Space nomenclature and terminology
MasterJedi
Veteran
Joined: 22 Oct 2010
Age: 53
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,160
Location: in an open field west of a white house
I don't know why but it bugs the ever living p... out of me when people refer to anything not of or on Earth as being "in space" like the moon is "in space" or "space aliens". Space is the void between celestial bodies. The quality of having to traverse an area doesn't make you from that area.If you were to sail across the ocean, you wouldn't be from the ocean, you'd be from your point of departure.
Another thing; why do people insist on wanting to travel to the Milky Way? We're in the Milky Way!
Oh, and there can be fiery explosions in space like if your spaceship exploded. "But there's no oxygen in space to feed the flames!" What about the oxygen already in the ship? It's like saying there wouldn't be any bubbles if a submarine exploded underwater.
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That is my spot, in an ever changing world, it is a single point of consistency. If my life were expressed as a function on a four dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, that spot, from the moment I first sat on it, would be 0-0-0-0.
[quote="MasterJedi"Oh, and there can be fiery explosions in space like if your spaceship exploded. "But there's no oxygen in space to feed the flames!" What about the oxygen already in the ship? It's like saying there wouldn't be any bubbles if a submarine exploded underwater.[/quote]
Except that the force of the explosion would tend to propel the ship's internal atmosphere outward pretty quickly - you might get a brief flash of flame, until the gases dissipated too far, but it wouldn't be a classic "fiery explosion". You get prolonged bubbles from a submarine because the surface tension of the bubbles tends to hold them together, but since surface tension is a phenomenon resulting from the interaction of a liquid and a gas, and space is void (or close enough as makes no difference), you don't get gas bubbles in vacuum.
The best visual depiction I've seen so far is the destruction of the Normandy in the opening cutscenes in Mass Effect 2 - as the ship comes apart and its remaining mass-effect curtains (which retain atmosphere in sections of the damaged ship) fail, the craft erupts in a billow of flame and sparks, quickly expanding and cooling in the vacuum. (Unfortunately, Shepard gets a really good view of this, as he drifts away in his damaged pressure suit...)
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Sodium is a metal that reacts explosively when exposed to water. Chlorine is a gas that'll kill you dead in moments. Together they make my fries taste good.
