Grrl Power #654 – Dejectory
It’s easy to take for granted that smart people in comics (and books, tv, etc) are smart because we see them standing in front of a big board of math – usually a clear board, which looks fancy and futuristic but would probably give you a headache trying to not focus through it. >cough< But the actual smart stuff is always off screen. We never see the process because the writers aren’t as smart as, for example, Reed Richards, who invented a time machine in, like, issue 2 of the Fantastic Four. But even if the writer wants to do a bunch of research just to even have the right equation on the big board for the 0.03% of the audience that would even notice, it’s not like an averagely intelligent character like Sydney would even be able to utilize information like that. (Okay, Sydney has exhibited above average intelligence on occasion, but not “inventing a dimension hopping portal gun” intelligence)
I mean think about it, do you really know what E=MC^2 means? Sure, you know E=Energy, M=Mass, C=The Speed of Light, but without googling it, do you know what the units are? Is E joules or newtons? M=kilograms, probably? And really, if you were on an alien space ship, and you had to program your confiscated railgun with just the right amount of power to punch through the door in front of you, but too little and it ricochets back and kills you, too much and the projectile rips through the bulkhead into space or into the reactor and kills everyone – could you do it? Using E=MC^2. You can’t fire a bunch of shots till you get it right, messing it up kills you at best or everyone at worst, can you tell me you REALLY understand E=MC^2?
Anyway, that’s why I thought this page was funny, because for the briefest flash, Sydney tried to actually mathematically work out space travel in her head. Dabbler would be all “Yo I got this.” but have you guys seen Hidden Figures? NASA had buildings full of really fucking smart people and it took them months to figure that shit out. (And a computer that could do over a thousand computations per second, watch out!) Sure, they were concerned about fuel and oxygen and angles of launch and reentry, and Sydney doesn’t have to worry about any of that. But STILL.
BTW, I know Sydney says it took the Apollo missions took three days to get to the moon, comments on the previous page mostly said four. The point is, Sydney doesn’t have access to the internet and she’s mentally breaking down already.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
As per my analysis that the orbs are for helping astronauts. But they cannot take them at space ship velocities. They are for survival on alien worlds not space travel.
She is wasting her time. What she needs is to contact her base. And the sooner they can locate her the better chance they might retrieve her. Sydney is in real deep shit now.
I think Halo is unlikely to find her cell-phone has reception.
*wags tail cheekily*
Preserving her pip-boy’s limited power would be a good idea though. It ran out in less than a day. It was not designed as a long-term survival tool. Rather it assumes a normal policing environment, or a well-supplied military situation, where recharging options are readily available.
So unless Anvil had hidden a solar power unit, behind the gadgets she displayed, for Sydney to pick, she should turn the device off now. Then only turn it on for a brief scan, on Archon’s usual channels, periodically. Say one minute every hour for the first three days. Then cutting that down.
This assuming that she is indeed stuck on this planet. Whereas if Halo is able to unlock a warp drive, or interstellar teleport, I think her next priority would be trying to figure out which of those twinkling little lights, up in the sky, has Earth orbiting it.
OK she does not know that it may not be her Earth, or time period. But Sydney can only act according to the information available to her.
No Pipboy in panel 5. Does it fold? Is it in her beltbags?
Halo always has it on duty. If it is not visible, artistic licence allows that it is under her sleeve.
*wags tail definitively*
She needs to add a battery backup to her belt (once she’s in a position to do so). Inexpensive, easy to use, compact (depending on model), & highly useful for long-deployment missions (as long as you remember to charge them after use).
I believe she’d be better off going a little more old school and picking a hand-crank 5 volt generator with USB ports. Sure, it takes forever to get a full charge, but until the mechanism breaks down (and it will) it’s more likely to work in unusual environments (like under a star that probably doesn’t have the same radiation profile as Sol – Earth’s Star/Sun). Plus it’ll work in caves, underwater (provided it’s properly sealed..l like with her forcefield), at night and in other situations/environments on Earth without needing a recharge itself.
Actually, she’d want the spring wound generator, with the toughest spring she could get. She can always wind it with the lighthook.
Ooh, nice elaborations throughout the thread. Each improving on the last.
To reduce the risk of mechanical breakdown, Sydney could even exploit the energy of the PPO. Once she has practised enough to have fine control, that is. The old school option being a portable steam engine, connected to a turbine. Those are mature technologies where very reliable options are available.
Heavy though. But can get very teeny engines. And Sydney does not need a firebox (just a suitably conductive target to aim at). So a pip boy recharger might fit easily in a pouch.
She can get a free recharge with what she has now. All she needs to do is carry a half dozen or so small but strong magnets, a spool of wire, and a roll of tape in her belt. Then when she needs to charge her devices she tapes a magnet to each orb and wraps a coil of wire around her head. When the orbs, well, orbit her head they function as a generator to charge her stuff. (the final version of the coil may include a headband with a USB port for ease of use.)
