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[Harry Baldman]

"Fantastic. Just what we needed. Maybe see if you can't use one as a novelty coat rack once this is dealt with, at least then they'll be somewhat entertaining while being totally useless.

So, if I understand you correctly, there's a floating vegetable with anomalous gravity coming toward you, yes? How big is it? And it's coming straight at you?"

"Imagine a rather large asteroid, shaped like a kidney, roughly several hundred miles in diameter. Smooth, too. Very smooth."

"And maybe not straight at us, actually, now that I am, er, now that the deadness in my brain is subsiding. It seems to be moving to orbit us. But nevertheless it is coming closer at a discomforting pace."

Scratch that order to cheese it, actually.

Instead, try flying perpendicularly to the plane of the orbit the bean is establishing. See if that helps.

Also, when one considers its gravitational pull, what is the effective mass of this thing?

[Radio Controlled]

((for clarification, the kidney bean is orbiting Crapgras, orbiting faster as they increase speed, and making their course erratic with it's gravity. The invisible spaghetti football spear is charging straight at scrupulosity, gaining speed and leaving beautiful death in it's wake.))

((I know, just trying to only go by what Cthunky-kun has actually told Miya.))

"Fantastic. Just what we needed. Maybe see if you can't use one as a novelty coat rack once this is dealt with, at least then they'll be somewhat entertaining while being totally useless.

So, if I understand you correctly, there's a floating vegetable with anomalous gravity coming toward you, yes? How big is it? And it's coming straight at you?"

"Imagine a rather large asteroid, shaped like a kidney, roughly several hundred miles in diameter. Smooth, too. Very smooth."

"And maybe not straight at us, actually, now that I am, er, now that the deadness in my brain is subsiding. It seems to be moving to orbit us. But nevertheless it is coming closer at a discomforting pace."

Scratch that order to cheese it, actually.

Instead, try flying perpendicularly to the plane of the orbit the bean is establishing. See if that helps.

"Ok then. I have a few ideas of what we could do, but we'd first need more info though. You could just try to outrun it, or try to get a sort of stable orbit so you can still keep going. Or maybe smash it into the next anomaly we encounter. I doubt shooting it will do anything but maybe creating individual pieces to chase you. Do you carry any explosives? If nothing else works, you could program the ship to fly off, then exit the ship before it moves away, after which we come pick you up once it's out of range."

((You mean flying in the z-axis direction, Harry?))

[Harry Baldman]

"Ok then. I have a few ideas of what we could do, but we'd first need more info though. You could just try to outrun it, or try to get a sort of stable orbit so you can still keep going. Or maybe smash it into the next anomaly we encounter. I doubt shooting it will do anything but maybe creating individual pieces to chase you. Do you carry any explosives? If nothing else works, you could program the ship to fly off, then exit the ship before it moves away, after which we come pick you up once it's out of range."

((You mean flying in the z-axis direction, Harry?))

"Outrunning it does not appear to work. Already tried that. Now I'll try flying perpendicularly to the orbit. Seems to exert a lot of gravity, actually. Much more than you would expect from an asteroid. It is starting to interfere with the flight path considerably."

"I do like the sound of that last plan, however. Even if gravity makes it somewhat unlikely to succeed."

((It depends on how it's orbiting us. The xy plane is a reasonable plane for it to orbit us in, but that may not necessarily be the case. If it even happens to orbit us on a stable plane, of course. It might be constantly changing course for all I know.))

[IronyOwl]

Faith's drooling shell wobbled slightly before acting completely normal.

"If I had to guess, it's reacting more heavily to gravity than it should, hence having more and responding to us as though we were much, much larger. Assuming perpendicular flight doesn't work, what's a good way to disentangle two large stellar bodies? Some kind of push-pull attempt to slingshot it away? Could we even do something like that?"

Supply Aux roll for anything Cthunkan's trying.

