Suspension of Disbelief

POSTED BY: ritak7
UPDATED: Friday, January 20, 2006 12:03
VIEWED: 16890
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RITAK7

Wednesday, January 18, 2006 6:14 AM

Yowsers a bit sensitive, are ya?
Oh if only i could change the font to give these words the inflection i aiming for.
It was meant to be a gentle ribbing not an insult. The others who critiqued my grammar/punctuation (or more appropriately, lack there of) didn't seem to be as hostile as you yourself were. The other posters who scolded me
seemed a little more easy going while you upbraided me rather vehemently. It was as if they saw my sin as venial while you deemed it mortal. So in jest, tinged with peevishness (peevish is a word peevishness probably not), i started out with poor baby
Big words like indolent c'mon now i was being self-deprecating. I understand now that it may be difficult to get through my original post but try again and you shall see I am so about mocking myself.

CORUM

Wednesday, January 18, 2006 7:41 AM

Nice to see lots of firefly fans, but I think I have more experience at modelling a story in my head, so here goes:

Serenity is not a ship designed to ram the atmophere like our space shuttle does. Its not aerodynamic, it has huge engines that can thrust at 1g (for lift off) and it lands vertically. It could easily enter an atmosphere as slowly as it pleased.

The friction from the shuttle re-entering isn't caused simply from falling from space. Its caused by the fact that the shuttle had to accelerate to 18,000mph to enter orbit. Aside from its altitude, the heat is produced by having a 300 tonne vehicle hitting a wall of atmosphere and having to dump that 18,000mph of momentum. Someone do that math: 18000mph x 300 tonnes = a lot of energy. Thats without a change in altitude.

That energy doesn't get put into the momentum during launch; only as the atmophere thins a lot does the shuttle go sideways and speed up to 18000mph. It doesnt do that in the thick atmosphere and it doesnt leave a fiery trail or lose radio contact on the way UP.

If you need further rationale, there were lots more dead bodies available on the reaver planet, which is the only time they came down thru atmosphere before they snuck thru the reaver fleet the second time.

Now, how about the blueprints for Serenity I was looking for?

CAUSAL

Wednesday, January 18, 2006 12:47 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by ritak7:
Yowsers a bit sensitive, are ya?
Oh if only i could change the font to give these words the inflection i aiming for.
It was meant to be a gentle ribbing not an insult. The others who critiqued my grammar/punctuation (or more appropriately, lack there of) didn't seem to be as hostile as you yourself were. The other posters who scolded me
seemed a little more easy going while you upbraided me rather vehemently. It was as if they saw my sin as venial while you deemed it mortal. So in jest, tinged with peevishness (peevish is a word peevishness probably not), i started out with poor baby
Big words like indolent c'mon now i was being self-deprecating. I understand now that it may be difficult to get through my original post but try again and you shall see I am so about mocking myself.

Well, shit...

A couple of things here:

1) Seems as though I completely missed the point (wouldn't be the first time, of course). You joke+me serious=bad mix. What I saw was you saying, "I don't care if you understand me or not; keep your grammar off my language"--hence the vehemence of my original post. It looked to me like you were voicing a complete lack of regard for every person on the board. This, apparently is not the case, and as the dust settles I'm surprised to find that I'm the one with egg on my face, in spite of having spent the whole time throwing them in your direction.

2) Mea culpa. I'm sorry that my misunderstanding of your statements resulted in an ugly stink. There's precious little high ground left for me to occupy, but admitting a wrong committed usually counts. Not much more to say that won't be counted as excusing myself.

3) Peevishness--should be a word if it isn't.

4) Venial vs. mortal--wins best analogy 2006.

________________________________________________________________________
I wish I had a magical wish-granting plank.

CITIZEN

Wednesday, January 18, 2006 1:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Corum:
That energy doesn't get put into the momentum during launch; only as the atmophere thins a lot does the shuttle go sideways and speed up to 18000mph. It doesnt do that in the thick atmosphere and it doesnt leave a fiery trail or lose radio contact on the way UP.

It's also a lot to do with angle of attack. During take off the shuttle is exposing a very small profile and thus surface area to the oncoming air, during re-entry the shuttle exposes a much larger surface area in the direction of travel.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.

KENT

Friday, January 20, 2006 12:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Erm, no the compression of the Air particles causes friction in the air. The Heat comes entirely from friction, and in fact most of the heat during re-entry comes from the friction with the air hitting the craft, as at high altitudes the pressure is too low for air compression to make that much of an impact.

That is in fact one of the reasons why the temperatures experienced by a craft during re-entry are higher than those during exit, because during exit a lot of the heating happens away from the skin of the spacecraft.

Well that's strange. The way I learnt it is, that air hyper compresses into a shock layer in front of the space craft. The shock layer is so hot that it turns into a plasma (this is the "fire" you see building up around the nose of the craft on entry). The heat from the plasma is then transmitted through heat conduction processes.

(Sorry 'bout the late reply btw)

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