Ooh clever!
What happens if that makes them tired, and want to nap early though?
*wags tail sleepily*
*yawns*
heheh. if she had a plain crank generator and a usb pack. you could put say 2 orbs on one side and and two on the other and wind that way (each pair of orbs going in opposite rotation directions.
what it they don’t like playing mule?
Syd: “c’mer you little brat orb I need a bit of winding done. *whiz out of reach* “
Its not like Dabbler forgot to put on a tracking spell on her teammates before entering a portal to the unknown before they left?
They know where she is, they just have this pesky problem of getting to where she is
They know she’s on the Alari homeworld, but they’ve never said they know where the Alari homeworld is. Remember, they got their through an unstable portal they didn’t make that is now gone.
Sure Dabbler knows a lot, but that doesn’t mean she knows the coordinates of every world out there, or even has a database somewhere with that info. It’s kind of like knowing your friend is in Mumbai, but you don’t know the latitude and longitude and you don’t have internet access right now. Maybe you have a really good world map on hand, but then again maybe not. Besides, the non-military available data might not included the coordinates of places they really don’t want people going to.
Yeah, that was covered by “pesky problem of getting to where she is”
I am finding the last few pages interesting because you normally don’t use physics in everyday life. (bank level math is Boooorrriiinnng)
The comedic is great too :P)
Hmm. I thought she was savvy (and geeky) enough to know that continuous acceleration is much faster than short, fast acceleration for outerspace travel. I’d be surprised if it took her more than six hours to rocket past that moon.
But we don’t know if the orbs can do that. They are a magical macguffin whose powers are only loosely known. Maybe they don’t increase acceleration. Maybe they’re like a speed limiter in the fact that they can only go as fast they can go without leveling up, period. Like, if something were to try and take them past their speed limit, they might start forcibly slowing down back to their current top speed.
Then their speed limit should kick in all the time since everything on Earth is traveling around 70,000 miles per hour around the Sun. Relativity is really annoying.
A speed limiter relative to what, exactly? There’s no such thing as ‘real speed’, it’s always relative to some external reference frame. What happens when she’s nowhere near any other objects to gauge her speed by?
You know, I had originally thought that her speed was fixed once she tops out at mach 4, and it’ll definitely stay that way in the atmosphere, (unless she buys a speed upgrade, obviously) but in space… maybe it makes sense that she can accelerate indefinitely.
Now that I think about it in those terms, I wish I had defined her speed as limited by gravities of acceleration. Evidently 1G of acceleration can get you places really fast.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/840/how-fast-will-1g-get-you-there
Assuming the guy at this link is correct:
Now, since Sydney has 4 dots in her flight speed tree filled in, I’d have made it so she could accelerate at 16 gravities, which would make her really god damned fast. Even if she was limited to a top speed in the atmosphere, she’d be able to reach that top speed in no time at all.
I understand that 1 G is pretty fast by the standards of interplanetary flight. Because conventional space flight uses propulsion that is limited by reaction mass and or power. Both of which you have more of on a heavier spacecraft, but a heavier spacecraft also needs more force for the same acceleration. So Sydney should be pretty broken by the standards of interplanetary flight. Except for needing three hands to hold the flight, shield, and atmosphere orbs.
The only orb she needs to constantly hold is the shield one, she could switch off between the atmosphere and the flight one. As it has been proven already that her shield is air tight, and that while the air inside will eventually go stale it does take a bit to do so. Also since she’s in outer space so she’s really only using the orb to accelerate not to keep from falling. she could stop actively accelerating for a few mins to refresh the air inside the bubble, and then once that’s done go back to doing that. true it would be a lot easier and probably more comfortable if she could keep hold of all three balls but she really only needs to hold two at a time and just juggle between the 2nd and the 3rd one.
I mean, there’s no reason you can’t do it that way now, and have it be realized to be an in-universe error with how they were measuring her speed, given that they were doing it relative to earth’s speed and gravity, which with Sydney’s understanding of zero-G space travel could cause her to not realize that it would operate differently in space. So on earth her top speed is mach-4, but in space her top speed should actually be measured in G’s, so it would be however many G’s math says mach-4 in Earth’s atmostphere would work out to. I mean you’ve had your characters be wrong about things before, just retroactively make this another example.
Dave, The correct way to do the speed orb in zero g / zero atmosphere is based on THRUST output, not G’s of acceleration. Her limit in atmosphere of Mach 4 will translate to a specific amount of thrust based on the aerodynamic drag of her body and shield at that speed. This thrust is the orbs top limit. If her limit was 1 G of acceleration than she should have been able to do that all the time which would make her top speed effectively limitless instead of mach 4. Once she got to mach 4 she could just continue accelerating at 1 g till she hits mach 5 and so on. Acceleration and top speed in atmosphere are both products of thrust (force) relative to the mass of the accelerating object and the aerodynamic drag.