[Radio Controlled]

"Hmm. I have no idea if it would work, but... Ok, hear me out. Right now you're flying straight ahead, yes? And the thing is orbiting you? That means it has a considerable speed in the x axis direction. Now, what if you were to wait till it's at its furthests point away from you, then do a hard stop? Assuming it has even a little bit of inertia and the scruples to follow some laws of physics, I think it might keep going and be flung out of your 'orbit' and away into the void. Of course, said inertia should also flatten you and your ship into queer little pancakes, but whatever inertial dampeners these things have seem to be able to cope with that.

Alternatively, creative burning and counter burning mght indeed slingshot it away. But that might not be enough to counteract its weird attraction to you."


Hey pw, would a plan like this possibly work, or is this abusing your physics system too much for us to get away with? After all:

Lets forget about inertia here, shall we ... you can stop on a dime.

While presumably, this asteroid cannot.

[IronyOwl]

"That's more or less what I meant by push-pull, only assuming it works in one go as opposed to having to do that repeatedly to push the orbit into ever more oblong loops until it comes free.

By the way, can I mention how reassuring the 'fling ourselves away from the ship and get picked up later' plan is to have as a last resort? And how incredibly glad I am that I brought a jump rocket pack?"

[Radio Controlled]

"You can, but remember that that plan is one of last resort. I'd really rather not lose a third of our explorative power this soon into the mission, we still have a lot of space to cover. That said, it might not be a bad idea to be prepared for such an event. Make sure everybody is suited up, and put a bunch of food and such ready by the hangar door so you can push it out comes evac time, cause I doubt we have enough spare rations to feed double the crew. See if you can't get your mindless drone slash coat rack to do those things. Also have the ship's diversive flight path pre-programmed so you can remotely activate it with the push of a button."

[Harry Baldman]

"Hmm. I have no idea if it would work, but... Ok, hear me out. Right now you're flying straight ahead, yes? And the thing is orbiting you? That means it has a considerable speed in the x axis direction. Now, what if you were to wait till it's at its furthests point away from you, then do a hard stop? Assuming it has even a little bit of inertia and the scruples to follow some laws of physics, I think it might keep going and be flung out of your 'orbit' and away into the void. Of course, said inertia should also flatten you and your ship into queer little pancakes, but whatever inertial dampeners these things have seem to be able to cope with that.

Alternatively, creative burning and counter burning mght indeed slingshot it away. But that might not be enough to counteract its weird attraction to you."

"An important detail - it's trying to orbit us. It happens to be moving of its own accord. It's the size of a small planetoid - several hundreds of miles, assuming that thing is indeed made of rock as it seems, means the pull it could realistically generate is, at best, in the 0.01 G region. And we should be orbiting it if the laws of physics actually applied. We ought to be pulled toward it considerably more strongly than it toward us, anyway."

"The thing is deliberately following us. So it's probably to be assumed it gives not a single rat's ass about how orbits actually work. And it definitely isn't merely what it looks like. Flying perpendicularly to its orbital plane would net us maximum achievable distance in the shortest amount of time, I think."

[Radio Controlled]

"Hmm. I have no idea if it would work, but... Ok, hear me out. Right now you're flying straight ahead, yes? And the thing is orbiting you? That means it has a considerable speed in the x axis direction. Now, what if you were to wait till it's at its furthests point away from you, then do a hard stop? Assuming it has even a little bit of inertia and the scruples to follow some laws of physics, I think it might keep going and be flung out of your 'orbit' and away into the void. Of course, said inertia should also flatten you and your ship into queer little pancakes, but whatever inertial dampeners these things have seem to be able to cope with that.

Alternatively, creative burning and counter burning mght indeed slingshot it away. But that might not be enough to counteract its weird attraction to you."

"An important detail - it's trying to orbit us. It happens to be moving of its own accord. It's the size of a small planetoid - several hundreds of miles, assuming that thing is indeed made of rock as it seems, means the pull it could realistically generate is, at best, in the 0.01 G region. And we should be orbiting it if the laws of physics actually applied. We ought to be pulled toward it considerably more strongly than it toward us, anyway."

