Author notes

221 - Status Report

El Cid

on May 31, 2018

The camera angle in the first panel may be disorienting. It's an upward-looking shot from ground level inside Nova Dagon, which is an O'Neill cylinder space colony. The landmasses in the background are very far away, but the cylindrical shape causes them to creep into view along the edges. That gigantic tubular structure up in the “sky” is where visiting space vessels taxi in and out. That's the docking facility.



So, who are these people, and what's going on? I'm glad you asked.

Benny is commander of the Nova Dagon Docking Authority. The docks have just experienced two separate attacks by mooner extremists (183, 188), and here Benny is being chewed out by the governor.










This is one of those questions that seems obvious at first, and then the more you think about it, the less obvious it seems. If you put birds inside a giant spinning O'Neill cylinder in space, would they be able to fly? They'd obviously be fine so long as their feet are on the ground; they'll feel centrifugal “gravity” similar to being on a planet, but as soon as they go airborne… what the hell happens to them?

First, there's no reason why birds couldn't get off the ground in a space colony. They've done experiments that show birds can fly even in zero gravity, though they have difficulty figuring out which way is up or down… but they're no different from people in that regard. The problem with flying inside a giant centrifuge is that, once the bird is in the air and no longer in contact with the centrifuge, it is no longer being carried along the same rotating trajectory as the environment around it.



So, what would happen? Initially, at least, probably nothing too dramatic. If the colony is large enough, then the discrepancy between the bird's launch vector and the spin of the ground will not be noticeable, and since the bird is already moving at the same velocity as the cylinder is spinning, it should be pretty easy for the bird to fly just like it would on Earth, though it will need to learn how to adjust for an upward curving horizon. There will be problems, though. You might see some weirdness going on if a bird gets disoriented and flies too close to the central axis of the space station, where there's no artificial gravity. Also, a bird flaps its wings to fly higher and uses gravity to descend, but that won't work nearly as well in a colony because the inertial motion vector it's flying against won't stay directly downward at a constant rate like gravity would… so landing could be an issue.

As for airplanes… that's another headache for another day!