Whether you do acceleration or top speed as the limit on the orbs performance you will always hit an inconsistency based on physics. If her limit was 1 G of acceleration, then why did she top out at mach 4 instead of continuing her acceleration? If her top speed is mach 4, then thats pretty silly in a situation outside of a planet where you cant really measure speed at all without a reference point. You have to measure speed RELATIVE to something else.
In real life speed on a planet is always a function on how much thrust you have vs how much drag. That goes for all things; cars, planes, everything. Thats the only consistent way to do it. If the limit is thrust then you can translate that to space travel quite simply.
If not, it might be that the orbs give her some form of inertialess acceleration. That is, maybe she’s not accelerating, maybe she’s just rapidly teleporting microscopic distances? It’s also possible that her flight powers work differently in space, telekinetically taking advantage of air to function as a jet engine in-atmosphere for greater efficiency, and in space thrusting until its internal batteries run out and then having to wait a bit until whatever powers them is able to recharge the energy storage.
If she’s able to thrust indefinitely, it does open up the possibility of one day aiding space programs in placing probes, materiel or even pieces of larger habitats on the moon or potentially even mars, though it’s possible that teleporters or portal-creators already fill this niche role much better.
So Sydney released the Flyball.
Will she start falling and freak out?
Start falling as she planned and just feel a bit uncomfortable because she’s falling?
Find herself not falling unexpectedly and freak out due to zero-gravity?
Should be good to see. Just don’t let go of the shield orb.
Orbiting is basically yous’t falling and missing the earth so you shoot past it on the other side and then falling again, also one should ask how far up she is, the further away you get from the center of gravity the less pull it has on you, thus the slower you will fall without something accelerating you towards the center of gravity, i don’t know how much the pull decreases, but it is not impossible that she is far enough that she have time to let go of the fly orb, resupply air and then grab fly orb again before having fallen any significant distance.
Orbiting is falling SIDEWAYS so fast you miss the Earth. Sydney is going straight up at a constant velocity, so right now she is more like a space elevator. Letting go will put her in ballistic free fall. Gravity will eventually eat up her momentum and start her back downward, but at 3000+ mph upward she has some time to spare. 3000 mph = 1341 m/s. Divided by 9.8 m/s = 137 seconds.
How would an adventurer turn liabilities into assets?
Simple.
You kill them.
And take their stuff.
You sir, are my hero.
Less simple, but possibly the better option, is to try and establish a dialogue with the enemy. If you can manage to turn an enemy into a friend you successfully eliminate an enemy while gaining a friend. Of course Sydney might need to go all Tasmanian Devil on them before they are willing to talk.
As someone who has done orbital trajectories before (and I’m not talking about Kerbal either, though it is amazing accurate) Straight line paths are lousy for getting around a planetary system. lots of wasted energy. Plus you have to aim for where something is going to be, not where it is right now. But she is right, there is no way with her current set up that she can get anywhere else other than the planet she is a fraction of a hairs width above (figuratively speaking). Options: Well there is a nice spaceship right there, full of who knows how many aliens with any number of unknown powers, weapons and BBQ recipes. So certain eventual oblivion in space or fight an unknown foe with unknown powers. Hope she has an energy drink in that belt, going to need it.
any number of unknown powers, weapons and BBQ recipes.
Is that last one labeled ‘To Serve Man’ ?
could you imagine if arianna got them an energy drink sponsor tho
Apocalypse cola seems the brand to try.
Harem would be the spokesperson, of course. And much hilarity would ensue.
Kei and Yuri would be the ‘booth babes’ of course!
Since it doesn’t appear to be here yet, escape velocity is actually a very simple formula: v=(2*G*M/R)^1/2.
G is the gravitational constant (6.7e-11), M is the mass of the planet (in kg), and R is your starting height, from the center of the planet. No pi is needed.
For Earth, v=(2 * 6.7e-11 * 6e24 / 6.7e6) ^ 1/2 = (1.2e8) ^ 1/2 = 11 km/s
Note that this equation is for unpowered flight, and doesn’t account for an atmosphere. It is a simple energy balance.
Out of curiosity, what does 6.7e-11 mean? I’m assuming it doesn’t mean -4.3e. That’s a s joke, see, cause I subtracted 11 from 6.7.
Seriously though, what does the “e” mean?
It´s the scientific way of shortening exponents:
6.7e-11 equals 6.7 * 10^-11 = 0.000000000067
Oh, I think I actually knew that. Man it’s been a long time since I took a math or science class. :/
Me too, getting out the WD-40 for brains to ease off some of the rust. Kinda fun also to learn some of the new discoveries as well
I thought Sydney looked really good in panel 5, like she is ready to take charge and then panel 7 pops up, yes Sydney grinding sucks.
there’s taking charge and then there’s spending several hours backtracking through a spaceship with color coded doors and inconveniently placed keys
also its like game theory or matpat or who ever when explaining science behind powers goes into the math sped up and then BREATH. XD aka air refresh orb
I’m with her
Let’s hope she can get the mystery orb to do something useful.
It’s either that or hope the comm orb can somehow get her hologram to Earth really fast so she can do a teleport.
Gotta love the grinding face, even when we feel sympathy for what is coming….
The important part is Sydney going to be grinding “mastery” as in exploring and learning all the skills each orb can do – or going to try to “level” specific orbs to get more skill tree points by attacking alot
Spot on.
Sydney has done this before, in the months before she joined Archon. However she had to do it in secret. Flying around her bedroom limited her ability to find out if she had hyperflight.
And her ‘incident’, in the forest (where she invoked the wrath of her arch-nemesis), put paid to research on the PPO and any other potentially dangerous stuff.
Here, at least, Halo will not risk burning down a forest.
Other dangers mind. But this is a situation where the risks of doing nothing are greater than those from testing.
Okay, but you wouldn’t use E=MC^2 for the rail gun. That’s an equation for conversion of matter to energy. You’d use KE=1/2 MV^2, no? And you’d need to know the properties of the door: how thick it is, what it’s made of, and so forth. That would stymie most of us mainly because we don’t carry around data on the properties of materials in our heads. We’d need to look it up somewhere.
So, here’s the thing: Sydney’s orb provides some sort of motive force. She hits mach 4 in atmosphere – which means that’s the point at which the energy lost to friction as her shield moves through the air is equal to the energy being provided by whatever it is the orb is doing. In space, there is no friction, ergo she can keep accelerating – although she probably wouldn’t notice the effect until she was going pretty fast since her only clue would be how quickly that planet receded and how quickly that moon’s apparent diameter expanded. She’s clearly putting out enough thrust to lift vertically against that world’s gravity (though not enough to cause any apparent discomfort) and the farther out she goes, the less significant that world’s gravity becomes. At a guess, she could probably manage the Earth-Moon trip in under 4 hours, though figuring out when to turn around and start decelerating would be a nightmare. Her real problem is that at some point she’s going to get sleepy, and it would be a very bad thing to doze off and lose your grip on your shield while in vacuum.
Kinetics are annoyingly complex to calculate in a predictive fashion, but with the door scenario you probably only have to hit a target E(kin) with a couple orders of magnitude leeway. And humans can gauge the properties of material trhrough accoustic tests (knocking on it), and heat-conductive tests (putting your hand on it), which will inform rigidity and density/specific heat capacity. F:om which a metal or metal type can be inferred. It is unlikely that a guess be accurate, but with several orders of magnitude to spare that’s ok. Something like a .50BMG has several orders of magnitude of E(kin) on a regular .22.
Thank you – the E=MC^2 bit was bugging me.
Essentially, E=mc² is a consequence of the kinetic energy equation and the Lorentz transforms that are the basis of special relativity (which are themselves intimately linked to the speed of light in a vacuum being a universal constant). Of course, the kinetic energy equation is also just really a simplification of the integration of momentum with respect to time…
Even in “The Martian”, Whatley has to ‘science the s**t out of his issues’ — but he still had a computer and some decent science skills. Sydney has tabletop gaming skills… which are a waaaay different level of math.
Even so, as a geeky nerd (or nerdy geek) she should be able to make the basic logic — as she did in this page — me can go fast. bullets go as fast if not faster. spaceships go even faster. I am not a spaceship.
First Google result for “I am not a spaceship”: I am a space ship.
I find it interesting what kind of fandom this comic has accrued, when you realize there have been 4 pages of comments about the mathmatics of using magical balls to fly to a moon..
and no one has commented on how Sydney has misremembered her Star Trek Trivia..
Kruge was the Klingon commander of the renegade Bird of Prey in Star Trek Three, which had no relation to Voyager nor any other space probe.
in Star Trek The Motion Picture, Voyager (as V’ger) was attacked by the IKS Amar, who’s captain was not named (and was played by Mark Lenard, better known for his role as Sarek).
but she might also be remembering how Pioneer 10 (which looks rather like a Voyager probe, and many fans confused them) was destroyed in the opening of Star Trek V by a bird of prey captained (and gunner’d) by Klaa, played by Todd Bryant
I was just about to comment on this, but then did a search to see if anyone else had.
Yup.