"The thing is deliberately following us. So it's probably to be assumed it gives not a single rat's ass about how orbits actually work. And it definitely isn't merely what it looks like. Flying perpendicularly to its orbital plane would net us maximum achievable distance in the shortest amount of time, I think."

"For the first plan, the one with the full stop, it doesn't really matter who is orbiting who, it hinges more on the fact we can do an extremely quick stop, while that thing might not. Then again, you were already going quite fast when you flew near, yet then it also managed to catch up to you. Either way, that plan is not mutually exclusive with your current one, you could try it if this one doesn't work."

[spazyak]

attempt to fashion together a make shift barrel and some electronics out of the scrap and wires I have

[piecewise]

((For the record, we've been updating the ship's locations and speeds on the wiki pw, so if you wanna know who is where, be sure to check there.))

Chook chook trucking on through the void. Drop buoy with all the relevant info about our current predicament as well. Then try to stay in contact range with team Capgras, but keep a healthy distance from that planetoid.

Noticing Capgras' lack of response, even though he could pick up their ship's transponder signal, Miyamoto started to get worried.
G
"Dubley, we seem to be picking up Capgras' signal, but they're not responding to any hails. Could you check if the comms equipment isn't malfunctioning on our end?"

He keeps trying to communicate with the other team while waiting for an answer.

"Capgras, this is Miyamoto. We are picking up your ship's transponder signal. Can you hear us? Come in Capgras."

You make it 3 more spaces before running into something. It looks like a swarm of enormous diatoms. The are enormous, crystalline but still organic looking objects that seem to be swimming around in space without any clear method of propulsion. They are quite varied in shape and configuration; you don't see even one repeat.

They don't appear to have noticed you.

"They're not moving, responding or making any indication that they are indeed alive. So the situation is entirely normal," Cthunkan explains. "To be honest, I'm not even sure if this team has three people in it. Maybe the third one is just a freestanding corpse. At least Faith made some effort to appear capable of independent thought. I don't think that's the anomaly, though. Just standard ARM conduct."

"But yes, the report. The kidney bean anomaly is coming straight for us, gaining speed and pulling us toward it with some rather strong gravity. It seems that we will have a tough time escaping it. Or perhaps we will be dashed against its preternatural surface into millions of braindead pieces - in fact, this is starting to appear increasingly likely. Things are starting to look very poor at the moment."

If I can figure out how, send the good general a visual feed of our impending doom.

Assuming you're in com range, you send a video feed.

"Is that thing still chasing us? You think it'd make it any worse if I shot at it?" Jason asks Lars, peering at the sensor readings.

If Lars is okay with it, tether myself to something sturdy inside the shuttle. Don't want a repeat of Jason's first spacewalk. See if there is an airlock or something I can open to poke out of and open fire on the anomaly with the HEP Pyramid or whatever ambiguous weapon my suit has. Or both.

If not, go back to staying out of the way or helping in some beneficial manner.

You head into the airlock and attempt to shoot at the thing chasing you. You fire out into the glowing lights in the distance, but it doesn't appear to have any visible effect.

Give the exoskeleton to Sir Jackson. Make his locker armour fit over it.
"Here ya go! Every space knight needs a suit of power armour."
Y'know what? Give him my shield too. Space knight needs a shield.
But if he ever dies or gets stasis dementa I'm taking all this stuff back.

Now work on improving my laser cannon. Wire it to my suit, robot body, and briefcase welder for MORE POWER!
There is never enough power. I don't even know how much power it has but it needs more.

I'll just give you these things.

Lars nodded.  "Do what you must, brother.  I will pray for us."

Keep running!  Pray to Algis for protection, Ingram to guide Jason's shot, and Cog-azaon to understand this anomaly.

Who is flying the ship right now, by the way? In case we need to roll for evasive maneuvers.

