Friday, May 30, 2008

Friday Night Physics


You know, it's almost pain ful to discuss this one. But I'll do my best.

SPACE STATIONS

The Picture above, here's why it wouldn't work, in short:

1) Fire consumes oxygen. Being in space, there isn't much of that to go around, unless you have some way of renewing it really really fast. Also, space stations tend to be a bit rich in oxygen, so fire would spread rapidly, destroying your space station and everything on it; including you.
2) Where does the smoke go? I mean, venting it into space means that you'd be exposing the fire to vaacuum, so it would extinguish, so that can't work. The only way this could work is if you had a separate "Smoke Storage" container that would occasionally open to space, creating a barrier between the fire and space.

Now, looking at the shot below, you see the Justice League deciding to leave bits of Red Tornado floating around in and around their orbiting space station. Aside from being slightly weird, this is also insanely dangerous. In order for something to be in what is called a Geo-Synchronous Orbit (approximatel 22,600 miles above the Earth, which is what the Justice League Satellite is in), means that it has a relative velocity of...about 22,000 mph. This would also be the velocity of Tornado's remains. What this means is that should another satelitte or space vehicle (say, the Space Shuttle) veer too close, it could be hit by, say, a glove, at several times the speed of a rifle bullet. Now, while this doesn't seem like it would be harmful, consider that a paint chip travelling at this velocity has been known to cause serious shuttle damage...and then think about what Red Tornado bits at multiple-Mach Velocity would do to some poor astronauts, and it really makes the Justice League look like complete Assholes.

This has been another proud installment of Friday Night Physics. enjoy and feel free to leave your comments.



No comments: