Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: When the Sky Falls (1/26)

Comments?

I hope to maintain a posting schedule of 2 chapters per week. We'll see how that goes.

One more note. I originally intended for this to be as scientifically realistic as possible. I will admit right up front that I ended up sacrificing scientific rigor for story. Please don’t beat me up too much for that when and where you see it. I already know.

Bob

Interesting idea - if they run out of ships there are presumably plenty of rocks around in that weight range, not to mention icebergs etc.

yea, a new story. It looks very promising. Looking forward to the next part.


Kathy
www.chili-everyway.com

Hey, you're already more realistic than the show. We're easy -- just give us a good story and we're happy. And after reading chapter one, I'm happy!

You've definitely got my attention with the first part. I like the changes to the plot and the details you've added. I'm taking it as face value, as Clark is, that these guys are all legit, but I can't deny being a little worried (as I'm sure he must be) that they are doing all these tests. He's learning more about his limits, which is good. I just hope the information isn't going to come back to hurt him. Having Bernie there helps reassure me -- "a little excitable", bwa ha ha.

Oh, and I also really liked the opening, with Clark and Lois in the newsroom. Your descriptions of how off balance Clark was feeling when he compared his ability to generate stories with Lois's, took me right back to early S1 and the feeling of those early episodes. Really nicely done.

Looking forward to chapter 2,

Kathy

Hi Bob:
Great, you're posting!
regards
Artemis

This is really good. I'll be sure to follow it and I'm already looking forward to your next post. The Nightfall episode is one of my favorites.

Nan

I'm beta-ing and learning something new every time! The author's comments are great. It's obvious that Bob has done his homework here (as opposed to the writers of the original episode, who committed numerous scientific howlers.) I appreciate that. When one does the research, it may not be obvious, but it'll definitely show up in story quality.

Can I just repeat everything that KathyB said?

I like that you've tried to make it scientifically plausible. Of course that has to break down somewhere, but at least you've given us more than the show did.

Wow Bob I am impressed at the research that went in to this. It certainly makes it sound realistic. It has an interesting premise so far. I am looking forward to how well you do in building up the romance factor too. Laura

Thank you all for the feedback. As I told HappyGirl in the other thread, what was done in the show was not a plan. They are trying to save the world for goodness sake. I've never heard of a military mission that had as little planning as just sending Superman with a little air tank and a radio and saying "hit it."

Marcus said: You're right. However, the mission planner (me) has a military background and mothballed ships was what came to mind.

KathyB said: This point in time had a lot of potential. Clark has only been at the Planet for a short time. I think we sometimes tend to forget that. However, I think that this was a potential magic moment for Lois and Clark. They have just been through the Smallville visit, the Pheromone thing and then the kiss in Honeymoon. There was a real potential for their relationship to blossom at this point in time.

As I said up-top, I hope for a twice a week posting schedule. However, Iolanthe and HappyGirl have been crazy-good at pointing out gaps in during beta and that may result in a slightly slower schedule until I figure out what I'm doing.

Bob

Hi Bob!

Sorry it took me so long but there was sort of a back-log on unread new parts to get through

I really enjoyed the scientific approach. One question about the Rod from God ( (c) The History Channel - The Universe) approach: Does the structural integrity make any difference for an impactor, i.e. a ship is basically a huge piece of crumplezone instead of one big, solid object? Does this not divert a lot of the impact energy into the steelframe instead of the target, maybe simply disintegrating the ship instead of delivering the punch? Or is this irrelevant for the speeds we're talking about?

Wonder how you're going to fill up the 30+ parts after Clark smashes the Nimitz into Nightfall. (Yeah, I know, he's just juggling cruisers, not carriers.) Anyway, this makes me wonder what troubles you've cooked up. And isn't it just about time for part 2?

Michael

Crumple zones don't make momentum magically go away. Using purely made up number it means that instead of you stopping at 40 Gs for a millisecond you stop at 10 Gs for 4 milliseconds. In either case the same total momentum is transferred, just at a less damaging intensity.

In a crash, the idea behind crumpling is to absorb some of the energy involved in the deceleration. If there is no crumpling, essentially all of the momentum is transferred to the body being impacted. Crumpling allow some of the energy in the momentum to be go into the bending of the metal. The act of bending causes the mechanical energy to be converted to heat.

In this collision. there are 12,800,000 TJ of energy being applied to Nightfall. While I can't say that I've even attempted to calculate the energy that will be absorbed by the compression of the metal, I'm confident that it is a small fraction of this total. While I could be mistaken, I believe that at the velocities we're talking about, the structure of the impactor is not a factor.

Michael said: Maybe I'm going to post 30 chapters of 1-word each...

Or maybe not.

Thanks for the feedback.
Bob