Monday's Word of the Day

Floccinaucinihilipilification

[flok-suh-naw-suh-nahy-hil-uh-pil-uh-fi-key-shuh n]

noun
1. the estimation of something as valueless

A word like floccinaucinihilipilification in today's day and age is considered to be floccinaucinihilipilification.


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NCoID™81

Please tell me that doesn't work.... We don't even know the info she just gave him is real. It certainly hasn't bought that level of trust.

*googles floccinaucinihilipilification*

Oh wow. That's a real word. o.0



Yeah, that panel with Riff's back turned...open target. He's not that dense, this must be bait.

...please.

How could this backfire? Let me count the ways!

1, 2....... I'm thinking two. That was short.

The space station is "above orbit"... That doesn't make any sense. If they're building satellites to put in orbit around Earth, the station would still have to be in orbit.

Unless she means "above geosynchronous orbit". That would make a lot more sense.

Maybe she means out past the Moon? Or a space station that just hovers at a fixed point in space, independent of Earth's orbit. If that's the case, though, they'd only be able to supply the station or get satellites from it once a year. So that's really, really impractical unless HC has Star Trek level tech.

I can think of more, but that gets into story spec.

Personally, I would have said 'super duper high up where it's harder to see'. But then again, I'm no astronomer

One of the Lagrange Points?

Probably one of the Lagrange Points, yeah. I wonder if it's more difficult to put a satellite into Earth orbit from the L just in front of Earth's path, or from the L just trailing Earth's path?

Well, according to a quick search of my go-to rocket site, it'll take about the same amount of fuel regardless of whether you use the Earth-Moon L4 or L5 point, about 4.1 Kms/Sec.

The L1 point is better fuel-wise, but tends to be unstable, so you'll likely burn alot more just doing stationkeeping. It's very likely to be a similar story with the Earth-Sol Lagrange points, but with understandably higher Delta-V costs.

Man, every time, I want to trust her. Her info may be big, but it's hard to verify, being "beyond detection."

Sasha' s "Yeah, it's over," really hit me.

Riff certainly seems to have a lot of stuff hidden in his coat!


I love this discussion.

Well so far we don't know for sure that the laser cannon he give her is real / functional, either. It could be a test. But she's had many opportunities to kill him already, so I'm not sure handing her a laser cannon really proves anything.

What did you think I meant by "doesn't work"? As for many opportunities, has she really? He warned her against leaving without him, so she needed to get him to let her go. I'd say this is just about the first real opportunity she's had.

Okay, this comic has a few issues. Problem #1: Nothing can get "beyond orbit" technically speaking since even if you escape the Earth's sphere of influence, you're in the sun's sphere of influence (and if you escape the sun's sphere of influence, you're in the galaxy's SoI; and outside of the galaxy's SoI, you're in the universe's, etc.). I suspect Pete was falling into the classic trap of assuming that gravity just stops working once you get out of the atmosphere; it doesn't. We call it orbiting for a reason: gravity's still pulling you down, you're just going too fast sideways to fall back to the surface. The further out you get, the weaker gravity's pull, but you still have to be moving fast enough sideways (ie. orbiting) to not fall back down. Get far enough away that Earth's gravity is no longer a major concern, and as I said, you're now in the sun's sphere of influence instead, orbiting around it at ridiculous speeds (which you technically already were when in orbit of the Earth, but a discussion of the madness that is the nuances of gravitational influence would take many, many pages to cover).

Problem #2: You can't hide anything in space. Even the far side of the moon is not invisible to people on the surface of the Earth, since satellites beyond the moon's orbit can see its backside just fine (as can any satellites in lunar orbit when they pass over that; we have quite a few of those). This is the problem with space being a whole lot of nothing with the occasional bit of something sprinkled in between: those bits of something are utterly obvious. Especially with modern technology working the way it does and modern astrophysics being as sophisticated as it is.

The short version: Hollywood space tropes strike again, and astrophysicists (as well as quite a few Kerbal Space Program players) shake their heads sadly.

Sorry Lord Golbez, I didn't realize "that" referred to the laser cannon. She could have killed him many times in the room, and then just done an escape out the window or something.


I suspect Sasha meant "beyond typical orbits that anybody is likely to encounter, and most specifically beyond the range that Riff used to blow up the first satellite."


That's a bigger problem. A sat-mfg space station would be a large beastie. Not only would it be darn difficult to hide in space, all the launches it took to build it would have been pretty obvious too.

Of course Pete is ignoring a few details of getting to & from orbit -- otherwise Riff (and Torg before him) would have been challenged and probably shot down when he came back from orbit.