Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT 2111-2115 (Jan 30 - Feb 3, 2012) - QC in SPAAAAAAACE!!! Week 2!

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HiFranc:
It looks like Marten will have a neck brace to accompany him to the party.

tjradcliffe:

--- Quote from: pwhodges on 31 Jan 2012, 07:40 ---Without gravity to slow his jump, he hit the other end of the shaft as hard as if (say) he'd run into a wall.

--- End quote ---

Thanks, I was embarrassingly confused by this:  I assumed Marten was in a tube leading to the outer part of the station and didn't understand why he wasn't hit by the wall on the way down as the station rotated.

Many years ago I worked out the math of "spin-diving":  skydiving on an O'Neill Colony (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_habitat), which is kind of a fun exercise in combining the physics of rotating reference frames with fluid dynamics.  It turns out that under some reasonable assumptions (1/2 g on the outer rim, some clever changes in orientation just before you hit) you can spin-dive from the axis to the surface without any additional gear.  

The path you take is a kind of broken spiral:  because aerodynamic drag goes as v**2 you basically "fall" outward until the tangential wind picks up, which throws you sideways on a path that becomes more radial as you get further from the axis, and this process repeats itself until you go splat on the surface.  The trick is to star-fish with your back to the wind as you get near the surface, maximizing your drag and bringing your tangential speed up.  You still have to land running under most reasonable scenarios, but it's the tangential rather than the radial velocity that is the problem.

Skewbrow:
What happened to Marten could be perhaps best emulated in RL in a skating rink. If a skater trips in a way that the blades no longer make contact with the ice, s/he will continue to travel at the same speed in the same direction sliding on nearly frictionless ice (you need to use the blades or something similar to exert friction or other forces to the ice). Of course, even a smooth wet ice is not completely frictionless, so you will be slowing down, but if the fallen skater is going head first to the boards serious injuries may result. Conservation of momentum and all that.

Throg:
Which begs the question: just how much force can a skinny indie young man generate with a jump straight up?  

At any rate Marten just got schooled in the difference between leg strength and arm strength.

Edited to add: just realized from panel 4 that Marten is *damn* flexible. Even in full collision, that's a hell of a body position for someone who's not an advanced yoda practitioner.

DSL:
Reports from places like Skylab (very roomy inside; it started life as a fuel tank, after all) indicate: Less force than you'd think to get yourself going, more than you'd think to stop. In less technical terms: Ow.

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