Planned Science Revisions for "Awakening" · 7:13am Mar 29th, 2013
Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. I thought I should probably start one to open another channel for interacting with my readers and critics, as I have been getting a lot of advice recently, all of it valid, but not all of it very well organized. So, I thought of giving this a go and seeing what becomes of it.
A lot of the feedback I've been getting recently has been focused less on character, pacing, and other important story elements, and more on finer details such as the actual science and grammar in "Awakening." When I'm writing, these to usually take a back seat to what I consider the heart and substance of the story. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about grammar, I just make those corrections as those comments come in, but instead this blog entry is all about the actual science and data presented in the piece.
I have compiled a little list here of the scientific issues present in the piece that I have put together out of comments posted to the story. I'm planning on fixing all of these, but it might be a while before I get around to fixing these, and before I have a solution that actually makes sense.
Things to fix:
-atmospheric conditions on the planet (for starters, ammonia isn't a gas at 180 K).
-computer science issues in chapter 5 (which would be too spoilerific if I mentioned them here)
Actually, I think that might be it for now. But the atmosphere is kind of a convoluted one to sort out.
Apparently the Luna Dream also can't turn without tearing itself apart, and would probably be reduced to a very large crater if it were to impact a planet, due to its weight. I don't really have much intention of fixing these. It's one thing to make the atmosphere of the planet composed out of nitrogen instead of ammonia, it's another to make the Luna Dream smaller. My goal isn't to be portray accurate science, but to tell a story. The needs of the character growth, plot, themes, tone, and emotion all come before scientific accuracy.
I'd like this to be an open discussion about fixes, problems that may have been missed, and anything else people want to mention regarding these issues. I am always willing to hear criticism, but that said, criticism that is designed to reconceive, rather than improve, the existing material or that is designed to validate the commentator at the expense of my self or others is not acceptable. I've had trouble with this recently, but I recognize the weak points in my writing and I am still looking to improve, and one cannot better oneself as a writer without opening up to people.
So, let's see what comes of this.
Any thoughts or criticism?
Personally, the technical issues (I'm not a scientist so I didn't even know of them until reading the comments) don't bother as much as problems with story telling or characters would, but those particular problems are absent from the storytelling so, naturally, I loved the story. To be honest, I just want a good plot and nice, relatable characters. I don't care if Ringworld is unstable or the Battlestar Galactica isn't even a feasible design in any frame or reference; I just want a great story. Awakening has given me one thus far, and as long as it keeps that up I'll enjoy it.
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My thinking is pretty much the same: story comes first. But for some people, those with a lot of knowledge in their field, little errors like the fact that ammonia can't be present in the atmosphere can break their immersion. There's just a bunch of little tiny details, and it's also not like one person has complained about it, either.
Thank you, and I hope you're just as happy with what's to come.
Compared to the changes and revisions I've made on this piece since it was in it's first draft state, these changes will be by far the smallest and least dramatic.
However, I'm also pretty blind to these issues, and could use a little help if I try to fix them.
I’m studying computer science so I may be able to help you with it, if you want.
When I read Awakening, or any other sci-fi stories, I don’t nit-pick the technical issues, most of the time I just read past them and thing nothing off them. It’s that characters and story I care abbot more. Still, if you feel you need any revisions I say go for it, so long as you don’t forget that it’s the characters, plot and overall great writing that makes Awakening great.
Much like ToixStory, not a scientist or anything so I never noticed any issues with science behind the story. I do greatly enjoy the story, it's one of the best Sci-Fi pony stories I've come across that isn't a cross-over.
I really haven't noticed any issues, though the temperature scale seems different to me. I don't know what 180 K is, but since it's a snowy plant I'm guessing it's pretty cold.
This might be a bit late, but as any ship that would be potentially to big to enter atmosphere... the Luna Dream has 0 chances of a safe entry. This can be explained away with some pseudo science; for example anything that travels very fast needs to have inertial dampeners; or even easier, the ship must have some shields of some kind. Those could help with the crash but only to a point.
Also steel tends to get red hot where friction with any oxygen(maybe some other gases) atmospheres is involved, so if that's the case part of the ship could melt the ice and sink in.
The angle of entry counts a lot, if it is just right the crash can be survived, add in some safety measures and the parts of the ship that survived can be explained that way. (This is actually used to decrease friction with the atmosphere when space crafts reenter and where angle is involved some plane crashes that happened over water became just emergency landings if the approach was good.)
Hope this helped a bit...
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Nope, it's definitely not too late to pitch in!
I know Lumina adjusted the angle, but the ship should still be smeared against the side of the planet given its mass and speed.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that, though. I kind of like the tech level where it is (they have transporters and an incredibly silly, and rather inefficient, FTL tech, but no shields, directed energy weapons, time travel, or even FTL communication), but I'm not sure why. I think it's because it's not so miraculous, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, the ship is a little bit of a pickle if I'm going to end up doing anything about it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do that particular detail...
1026004 Well then the inertial dampeners still apply. If not for them anything moving faster than the speed needed to exit earth's atmosphere should, by the laws of physics, suffer so many G forces that any living things inside would just have their organs herniate kind of instantly. That could also help the ship to reduce a lot of its speed, or at least cancel the inertia.
Another thing that could work would be to make the ship slightly smaller. Small enough that it could enter atmosphere safely, but it would be unable to maneuver in any direction beside up or down. That means slowing the descent, like what you have in the fic, would be possible.
Don't want to change the size of the ship for scientific accuracy? Just say it's made of some sort of space-age metal that has strange properties, like kinetic dispersion. I just made that up. I think I did, anyway. See? You can explain anything away by making up science terms.
Hi there, guess what? I registered on fimfiction specifically to add this comment! I love your story, by a long shot the most original I've read so far.
There's only one thing that managed to jump out at me as being distractingly odd from a technical standpoint:
In chapter five, you specifically state that "The valley walls and the wreckage of Luna Dream helped guide her, however she was not without a GPS system. A little waypoint projected on her helmet marked the path to the drill site."
First off, GPS already stands for "system" in that last letter, but more-important still, it would require a pre-existing network of geosynchronous-orbit satellites. From wikipedia's first line on the subject: "The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based satellite navigation system that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites".
Thankfully, this should be pretty simple to solve while still enabling the portrayed HUD. Just choose some alternative technology, like radar or maybe laser rangefinder triangulation relayed from the ship (not unfeasible for the range involved due to the relatively massive size of the ship, as well as the fact that the laser which bored the hole in the first place came from the Luna Dream)
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Thank you! When (after my current project is done and edited) I get around to fixing the science stuff, I'll make sure to change the GPS references.