heh... ya "the only one case" I was complaining that your style guide overlooked it.
Wayne Gretzky is the Great One, not the great one as the guide would imply.
So it is a separate rule? What about the example where I capitalize governor because there's only one in the conversation: The Governor is dead.
Kill me now! I am so fed up with caps inconsistencies. Here's the latest distilled down to two lines:
"The emperor no longer exists, Governor," Apollo said.
or
"The Emperor no longer exists, Governor," Apollo said.
I had decided that I wouldn't use capitalization for titles like emperor and queen. I treat them the same as crown prince or governor. Otherwise there is mass chaos among my numerous titles.
Some time ago, Seabrass indicated that when there is only one (e.g., Apollo is referring to himself here), it should be capitalized. Is that a separate rule, or just the same rule I quashed above?
If you tell me that Emperor should indeed be capitalized, what then of the reverse sentences:
"The governor no longer exists, Emperor," Decianus said.
or
"The Governor no longer exists, Emperor," Decianus said.
Thanks!
O
I
C
IIRC?
Correction. I do have a medical question. If someone's air supply is completely cut off (albeit slowly), how long is it before the heart stops? And how long can they be in that state (no air, no heartbeat) and still have a chance of being revived?
Thanks
Dirk
Amy, no need for the medical details about decompression. Wiki has good articles about it. I wasted a day on research/writing before deciding it dragged the chapter down.
killer asteroid
You need to read this article. It will be helpful in making your decisions. http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2013/ … uman-body/
Also look up info on decompression sickness. It normally happens to divers, but the loss of pressure in the cabin would make the kids susceptible to this as well.
I'll give you a quickie course on reviving someone from near-death, but I don't have the time at work right now. Give me a day or so and I'll be glad to oblige.
Thanks for the link. Also, I`ll check out decompression sickness. It's been a while since I researched it. There's a lot of cracy stuff one researches for a simple space opera. Sheesh!
Amy, I have characters in a small spaceship that's leaking air. Minimally, they'll be unconscious by the time they're rescued. They may even be dead. What would be the major medical steps taken to revive them? I'd rather they were actually dead before rescue, but that probably greatly complicates reviving them. I'd like at least one of them up and walking within an hour. I assume this is doable if they're only unconcscious. Being dead would be icing on the cake.
Thanks,
Dirk
Hail to the Chief!
Read again, Amy, r.e. the Roche Limit, above. It's sufficiently plausible that I'm keeping my rings.
Dark energy, not dark matter.
I googled this. There is a Roche limit around planets that determines whether or not you get rings vs moons. If you have debris within the Roche limit, the tidal forces of the planet keep the debris from coalescing (the tidal forces exceed the force of gravity). Outside the Roche, you get moons. The Earth's Roche limit is 10,000 km, so based solely on that, we could have stable rings between the Earth`s surface (6,400 km) and the limit. However, other factors affect the formation of rings, so those might play a role (e.g., melting of icy debris too close to the sun, the effect of gravity of any nearby moons, the density of a planet, among others). This is googled info, so take it with a grain of salt.
I'm curious to know why rings around smaller planets would only last 2000-3000 years.
If I type gibberish over the next weeks, it's because I bought a Microsoft bilingual keyboard, and some of the keys are in the wrong place. I had to configure it in Windows as a French keyboard before all the keys worked right. I do like the extra symbols they squeezed onto keyboard. You hold down the Alt Car key and type a key to get the expanded character set. I HATE that the left shift key is half the width of any regular shift key.
Some might say I type gibberish all the time, to whom I say pfft.
Amy mentioned in her review of my Caligula chapter that a small planet (e.g., 10% smaller than Earth) couldn't sustain planetary rings. Does anyone else agree/disagree? And why? Surely Kdot must have equations for this. :-)
Thanks
Godforsaken Chapter 35 is back up. Rewrote the epigraph again. This one I like (mostly).
Yeah, I saw that episode of Aliens Resurrection.
Never saw it. Did they do that? If so, I'll have to change mine somewhat. Duct tape, anyone?
I worked for an hour on Norm's chapter, "Caligula'.
And an hour of Amy time is a day of mortal time. God help me! ;-)
They blow apart a seat and then cover the crack in the hull with the seatback, but it's only partially effective. Technically, you could put a human arm against the crack. It would swell and close the hole, but that's nasty (and excrutiatingly painful). It would have changed the focus of the chapter, which I didn't want.
A momentum inhibitor, perhaps? 
Don't forget, the rescue ship (flagship) is about 10 minutes away, even when both are moving toward each other at high speed. The flagship can begin making its turn right away, giving it time to get in position/oriented/moving in the correct direction. I haven't specified the raider's current speed, just that it's at max thrust. I'll need to put a max on the raider's speed, which is easy, since the colission can knock out the thrusters. That means the raider is moving at whatever speed it was going before the collision, and the flagship can, with a bit of handwaving, reach the same speed as the raider, which allows for the tractor beam.
I haven't defined yet why big ships are slower than smaller ships. Momentum may be the key. None of these ships have an upper bound on speed, but the big ships need time to turn or reverse course, so they generally avoid going too fast. In an emergency like this, they would apply whatever thrust is needed to match the speed of the raider.
Does that work?
I should add that the rescue ship calculates the raider's trajectory and then positions itself appropriately for when the raider flies by. The effect would be included in the calculation of their trajectory.
Did you consider the reactive (rocket) movement that will result from the leak?
If I understand the question, it should be a minor effect, since I'm emptying a small ship (holds about 12 people) worth of air over a period of 6-9 minutes (6 minutes to knock em out, 9 minutes to kill em).
I need three explicit times: one for when they lose consciousness, one for when they should be dead, and one that shows how long they should have been dead. I need these to set up an apparent miracle.
The first number depends on the size of the hole, so I chose 6 and made the other numbers around the same order of magnitude, leading to approximately 1/6 of an hour to get them aboard. I'm fine with 1/4 or 1/3 of an hour, too. Admittedly, I did a total asspull on 9 and 11. If you know how long it takes for them to pass out, then you can probably calculate how long before they die, but the equations are over my head. Also, it's probably too short, since they have to repressurize the raider before going in.
For your calculation, if they were to reverse thrusters (assuming they were working) and rely on the splat inhibiter, don't your equations become irrelevant? Is there something fundamental in physics that says I can't slow them down more quickly in spite of having the inertial damper?
It's probably overkill to worry about this, but Kdot mentioned that my characters should have turned into salsa inside the raider they were in when the ship was physically struck by an enemy starfighter. The raider ends up spinning end over end while those inside vomit. They're strapped in so they don't fly out of their seats. Also, there is artificial gravity, although it's largely overwhelmed by the ships crazy spinning. Emergency stabilizers kick in to right the ship. Throughout this, I have an inertial damper (splat inhibiter) in effect inside the ship.
What have I missed? Should I just ignore the splat inhibiter and ignore the inertia?
Thanks
Dirk
I love writing! In revising my latest chapter, I came up with a neat idea for Apollo. The longer I played with it, the more important it became. As a result, it gives me half of book two, assuming I live that long. As important to book two as the Roman Empire is to book one.
An insomniac probably shouldn't get this pumped at bedtime, but what the hell.
Nite.