The obvious explanation is that Sydney, being a Star Trek fan, has deliberately expunged the existence of Star Trek V from her personal canon and subconsciously ported the cool portions of that film so that she remembers them as having come up elsewhere. So Klaa destroying the probe was actually Kluge, Plan Barricade might have been part of Undiscovered Country, and asking what God needs with a starship was probably one of the original series episodes.
(I can’t be considered a true Star Trek fan, since I’ve been grudgingly admitting ever since 2002 that Star Trek V is an acceptable, if poor, Star Trek film.)
Lol
Hmmm, I like where her thoughts are going, Get IN the squiddie ship where they cant possibly do that apocalypse bang without losing THEIR ride home… >:D …Hopefully from there its a matter of negotiation or “Kill em with pew-pew ball and gink their gear”.
I feel really really dumb.
When did that green orb get identified? Can someone link me to the page where this happened?
It was back in the pool when Sydney lost her scuba mask and had her near death experience. Well, with Maxima there it was more death-adjacent actually.
Sydey is a certified diver, as such she is rated for solo dives. She was not panicked nor having a near death experience. This is abundantly evident in her reaction to the air orb to wit ; ” Well… that’s F____ing handy.”
Notice she is not climbing all over her ” rescuer” nor wildly screaming” THANKS FOR SAVING MY LIFE !”
We divers are trained not to panic. Loss of your regulator is part of that training. ( in defence of Ms. Scoville’s honour.)
+1
I apologize to Miss Scoville and any other comic book characters I may have insulted. My post was an exaggeration for comedic effect and not an effort to malign any diver instructors, real or imaginary. My father was a certified scuba diver and taught lifesaving classes for many years.
Honestly if I was Sydney, Id be more worried about survival at that point, water and food. Not going to get it in space unless her orbs can magic her up a hamburger or something… flying slowly (in perspective) to the moon isnt gonna do it for her. Even if she gets there then what? Best bet is either waiting on planet and hiding or trying to take over a ship
I think her time is even more limited before she’s laid up for a few days with caffeine withdrawal. Her daily intake makes me look like an amateur and frightened the doc doing her physical.
Link to green orb function party found then some shenanigans ensue
ref #541
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2560
well since you are writing a geek comic and many of us that read it are… geeks and many of us have specialties in various fields you might just ask; as a writer whose expertise is in art and writing. i dont think any of us expect you to be well found in our fields. and i’ll lay odds that while there is a little cross over in several fields there isnt very much at all. engineers and physicists always try and talk about my field; combustion science and always get it wrong. I mean every time. its because those two use averages for equations that i cant afford to average. i would do the same if i tried to work in their fields; its the nature of the beast. so while i know what units e=mc2 uses and i can work the problem i still would have to have it checked by a pro. as for the rail gun idea you dont use energy conversions to render ballistics answers. (just sayin).
however her problem isnt one of higher math and nor was NASA’s it is one of great circle navigation’s and its about as complex as baby talk orbits are curved they can be taken as circles (ovals) the only real difference is that her target is moving which is not a biggy since its hard to miss a moon and she isnt trying to hit the whistle at helo bay from Newfoundland . she just needs to get in front of it she knows her speed and acceleration and she has a good idea of how fast a moon travels (given its shadow on the planet would be able to give her this information, its just simple vector math from that point on easy to do in your head or on her phone. but its even simpler than that who cares if it takes her three days she is going to be able to correct her course on the way as near to the planet as she is she just needs to fly opposite the moon path as long as it isnt catching her up she wont have any problems at all.
and no i am not going to give the general public a tutorial on great circle navigation there are a whole bunch of them on the net and they are all better than mine would be; i learn as a child so i dont have some of the mechanics that folks need as adults.
I know how to work out Hohmann or constant-acceleration transfer orbits. I’ve written my own programs for planning maneuvers in Kerbal Space Program. I’ve got no clue how to get Halo into lunar orbit.
You see, the flight orb isn’t an impulse drive like the chemical rockets most spacecraft use. It’s not a constant-acceleration drive like an ion thruster. It’s a constant-velocity drive. Nobody’s ever used one of those for spaceflight before.
the physics do not make sense to me.
should she not be able to just keep accelerating (and without fuel issues) she should be able to reach anywhere in space fairly fast (as long as she can aim properly and time when to start flying the other direction)
if her speed is a fixed speed it doesent make sense to me.. in relation to what??. if she can only fly so fast regardless of where she is.. its weird…
like if she is flying max speed. then stops flying forward (as in stop flying – but still keep the momentum). does she not continue at her speed she was at? or will she immediately stop.
the way my mind can figure it out she should be able to fly super fast in space just keep accelerating over and over. till the point she could go light speed if she had enough food/drink/space for waste to keep herself going
“Constant velocity”? What does that even mean? They clearly don’t only work in one direction so they change velocity all the time even at top speed.
