[2010] Jones! In! Space!

[cb3]

That's pretty much my "I'm bored at work" expression too

[faiiry]

Various predictions for next chapter:

-Coysengrin fighting with itself, as both gods struggle for dominance.

-Coyote, specifically, will want something from Annie. Probably he'll want her to renounce her humanity and align with the forest.

-Annie will probably try appealing to Ysengrin in particular, not Coyote.

-Fire will be used.

-This chapter will be very pretty and cool looking and will also make us all cry.

[todd]

While removing Jones from the action to ensure that Annie would have to face Ysengrin (or whatever he is now) on her own was a good idea, I wonder if Tom did it in the right way.

The trouble with the "launching Jones into space" method is that, judging from the comments, it upstaged the main story. Almost everyone focused on Jones in space, where she'd land, if she'd land, etc., and gave hardly any thought to the fact that Annie has to meet Ysengrin without any help.

Though I'm having trouble thinking of a way of getting Jones out of the story (for now) that wouldn't distract from Annie's mission.

[todd]

Jul 6, 2018 16:08:29 GMT faiiry said:

-Annie will probably try appealing to Ysengrin in particular, not Coyote.

Which definitely seems the right approach to take. For one thing, the trouble with reasoning with Coyote is that he's far too clever (as befits a trickster). He'd constantly change the subject, tell stories about himself or get someone else to tell stories about him, and so on until the person trying to argue with him has been manipulated into agreeing with him.

But Ysengrin's, underneath the anger (which is genuine anger rather than just an excuse for playing around with things for his amusement), a straightforward, honest figure (the deceptions he's occasionally carried out, such as with the Tictoc Bird, seem to have been due to Coyote's meddling), with some paternal feelings for Annie. (And certainly, from a narrative point of view, there'll have to be enough of those feelings left, even if buried underneath the anger and the trickster-tone he's apparently acquired from devouring Coyote, for Annie to reach out to. It's become a major part of Ysengrin's part of the story, and needs a proper resolution; it would be poor storytelling to drop that element by, say, having Ysengrin absorbed into Coyote; at most, it'd be just a plot device to bring Annie to the Woods in an attempt to dissuade Ysengrin from his attack, only to discover that it was too late and she was dealing with Coyote now.)

[ohthatone]

Jul 6, 2018 16:14:47 GMT todd said:

While removing Jones from the action to ensure that Annie would have to face Ysengrin (or whatever he is now) on her own was a good idea, I wonder if Tom did it in the right way.

The trouble with the "launching Jones into space" method is that, judging from the comments, it upstaged the main story. Almost everyone focused on Jones in space, where she'd land, if she'd land, etc., and gave hardly any thought to the fact that Annie has to meet Ysengrin without any help.

Though I'm having trouble thinking of a way of getting Jones out of the story (for now) that wouldn't distract from Annie's mission.

I suppose Tom could have had Jones be on an important Court mission elsewhere when this all went down. Or even just left it at the page where we see Jones get lifted and shot into the sky, then I suspect comments would have returned to Annie and her impending meeting, but frankly this was WAY more cool and fun to read.  The immortal rock-lady gets shot into space! and all that that implies!! it was unexpected and powerful and /Syndrome/ I'M STILL GEEKING OUT ABOUT IT. I think Tom knows what he is doing and our attention will be back on Annie on Mon/Wed.

[imaginaryfriend]

Jul 6, 2018 10:09:34 GMT noone3 said:

Jul 6, 2018 7:38:21 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

she might even get one or two orbits out of it

It doesn't really work that way.

If she's just ballistic (suborbital) she gets a semi-parabolic path and quick, hard landing. Also an orbiting satellite, like the one pictured would be passing her at great speed. It still may, for all we know.

If she's orbiting there is very narrow margin between semi-stable orbit (some high degradation orbit, passing through high atmosphere at some point) when she gets a few circles and then fully entering atmosphere and dragging through it (loosing all non-heatshield-grade garments) before hard landing, and fully stable orbit, which could last her years to lower down on her own (by basically waiting, since there is nothing much in the lines of propulsion that she can do).

Question is, if Ysenyote was able to properly round her orbit into some more stable form, or just "pushed her up" and didn't bother anymore. In the latter case there is also the question of speed, since pushed fast enough Jones could leave earth's orbit and circle the sun, or even broke loose completely, and follow the Voyagers.

Not sure if we actually disagree. We know Jones was going below 300kph since her clothes are still on and that should be insufficient for LEO however you look at it. The problem is Ysengoyote's range. Assuming that Ysengoyote needs line-of-sight to manipulate her, which I think is reasonable, he can see her at >20km (mist and clouds presenting no problem for him at all). She wouldn't be going up that whole time, she'd be going away in a manner that would appear to be up from the observer (Ys) and presumably he'd stop "pushing" her when she appeared too small to be an eyesore or "fell" below the horizon, from which point inertia takes over. So in spite of what we're seeing (Jones at around 2,000km altitude) I think it's way just more likely she's on a ballistic arc (zero orbits with an asterisk that I can't convert into more than two orbits no matter how I imagine the angle and drag).

