Earlier in the week Andy B asked 'What Would You Do?' when faced with the crisis scenario posed in Lion Eagle comic. The comic's published 'answer' appears above. Amidst many excellently funny suggestions, reader Richard [Bensam] aka RAB posted any early solution which was simply spot on! [see below]:
Wait, I know! First, you orient the ship so your main cargo bay is facing at a 90 degree angle (i.e. perpendicular) to the direction of forward momentum. Your attitude jets are on a separate power supply from your atomic engines, I hope, or else you can do this by rotating the internal gyro. Seal off your cargo bay from the rest of the ship. Then open the cargo bay hatch to expel the air, providing thrust at a right angle from your previous course. This shoves you on a slight diagonal, veering away from the projected point of collision. You miss impact very narrowly. The crew says "Hurray, we're saved!" and everyone wants to have a beer with you. What do you mean, wrong?
I know who I want on the SWORD crew! Well done Richard, you are hereby promoted to SWORD Captain!
Woo hoo ... well done, Richard. (Stands to attention) Captain Richard, Sir, I mean!
ReplyDelete(asks in a whispered aside: so how much did you guys collect on the insurance for that meteorite scam?)
Good answer! ... Just a shame there was an even larger meteorite 20 seconds behind the first, and the push from the oxygen put you right in its path. LOL
So I now have to show my utter ignorance of physics (well, I am an Aries) ...
ReplyDeleteWould this really work? Would the expelled oxygen from a large spaceship move it? And would it do so fast enough to save them?
Wow. I really had no idea that would actually turn out to be the right answer! I'm stunned! I have to assume the author of the quiz was well versed in the same Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein stories I was thinking of when I wrote my entry. I didn't have a specific story in mind, but I was definitely thinking "What would one of their characters say at a moment like that?" I owe my victory to the school libraries of the Central Grade School and Snyder Elementary, where I ransacked the SF paperbacks instead of working on my assignments…it all paid off in the end!
ReplyDelete(Honestly, I thought for sure one of philotoadia's entries would be the right one. At least there's no need to find a whole crew for the ship: my erstwhile competitor is clearly an entire starship crew all in one…)
As to whether or not it would really work in practice…there are too many unknown variables in the problem to say one way or the other. For instance, how big is the huge meteorite, what's the mass of the ship, all that stuff. Not that I'd have the slightest clue how to calculate it if we knew those things! But theoretically, there should be circumstances under which it would work. And remember, you only have to move your ship just enough to narrowly miss the collision -- you could miss it by only one inch and that would still be enough. You wouldn't even have to change your direction; just slowing down enough that the meteorite reaches the collision point and keeps going before you get there is good too.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the explanation, Richard! I think it's failure of imagination on my part. I know, as words, the Newton law, "For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction". But my earthbound monkey-brain (which clearly evolved for shopping), just can't make that leap of expelled oxygen moving large, heavy metal ship. I wish I'd paid more attention at school ... or at least spent it reading SF paperbacks like you did ^_^
ReplyDeleteAnd talking of monkey brains ... i reached into this jar to get the last sweet, but now I can't get my hand out! Heeeelllp!