Then of course there’s the fact that there is so privileged reference frame for velocity, just as there isn’t one for speed.
I have a feeling their scan and reaction was very much their version of SCP procedure: [ALIEN LIFE-FORM POSSESSING KETER CLASS ARTIFACTS DETECTED. UNABLE TO FURTHER CATALOGUE. CONTAINMENT UNFEASIBLE. PROCEEDING WITH NEUTRALIZATION PROTOCOLS.]
Dammit, I hate this comment system, it detached my reply from the comment I was replying to and I can’t edit or delete it.
Ugh dammit I hate this comment system. You can’t edit or delete a comment if the planets do not align during the solstice and you reply gets detached from the comment you were replying to.
This is hilarious to me, because as a teen boy an Uncle (more of a big brother, he was only 11 years older than I and not even my youngest Uncle) and I went through this exact same exercise. We very rapidly ran up against the “what are the units?” limitation, and this was a decade and more before the internet and smartphones existed so we couldn’t just whip out a phone and pull the information down in about 5 minutes flat like anyone could do today. We winged it using what we figured were the best units, like we knew that metrics were probably used over English for mass, etc. But in the end we still figured that we were probably so far off that it just didn’t matter. Because any unit change will severely impact the result.
The units are:
E = joules
M = kilograms.
C is defined as a number of meters per second.
You can use any units so long as they’re a consistent set that natively converts between themselves, or you know the conversions.
You could use pounds, feet per second and tons-of-TNT if you wanted.
This is simply not correct. Had we used grams instead of kilograms, for example, our result would have been off by 1000.
…Because you made a mistake converting the units to the correct ratio, yes.
Yeah, that was kind of the entire point of my OP. Do you fail to read, or fail to understand?
Now is when we find out the final orb is a universal translator
I put my money on a science teacher A.I. hologram. It could be named Seagal; Steven Seagal.
Ah yes. Steven Seagal. Known throughout the universe for his vast scientific knowledge.
And necksnapping
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bTi0A3BF0i4#
Well, a certain martial artist goes by the name of Maths.
The fourth Newton´s law states that a compensation is needed to reach a point of equilibrium.
Nice potrayal of mighty Seagal.
All I wanna do is walk the stupid path of peace, but you’re forcing me to walk the path of pieces!
*rips off person’s arm*
Actually I do this kind of math – and understand it. I even understand where E=MC^2 comes from.
This is some of my recent work:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1gbbnvrqol1vp16/Equation.docx?dl=0
This is me extending Einstein’s formula for linear acceleration to linear displacement – hopefully. I’m going through peer review right now.
Very impressive, except for the “I even understand where E=MC^2 comes from”, since the basic principle is taught in high school physics classes
They teach the principle behind the equation – not how it was derived – which is what I specifically meant. In the English language the idiom “comes from” refers to origins.
Well, for spaceships, how aerodynamic it is is largely irrelevant, once it’s actually in space. The Borg Cube is the most efficient design; thrust from any angle, and a near-total vacuum means that air resistance isn’t a factor.
Why are we assuming it’s a constant velocity drive? That it has a top speed in air does not necessarily mean it has a top speed in vacuum. Her remark may simply indicate her lack of experience with flight in vacuum.
We are assuming it because until we learn otherwise it’s best to assume that the user knows better than we do about how their equipment works. If the mach 4 limitation is only due to air resistance, then Sydney should be able to continue accelerating once free of the atmosphere. But that’s not how she phrased it. This is her first time out of an atmosphere, so she could easily be wrong. But until she is proven wrong I’ll stick with her take on things.
What amuses me is that the escape velocity of this planet is apparently exactly that of Earth. It’s like how in Star Trek or Star Wars they are never on a planet with 83% gravity or 137% gravity.
It’s too important not to link these chapters, so I have to in order to make my case.
Maxima says Sydney leveled up, some time passes (with no orb in use), then her Sphere Grid gives her a point: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1092
Sydney believes she leveled up, with witnesses who don’t argue it, some time passes (with no orb in use), then she gets another point: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2430
If I’m right, Sydney can’t level up. Someone else needs to say it, or at least agree to it. Possibly also each person can only level her once, and there can’t be any sub/conscious disbelief in the validity.
Interesting angle. And plausible in principle. Especially when lining up the orbs next to regular super powers. Presently they are distinctly different things. Just like Krona is in a separate category to every other supernatural.
Yet supers have an ‘idealised’ physical form. The air quotes indicating that they are the ideals for the (big) proportion of the world affected by Western priorities (for the ones who we have seen to date, anyhow).
So (somehow) superpowers have a correlation to perceptions, and opinions, of society.
Perhaps the orb makers understand this fundamental aspect of super powers, and created the orbs to harness it? Where the rest of humanity, and the supernatural, do not understand super powers, the orb creators know exactly what it is that causes one person to have super powers and another not. And have managed to capture that in the form of orbs.
