars Miles has prevented or ended Mark will change that universe beyond recognition. though Mile’s kids…. with those two as parents? Miss ‘it cost him all he had’? Miles the hyperactive git? its probably a good thing that series is ending as those kids will likely be weapons of mass destruction. both of their parents were.. and the grand parents are just as scary even if Aral is dead. and uncle Ivan is absolutely no slouch in that department either.
Well, I’m thinking that Hood Guy at least has pretensions of being well financed. The only place you are going to find a boxed set of syringes like that is a high end custom villain’s equipment store. I’ve handled various syringes from cheap disposables all the way up to chrome plated veterinary syringes that were intended to give a hundred shots per day and none of them came in a fitted velvet lined case. The best I ever saw was a nice cardboard box with some crepe paper padding. It does fit in with the fancy hoods and suits. This guy probably has an account at a discrete little villain’s supply shop on Saville Row but they laugh at him every time he leaves the store.
Um, actually veterinary supply. Those are the type of syringes sold for livestock. Made of glass (they are to be reused, not disposed of), enormous, and sometimes (but not here apparently) sold in individual steel cases that make them highly resistant to damage. But if you don’t get the individual steel tube cases, you get a box like bozo is holding. One that can be stepped on or kicked by a horse or something without breaking the syringes.
They’re in the presentation case now/ That doesn’t mean they were originally supplied in the case; it may have been made to suit syringes they already had.
Indeed, custom cases for odd contraptions is a hallmark of Evil™
“The first book is chronologically the second book, and the fourth book is chronologically the first, so I’ll leave you to figure out your own optimal reading order.”
Holy ghosts of Narnia, Batman!
it does sound like an interesting series, I will have to check it out.
Always read/watch in order of publishing/broadcast.
start with Falling Free. it will introduce some things that will pay off much much later. and read her notes about the book and why there is no direct sequel.
Eh, Falling Free is by far the weakest book in the series, and really only tangentially related. Best to start either with Shards of Honor, to get the story of Mile’s parents, or The Warrior’s Apprentice, which is the start of Miles’s story.
All I can think of when I read the note is a quote from The Gamers.
“You splatter Hunk all over the common room. The patrons shriek in horror and run out of the inn, occasionally slipping on the blood and entrails. You’re now alone in a room that looks like a vat of beef stroganoff exploded in it.”
Is it Thursday already?
Those three fans who didn’t recommend Lois McMaster Bujold to you? I was one of them. I figured the others had it covered. But now I’m adding my, er, voice, lest you think her fen are not legion. She’s the best.
yay, finally!
The baddies were easily distracted and allowed themselves to be completely fooled by Sydney’s talking. Are we sure Sydney isn’t actually a super? Does she have some sort of charm ability that is always on? I feel like a lot of the baddies are to easily distracted by Sydney when she says something that they have to focus on it. I know thats the comedy of the comic but honestly I wouldn’t put it past Dave to give Sydney a secret super power.
I’m really happy with Sydney for maintaining her snark even after being backhanded.
I’m also, probably belatedly, becoming a little concerned about the fact that a method for totally disabling Sydney’s powers has become known to the Bad Guy agencies. Concretia’s stone powers aren’t even necessary to recreate this scenario at a later date, anyone who can ambush Sydney and carry a sturdy box to scoop the orbs in can do it.
Sydney can control the orbs to spin and strike, but yeah if they get a metal crate and manage to get them separated from her in something they can’t break out of she’s screwed.
Why I am actually kind of disappointed she didn’t pull a “beast” mode and in a fit of anger causes the orbs (being presumed indestructible Nth tech designed to be used by and heck survive in the presence of presumed Nth level beings,,,unless DaveB is pulling a Jack and Daxter on us) to burst through the concrete and spin around her.
that said she hadn’t really gone into that fit of rage that trope goes with, with instead a truth serum, and the situation where that survive and unleash the beast mode looks to be being prevented just as it was started by help arriving. But that’s just wishful thinking on my part; even if the orbs could Sydney’s personality doesn’t seem the type to go super saiyan through anger.
Yeah that was my going assumption too: Sydney gets either so scared or so angry, that the orbs smash through the concrete to reach her. That or they do an emergency activation and all the orb powers fire off at once.
I predict that she will start to think about how to keep her orbs (pun avoided) such that this will be very very hard from now on. keep shield orb in a pouch on her hip or something. you can still trap her… but how much can you do to her?
