Thunderbirds are go.
Jun. 10th, 2018 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrI know it's cheesy, but usually the stupid isn't *too* extreme.
But I finally got around to watching Season 3, episode 8: Crash Course.
They really mangled things this time. they have a pair of ground-to orbit space frieghters collide. One is going up, the other was heading down.
First off they start arguing with each other about who is supposed to change course. Oy. Other comments make it clear that the writers are using trucks on highways (or maybe ships at sea) as a model.
Sorry folks, when you've got that level of space traffic, there *will* be Space Traffic Control (STC) to prevent exactly this sort of thing (and a whole bunch of others as well). Even more than with Air Traffic Control, you *will* use the course they assign you. We'll get to why in a bit.
Now, these ships were going in essentially opposite directions. And they had to be at something approaching orbit velocity. That's 8km/sec. So collision velocity would be more than 15 km/sec (I went low because 15 is easier to work with than 16).
Rule of thumb. A mass impacting at 3 km/sec releases the energy you'd get by detonating an equal mass of TNT. The energy release goes up as the *square* of the velocity. So at 15 km/sec, they are moving 5 times as fast, so they'll release the energy of *25* times their combined masses in TNT.
And these freighters likely mass tens if not hundreds of tons. So there won't be much left after the collision (and what will be left will be spreading all over the place at high speed creating hazards for everybody else in or near earth orbit.
BTW, *this* is why you *need* STC. A ship impacting a station or a city on the ground will make 9/11 look like a campfire.
But no, the ships are mostly intact and stuck together. And there's a hazard from their cargoes if they get mixed. Which is also a major WTF as one of them is carrying *liquid* aluminum oxide. Aside from there being no sane reason to ship it as a liquid, given that it melts at something over 1000 degrees a leak would be a major hazard regardless of what the other ship was carrying.
But I finally got around to watching Season 3, episode 8: Crash Course.
They really mangled things this time. they have a pair of ground-to orbit space frieghters collide. One is going up, the other was heading down.
First off they start arguing with each other about who is supposed to change course. Oy. Other comments make it clear that the writers are using trucks on highways (or maybe ships at sea) as a model.
Sorry folks, when you've got that level of space traffic, there *will* be Space Traffic Control (STC) to prevent exactly this sort of thing (and a whole bunch of others as well). Even more than with Air Traffic Control, you *will* use the course they assign you. We'll get to why in a bit.
Now, these ships were going in essentially opposite directions. And they had to be at something approaching orbit velocity. That's 8km/sec. So collision velocity would be more than 15 km/sec (I went low because 15 is easier to work with than 16).
Rule of thumb. A mass impacting at 3 km/sec releases the energy you'd get by detonating an equal mass of TNT. The energy release goes up as the *square* of the velocity. So at 15 km/sec, they are moving 5 times as fast, so they'll release the energy of *25* times their combined masses in TNT.
And these freighters likely mass tens if not hundreds of tons. So there won't be much left after the collision (and what will be left will be spreading all over the place at high speed creating hazards for everybody else in or near earth orbit.
BTW, *this* is why you *need* STC. A ship impacting a station or a city on the ground will make 9/11 look like a campfire.
But no, the ships are mostly intact and stuck together. And there's a hazard from their cargoes if they get mixed. Which is also a major WTF as one of them is carrying *liquid* aluminum oxide. Aside from there being no sane reason to ship it as a liquid, given that it melts at something over 1000 degrees a leak would be a major hazard regardless of what the other ship was carrying.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-11 01:16 pm (UTC)The "spacecraft/aircraft colliding while one taking is off and one landing" bit also appears in some of his other works. There was a sequence in _Fireball XL5_ with someone directing several simultaneous launches and landings to the same pad.
The puppeteers were also notoriously uncaring about continuity.
One of my "favorite" examples: There's one episode of _Thunderbirds_ which involves a covert military organization in North Africa which shoots down _Thunderbird 1_ to preserve the secret location of their base. Leaving aside the fact that if they hadn't shot nobody would have noticed them, in the scenes where some Egyptologists find the crashed _Thunderbird 1_, the model used is the smaller one, with the pilot barely fitting into the nose.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-11 05:53 pm (UTC)Alas, I missed my chance to casually inquire of David Weber if that Lt Harrington was one of Honor's ancestors. :-)
no subject
Date: 2018-06-14 01:35 pm (UTC)I have long thought that the basic setup for _Thunderbirds_ makes a lot of sense.
You have a sortie vehicle, to get there *fast* and evaluate the situation. Equipped with basic rescue equipment and a mobile command center, it can handle some problems by itself, but is primarily intended to evaluate the situation and command the rescue.
This is followed by a not-quite-as-fast heavy cargo vehicle. This chooses from several prepackaged pods, each equipped for a certain class of problem.