Essentially each would represent what might have been channelled into some random adolescent teenager. But the orbs soaked up the ‘super ether’ and coalesced it into orb form, rather than it altering a person.
And upgrades harness individual and public opinion to further improve each.
Oh, crap. Wait.
Doesn’t that mean the final orb’s actual power is the Cloaking field? It’s a Whovian Perception Filter! It was active in the ballroom, but its active and passive state are the same (no they aren’t but youuuuu don’t knowww that! Nya nya nya!) Whatever it was doing while ‘active’ was…
– it wasn’t active it just said it was and you’re dumb
– something something something dark side
– Kronachrome saw through it (go A-Team!)
– the entire Grid is unlocked but the glowy things are used to ‘unlock’ powers is just so you believe in yourself; it would be too overwhelming to give you all of it at once. The Cloak Orb controls this.
… I still want it to be a Room Ball though.
room ball . How about a master control room. the Orb is just the “doorknob/and short cut to the gutz” one? – eg control room {master}, {engines}, {shield system} … 5 others…{workshop},{bedroom} {loo >;) }
I kinda suspect the cloaking/disguise one might be on the shield ball
I tried setting up a Facebook account. In order to validate the account, and log in, it wanted a mobile phone number. I gave it one. It said “this is not a valid number” (which is incorrect, it works). There was a button on the login page though, allowing you to report any problems. So I clicked on that …
… only to be taken to the login screen, with a message something like “you must login, in order to report your problem”. Taking me back to the screen demanding my mobile number, and lying to me.
F*** Facebook!
Verily, the bag of faces (oops book) bears the weight of its logic in a hitherto unknown space. Or something.
I just used my email. Plus maybe your phone didn’t work because of parenthesis or lack of them? Addition or lack of out-of-USA calling number (like dial 9 before the number)? *shrug*
But I’m glad you saw what I do. But that’s also probably bad if we agree with each other- it’ll weaken Halo. Hopefully Dave disagrees with us or sees me noticing correctly and changes it so I become wrong.
I should continue to set up the business Facebook account. But that will have to wait, until I get to the UK. I will get a UK sim then, so hopefully it will sort that out by itself.
For info though, I did go down the route of picking email. Which it accepted and sent a ‘please verify’ email, as you would expect. Following that though took me to the ‘you must enter your mobile number, scum!’ screen.
It auto-detected my IP address, so actually had the correct intentional dialling code prefix selected.
You’re not missing anything other than the opportunity to have your privacy invaded and your PII sold to the highest bidder.
I would have died by now if I didn’t have Facebook. I won’t go into it here.
I cannot believe that there is nothing in this world which could have saved your life in the same manner or better than Facebook. And gotten the job done without invading your privacy at that.
Unless she wants to dance with squidward (who does fire slowly), not many options left short of assuming the fetal position and waiting for help.
Options:
– Use the true sight orb to scan the planet for anything useful.
– Try out the mystery orb… maybe it’ll do something?
– Sneak on board or telepresence on board the mystery ship and hope it isn’t a deathtrap… maybe she can use it to get home?
– Land on the opposite side of the planet and hope she finds some alien Twinkies or a shelter that survived and wait for rescue.
– Attempt communication… “your enemy is my enemy, so lets be friends”
You omitted “Attack using the PPO.” It might not be the wisest option, but it is an option.
Question. Do we know whether Sydney’s pouches contain emergency rations of food and drink and, if so, what are their ratios of useful calories and nutrients to capsaicin and allyl isothiocyanate?
I think this might be my favorite page yet (the one where she said “kicked him in the spunk factory” is a close second). Seriously, really nice work.
Why do I get the feeling that when they finally get another portal open, they are going to return to discover that not only has Sydney conquered the planet, she is well on her way to conquering that portion of the galaxy.
*chuckles out loud*
People have been asking what the last orb does for a while now. We may have a clue based on what Marvel has been doing in their movies. https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/1*DxfZPqf6lGvrGXZ1PIsyHw.png
Since she has seven orbs, the last one transforms into a gauntlet that the others fit into. Then Sydney can do just about anything she darn well pleases.
Lessee. If the travel time is significant, she won’t be taking a straight line. If she points at the moon, the moon will shift as she is pointing, and she will turn to follow it. Perhaps the diagram is in some coordinate system that takes this into account?
For a lot of equations, you have a lot of choices about what units to plug in. Just gotta include the right conversion factors so that they play nice together. And everyone memorizes the conversion factors, right?
MC^2 is for conversion between matter and energy. If you aren’t doing mass energy conversion, it may not matter at all.
Kinetic energy is half mass times the square of velocity.