And I doubt Ysengoyote knows what an orbit is.

[Sky Schemer]

Jul 6, 2018 19:24:16 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

And I doubt Ysengoyote knows what an orbit is.

Coyote is/was a god. To quote Richard Bach, if someone walked up to Jesus the Christ and handed him a guitar, do you really think he'd say "I don't know how to play that thing"?

If Coyote/Ysengrin wants Jones in space so she's out of the way, the details are just taken care of because god.

[imaginaryfriend]

Jul 6, 2018 20:59:46 GMT Sky Schemer said:

Jul 6, 2018 19:24:16 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

And I doubt Ysengoyote knows what an orbit is.

Coyote is/was a god. To quote Richard Bach, if someone walked up to Jesus the Christ and handed him a guitar, do you really think he'd say "I don't know how to play that thing"?

If Coyote/Ysengrin wants Jones in space so she's out of the way, the details are just taken care of because god.

The theological question of "big G" God vs. "small g" gods aside, the question I was trying to ask was not "is Jones up?" (and therefore out of the way) but "how up is Jones and how long will she stay there?"

[Igniz]

Jul 6, 2018 20:59:46 GMT Sky Schemer said:

Coyote is/was a god. To quote Richard Bach, if someone walked up to Jesus the Christ and handed him a guitar, do you really think he'd say "I don't know how to play that thing"?

If Coyote/Ysengrin wants Jones in space so she's out of the way, the details are just taken care of because god.

Yes, Coyote is a god - but, just as the ones in the Greek, Norse, Egyptian and Aztec pantheons (among many others) he is not an omniscient god, nor is he an omnipotent, almighty one. In fact, an entity does not need to be almighty, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent/omnimalevolent or eternal to qualify as a deity.

Jul 6, 2018 21:30:21 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

"how up is Jones[...]?"

Taking the views of Earth as well as the satellite (bonus page or not) as a reference, it can be assumed that Jones is currently in the exosphere, in a Medium Earth orbit (MEO), above 2,000 km/1,243 mi but far below 35,786 km/22,236 mi (geostationary orbit, GEO).
Orbital altitudes
Earth's atmosphere

However, there's one "little" detail of particular interest that seems to contradict this. Regarding it, the following must be taken into consideration:
- At sea level/the surface of the Earth, the escape velocity needed to escape from its gravitational influence is 11.2 km/s (approx. 33 times the speed of sound, or Mach 33)
- The atmosphere is not evenly dense from top to bottom. The top (facing outer space) edge is much less dense than the bottom is.

Because of the density at the lower atmospheric layers, if escape velocity is achieved almost instantly, the hypersonic speeds involved would cause most objects to burn up due to aerodynamic heating or be torn apart by atmospheric drag. That's the reason that, for an actual escape orbit, spacecrafts accelerate steadily out of the atmosphere until they reach the escape velocity appropriate for their altitude; only when they leave the most dense regions and get into the very thin upper atmosphere they start to reach the orbital speeds that can produce strong heating, but by that point there's not enough atmosphere left to produce significant heat.

In Jones's case, she seems to have maintained a stable and constant speed since her "take off" without suffering any deceleration until she reached her present location. In other words, she reached escape velocity instantly, right? But here's the catch: her clothes remain intact. Sure, she's an indestructible ancestral being, yet her clothes are normal clothes.

From this very fact, it can be safely deduced that she didn't achieve escape velocity (at least, not the one required to reach MEO) and, at most, she's actually in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), at some point between 160 to 2,000 km (99 to 1,243 mi) above Earth. The majority of artificial satellites (and all crewed space stations, by the way) are placed in this orbit; due to atmospheric drag, satellites do not usually orbit below 300 km, so this can be taken as a cue to Jones' current altitude.

You have already pointed this, correctly in my opinion:

Jul 6, 2018 19:24:16 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

We know Jones was going below 300kph since her clothes are still on and that should be insufficient for LEO however you look at it.[...] So in spite of what we're seeing (Jones at around 2,000km altitude) I think it's way just more likely she's on a ballistic arc

Of course, when she crosses the Kármán line on re-entry... goodbye best suit.

Jul 6, 2018 21:30:21 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

"[...]and how long will she stay there?"

Technically, from a mimimum of 3 weeks to a maximum of 44 years (with an average of 1 year) if effectively in LEO, or just a few minutes if in a ballistic trajectory. But I'll go with "as long as the story requires."