"Fantastic. Just what we needed. Maybe see if you can't use one as a novelty coat rack once this is dealt with, at least then they'll be somewhat entertaining while being totally useless.

So, if I understand you correctly, there's a floating vegetable with anomalous gravity coming toward you, yes? How big is it? And it's coming straight at you?"

"Imagine a rather large asteroid, shaped like a kidney, roughly several hundred miles in diameter. Smooth, too. Very smooth."

"And maybe not straight at us, actually, now that I am, er, now that the deadness in my brain is subsiding. It seems to be moving to orbit us. But nevertheless it is coming closer at a discomforting pace."

Scratch that order to cheese it, actually.

Instead, try flying perpendicularly to the plane of the orbit the bean is establishing. See if that helps.

Also, when one considers its gravitational pull, what is the effective mass of this thing?

As in, if it is circling forward to back, you would juke hard left or right?

Hard to say. The thing is pulling much harder than it should for its size, but it also didn't start pulling until you got fairly close. It may not be following any established rules for that sort of thing.

Faith's drooling shell wobbled slightly before acting completely normal.

"If I had to guess, it's reacting more heavily to gravity than it should, hence having more and responding to us as though we were much, much larger. Assuming perpendicular flight doesn't work, what's a good way to disentangle two large stellar bodies? Some kind of push-pull attempt to slingshot it away? Could we even do something like that?"

Supply Aux roll for anything Cthunkan's trying.

Alright.

"Hmm. I have no idea if it would work, but... Ok, hear me out. Right now you're flying straight ahead, yes? And the thing is orbiting you? That means it has a considerable speed in the x axis direction. Now, what if you were to wait till it's at its furthests point away from you, then do a hard stop? Assuming it has even a little bit of inertia and the scruples to follow some laws of physics, I think it might keep going and be flung out of your 'orbit' and away into the void. Of course, said inertia should also flatten you and your ship into queer little pancakes, but whatever inertial dampeners these things have seem to be able to cope with that.

Alternatively, creative burning and counter burning mght indeed slingshot it away. But that might not be enough to counteract its weird attraction to you."


Hey pw, would a plan like this possibly work, or is this abusing your physics system too much for us to get away with? After all:

Lets forget about inertia here, shall we ... you can stop on a dime.

While presumably, this asteroid cannot.

You're gonna try the whole, let it get behind you then suddenly brake move? Eh...I dunno. I did say it could stop on a dime, but that was more for abstracting movement a bit.

If harry feels like trying it, he can.

attempt to fashion together a make shift barrel and some electronics out of the scrap and wires I have

Doesn't work like that, mcguyver.

 

[Radio Controlled]

"Why is it just one thing after the other in here? This is space! It should be empty!"

Drop another buoy in this grid, then either keep going ahead in a wide berth around the cosmic diatoms, or alter course to keep in comms range of Capgras (but still avoid the diatoms).

Viewing the video, Miyamoto is starting to realise how bad the situation is for Capgras.

"Capgras, have you decided yet what you're gonna try to loose it?"

[NAV]

Now add the rebreathers and spark gap to the laser. So it shoots lightning and works better in space.

attempt to fashion together a make shift barrel and some electronics out of the scrap and wires I have

Doesn't work like that, mcguyver.

((Sure it does! What is a coilgun other than a metal barrel, copper coils, and some electricity?))

[spazyak]

Now add the rebreathers and spark gap to the laser. So it shoots lightning and works better in space.

attempt to fashion together a make shift barrel and some electronics out of the scrap and wires I have

Doesn't work like that, mcguyver.

((Sure it does! What is a coilgun other than a metal barrel, copper coils, and some electricity?))

((Exactly! it will be like a very very crappy gauss rifle till I can afford to get one!)

[AoshimaMichio]

attempt to fashion together a make shift barrel and some electronics out of the scrap and wires I have

Doesn't work like that, mcguyver.

((Sure it does! What is a coilgun other than a metal barrel, copper coils, and some electricity?))

((A precision tool. It needs very precise control of electric currents.))