Hard to say. Free-hovering seems to be the orb’s default state, so I not sure a pouch would work. They’d all go into free-hover everytime it opened.
If I recall right that was how the cardboard tube she used in the beginning worked. It was just kept shut all the time, and once she opened it the orbs flew out.
And, if she didn’t interact with them for a while in the tube, they went to sleep. That’s not safe now she has a public ID.
She could have been given concrete mittens just as easily, except Sydney might have had the orbs attempt to shatter them or someone’s head.
I’m really sad that Dave didn’t have the pan-dimensional orbs take a left turn through another dimension to return to her.
it really is things like this that more convince me these aren’t weapons, space ship components, or tools for a Nth level being; but toys. The connection between the user and them is just some *strap* so the kid doesn’t easily lose the multiple moving toys rather than as some profound bonding; and Sydney just doesn’t know how to turn off the child lock that keeps the bond going and being a small squishy ephemeral being is far more inconvenienced by the strap than a Nth level being would.
It’s Cora isn’t it?
Well, the bad guy can’t complain that he wasn’t warned he only had a few minutes.
Mind, he can’t complain because he’s bleeding out, but he did get the warning. Boy is he going to feel stupid if he lives.
Brain in a jar time.
that… would be a violation of human rights wouldn’t it? I mean that is by definition solitary confinement, mind you I’d wait till he was bleeding to get some legal and medical opinions on the matter, while the blood was still fresh say. wouldn’t do to make this determination as a hypothetical.
Have I not mentioned that I am not a nice person?
I am really, really sorry for failing in that.
…
Unrelated, could you help me with getting this jar set up in the autoclave?
Regarding the higher-ups and their consideration of Plan Orb Snatch: they also must have considered the very clear friendship developing between Sydney and The Harbinger Of Golden Nuclear Apocalypse, Maxima. I think that would be their biggest deterrent to using their government-sponsored vivisectionists.
Ok, that next to last panel-Sydney has officially learned Maxima’s “Death Glare.” Also, congrats guys, you just put yourself on a shit list towards Arc-Swat, AND a group of intergalactic badasses.
Im *really* disappointed we didnt get a classic sydney cursing meltdown when he hit her. Like back at the bank when the guy hit her she broke down into pure creative cursing. Ive really missed sydneys cursing in the last years of comic and this would have been a perfect moment for it to come back, especially since shes under the no-filter effect of the truth serum
Which leads to the inevitable and slightly scary conclusion that Sydney’s cursing ability is a function of her filtering and sublimating what she would really LIKE to say…
I think Sydney’s pretty tough, but also given his freak nature she just doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Refusing to cower is the only way she can deny him control.
Well, that and not giving up any intel. And stalling until the cavalry arises. And an almost fanatical… I’ll come in again.
The fact that a forewarning is Mentioned here puts me in mind of the last read gore warning a comic creator posted.
https://www.awakencomic.com/comic/ch9-page-66 *Starts handing out umbrellas.
*Splorch* “MY ARM!”
“It’s not yours anymore.”
“Is that a human arm?!”
“What a really good question! I mean, where’s the line really?”
“…did you take it off a person?”
“Oh! Yes.”
Not sure why, but Sydney’s face at the end there is giving me some DBZ vibes. Maybe just that her eyes are angrier than usual. Plus the severe battering. Christ, she is going to be a mess by the end of this series, physically speaking she IS still human and getting hit in the face as often as she does is gonna start adding up.
Between an Archon employee with literal “healing powers” and the prospect of alien medical tech handwavery, she’ll probably look fine at the end.
it is nice at least one guy is going “Do you want to be know as a cop killer!!” and that makes a good point. cop killers rarely get arrested. they get shot.
“That’s your best slap? I’ve eaten HOT SAUCE with more kick than you!”
“We’ve seen your eating habits, Scoville. We know that’s not a real insult.”
I suspect you (Dave B, as well as readers of Grrlpower) will really enjoy the Vorkosigan saga. I’ve only read, oh, half of them, but they’re pretty delightful space opera, with a fair bit of romance.
Looking forward to a future review!
…you know,
depending on how forgiving Cora, or whoever responded is feeling, perverted idiot guy may have quite literally just committed suicide-
i mean, whats this right here-
assault on an officer, attempted murder (or menacing with a deadly weapon i think), im pretty sure the drugging is another big one, definitely kidnapping and torture on Concreta,almost certainly coupled with ..god knows how many counts of sexual assault…
YAY BLOOD!