[madjack]

Jul 6, 2018 20:59:46 GMT Sky Schemer said:

Coyote is/was a god. To quote Richard Bach, if someone walked up to Jesus the Christ and handed him a guitar, do you really think he'd say "I don't know how to play that thing"?

If Coyote/Ysengrin wants Jones in space so she's out of the way, the details are just taken care of because god.

This is starting to remind me of the story that someone tried to work out the rotation and orbit of the world A Song of Ice and Fire is set on to explain the seasons in Westeros and couldn't figure them out. Then GRRM piped up with "who said they're natural seasons?"

I'm usually the first to pounce on small details and try to deconstruct everything, but what's exactly going on with Jones is probably a 'wait and see' case.

[mashivan]

Poor Jones. Now she can't watch anything at all.

[liminal]

Jul 6, 2018 7:42:38 GMT philman said:

It may be an optical illusion, but I swear I keep seeing the direction her eyes are looking change in my peripheral vision.

Attachments:

[fia]

I never thought I'd learn so much rocket science on the forums of an online comic in the fantasy genre! 


Thanks everyone for your explanations about LEO and the complications of Earth orbiting.

[imaginaryfriend]

Jul 7, 2018 2:45:42 GMT Igniz said:

Jul 6, 2018 21:30:21 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

"[...]and how long will she stay there?"

Technically, from a mimimum of 3 weeks to a maximum of 44 years (with an average of 1 year) if effectively in LEO, or just a few minutes if in a ballistic trajectory. But I'll go with "as long as the story requires."

Well, not minutes... Using a lot of rounding and a couple of free online calculators I guesstimate it should still take her nearly an hour and a half (eighty-sixish minutes) minimum to plummet back to thicker air, then add another five minutes and change before impact for about ninety-one minutes total. My (un)educated BOTE is that she's on a seventeenish-hour tour of LEO because she just wasn't going fast enough for orbit; assuming Ysengoyote was able to push her faster once she was at higher altitude (and he would have had to have done so or the timeline for comics #2007-#2009 doesn't work/is nonlinear) the amount of force he'd be using would still remain the same (about 2Gs for maybe six minutes at most else you need to account for why he isn't pushing her faster earlier or the timeline breaks down again) so if she skips along the atmosphere a lot she might be able to achieve one, at most two, complete orbits (I am picturing a data set with many, many, many zeros and a few ones and then at the very end a lone numeral two). But even so, assuming she wants to go back as soon as she can, she should be trying to catch air to shed speed faster, so (unless something else intervenes/all else held equal) most likely zero complete orbits.  But if anyone actually wants to sit down and do the maths I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

[Runningflame]

Dear readers, this comic is a work of fiction.

[rimwolf]

Jul 7, 2018 20:47:23 GMT Runningflame said:

Dear readers, this comic is a work of fiction.

"Everybody out of the pool!"

[Igniz]

Jul 7, 2018 12:45:19 GMT fia said:

I never thought I'd learn so much rocket science on the forums of an online comic in the fantasy genre! 

Thanks everyone for your explanations about LEO and the complications of Earth orbiting.

You're most welcome, my friend! Who says fiction and fantasy don't lead to learning new things?

Jul 7, 2018 19:30:21 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Well, not minutes...

It was a figure of speech.

I agree with your guesstimates, by the way. Considering that all we got is an idea of her velocity based on the state of her clothes while also ignoring her precise altitude and take-off angle, it's the best we can assume. But then again, whenever godlike beings, magic/ether/ki/chakra/whatever and/or narrative purposes are involved in the equation, the laws of physics can stretched or bent like soft wax.

Jul 7, 2018 20:47:23 GMT Runningflame said:

Dear readers, this comic is a work of fiction.

Well, in that case...

[mturtle7]

Annie isn't the only one who can rock those eye rolls.

[imaginaryfriend]

Jul 7, 2018 22:59:28 GMT Igniz said:

[W]henever godlike beings, magic/ether/ki/chakra/whatever and/or narrative purposes are involved in the equation, the laws of physics can stretched or bent like soft wax.

I don't disagree with that but in this case I think it may be worth drawing a distinction between magic and etheric abilities. It may seem like a distinction without a difference but if Ysengoyote did something that caused Jones to fly up into orbit as opposed to pushing her up until she was in orbit that 1. would make him more dangerous and 2. also it suggests that he's trying to do the same thing that humans in the comic are fundamentally doing in the Court. There may also be implications for who/what Ysengoyote is and how the Gunnerverse works since, as impressive as it was when Coyote pulled the moon down, I'd classify that as an ability. So if Jones is indeed in true orbit that may be something Coyote couldn't have done by himself.

[The Anarch]

Ground control to Major Jones . . .

[Igniz]

imaginaryfriend: Agreed.