Adjusting a railgun made by an entirely alien tech base might be doable. Given enough time, a really skilled electrical engineer might be able to reverse engineer the control circuits. Reprogramming? Software might be pretty difficult to reverse engineer. Let’s pretend it is just hard wired circuits.
But the problem of the projectile going through just one width of door is more complex than that. You can break it down into internal ballistics, flight ballistics, and terminal ballistics, and make the argument that you would need experimental evidence in each case. Internal: for a given profile of power through the rail gun, how much drives the projectile forward, and how much the gun backwards? Flight: Is it through atmosphere? You know we don’t have a general solution for Navier-Stokes? So there might be problems if our plucky omnidisciplinary engineer hasn’t just happened to have memorized a table of values for a fairly similar projectile worked out by humans on Earth. And have done the work to know the properties of ship atmosphere. Third is terminal ballistics. Hardness, density, shape, size and speed of the projectile, versus hardness, strength, density, thickness and construction of the door.
For some problems, there isn’t a formula, or isn’t a known formula.
Occurs to me that you could take an angle to the door so the ricochet goes somewhere you don’t mind it going, then step upward in power a bit at a time from there. Might also solve the problem of penetrating to hit a reactor on the other side of the door since the projectile will penetrate at an angle.
I finally got around to making a Interactive Halo Skilltree (I’m the guy who made the “clean” versions of the skill tree way back when)
The skill tree is easily updateable so I can update it much faster. (I also lost my old PDN file of the old skill tree.)
There are still some issues related to it since I still have some missing data. If you find something, please reply here. (I subscribed to this thread)
Awesome! Thanks for all the hard work.
I have often linked to your previous version, that proved to be invaluable.
Is there any chance someone might be able to link it on the GrrlPower wiki please? Sadly I’m going to be tied up trying to prepare world-wide press releases.
There’s a wiki?
I’m fine with it being linked to, I am constantly trying to update it. (I have done something like 25 updates in the past hour.)
I may end up moving it to a git-lab website instance to make it easier for others to edit or create their own versions… If it get’s popular enough I probably will set up a instance. I just wanted to get it set up as fast as possible.
@DaveB: Nodes CO.D.5 and MB.C.3 were shown with greyed out connections going to them but they themselves were not greyed. This is really bugging me since I’m not sure if it was intentional or not… Any chance of Word Of God resolution of the question?
Any chance of Krona’s expanded version!?!
(Joking – Pretty sure Dave just mashed buttons until it looked complicated)
No, but only because my computer is not fast enough to run VR applications. (and I don’t have a VR rig. But if people want to give me one my birth day is coming up next month…)
If I had that I would make a 3d model of it in VR useing source images… not that it would tell us anything but it would be cool.
I may end up adding a timeline with events and periods so it is easier to navigate the comic.
Yup, here is the link, for anyone who wants to pop it in their browser:
https://grrl-power.wikia.com/wiki/Grrl_Power_Wiki
Currently it is pretty much just the cast page though:
https://grrl-power.wikia.com/wiki/Cast
It would be nice to get another page going though, and “Halo’s orbs” seems like a topic which deserves such.
I don’t know if this could be added to the wiki since it would require custom HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Feel free to link to it and if the nodes get their own wiki pages tell me so I can back link from my map.
I finally got around to making the map look not shit. (I replicated this sites style)
I am considering adding a time line also since it’s in the same javascript framework. It would be a different page with major milestones and when they happen (also showing periods such as “The Steak House Brawl”) With links for the items back to the page they took place in.
Also https://jcc10.gitlab.io/GrrlPowerSkilltree/ is now fully functional.
Just a update – the Deep code – Krona
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2447
This is really cool. I will check it out when I get a chance.
Escape Velocity is not 9.8m/s^2 That’s gravitational acceleration. Just for reference a ballistic missile on a suborbital trajectory is moving at something stupid fast like Mach 20. Space Vehicles move faster. You Will Not Get To The Moon Today.
Quest: Mega-Nega Squidward Tentacles (0/30)
You know, weird super non-aerodynamic ship might decide to give chase. It might be wiser to go halfway around the planet and then take cover rather than trying interplanetary flight and risking being caught in open space by a ship of unknown potential. Of course, she does have her own cannon if it comes to that, but if these folk are here to wipe out the evil blood-magic-using scourge and simply assumed she was a local threat, then engaging in combat might have undesirable long-term consequences even if she wins.
Well my bet would be access to the subspace pocket where the mini-orbs are attached/etc to its core.
Also the Loo, facilities, bedroom etc. … ‘Hobby collection aka (the secret stack of Dabbler pics)’
Hey it’s what I would try to add to that set of skills when doing work 20 lightyears from home
Ah, the tyranny of the rocket equation. Not enough KSP for Sydney, obviously. Or, at least, not enough time on Scott Manley’s youtube channel.