Search options (Page 131 of 165)

The entire book is 3rd person limited. Everything I, as the narrator, write is through the point-of-view character's lens.

Just to clarify, the character turning beet red was in narration (Joseph turned beet red and looked to the marine for his reaction). It was, however, from Joseph's POV. It looks odd when written as dialogue.

Turns out banking as we understand it for atmospheric flight does have a use in space. My cadets execute banking moves as they arc toward/away from the Actium's main hangar bay, trying to overload the shield emitter while minimizing exposure to cannons surrounding the bay. As far as I can tell, it's doable using jets and omnithrusters. It helps that omnithrusters can apply thrust in any direction.   It needs a different name than banking, though, to avoid further confusion. Any suggestions? I was thinking arcing...

I really regret not taking physics in high school and university. It would have been a great minor in addition to comp sci. Your explanation is over my head. Let me switch to examples. Assume a 2D plane to keep this easy.

Ship is flying at high speed in the direction of the sun. Pilot wants to reverse course. As far as his controls are concerned, he pulls hard to the left (or right) until his maneuvering jets line up the ship in the opposite direction, away from the sun.. Pilot stops pulling the controls left (or right). The computer then manipulates the big thrusters to completely counter the ship's momentum toward the sun and to provide forward movement in the opposite direction. There is a fixed amount of time when the pilot is facing away from the sun but his craft is still moving toward the sun, even though the thrusters are trying to overcome the momentum of the ship's previous course toward the sun.

Have I got that right? And am I using the term momentum correctly?

I'll add to the example in my next post assuming I got the above correct.

Thanks!

K caused trouble on the playground today. He noted (quite rightly) that the flight mechanics in my dogfight look an awful lot like atmospheric flight. I checked through my old posts and realized I had never actually settled on a reason for why my flight mechanics work. Flight cocoons are no longer in the running. Too complicated. There are two remaining possibilites:

1. It's space opera. Deal with it. -- Not my favorite option.

2. A combination of specially mounted thrusters that can fire in any direction (including reverse), and maneuvering jets. Asimov would not approve, but he's dead, so I win. Correct me if I'm wrong, but since the thrusters can fire in any direction, the maneuvering jets are simply there to point the ship in the direction you're trying to move in. That keeps your lasers and missiles pointing in the right direction, even while your thrusters/computer are working like crazy to overcome the momentum from your last course and get you on the new one.  It's a little like ice skating. I should add that there's an inertial dampener ("splat inhibitor") so you don't turn into pancakes when the thrusters kick into a new direction.

Is option 2 possible? I have no intention of explaining it in detail, but would like to know if I understand it correctly. I can throw in a few buzz words in the story like omnidirectiional thrusters ("the omnidirectional thrusters canee take much more captin").

Thanks
Dirk

Fly, be free!

Amesome! What is the common site on the body to do an IO? I read it's the upper tibia.

I'm considering splitting the chapter into three, rather than have three scenes in one endless chapter. At this point into the book (almost done), I don't mind if the remaining chapters are short. It would give me room to expand them, especially Apollo's revival, which is currently only two pages.

Thanks!
Dirk

No rush. I'm going to incorporate everyone else's feedback while I wait for more reviews.
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For those who haven't read/finished chapter 36, originally titled Joseph Acts, please hold off. I'm reworking the ending so it doesn't seem like the reason for Joseph's failure comes out of nowhere. I decided I want Joseph to be all-in until it blows up in his face. Needs a little more work.

Back soon.

Dear God, not the diagrams! :-) There's nothing in the chapter that limits Eve's ship's power. She has as much power/time as she wants, including the ability to plow into the emitter. The only exception is that she doesn't have the power/time to get back to the Ark.

But there's no way for her to know if she'll die in one minute or fifteen or an hour. Even if I was coughing up blood, I couldn't predict my own time of death. If I know for sure that I've got maybe one to two minutes left to live, that would drive me to ram a shield emitter for the good of mankind. Otherwise, I'd be holding out hope.

How much do you know about fission reactors. Technically, the power generators in my fighters are not nuclear reactors, but the same principles might apply. Namely that they can go supercritical without coolant. One of my pilots is not losing coolant, but he's lost main power. The other pilot who sacrifices herself does so because she's losing coolant and the power generator will explode. How do i reconcile those? How is it that pilot A loses power without his generator exploding, while pilot B is about to explode because of coolant loss?