Verifying Account · 7:18am Jul 22nd, 2017
Just a thing here to link my account to my account on another site.
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Hey guys, still not dead! Still writing, in fact!
Finally making some progress by changing how I approach the problem... I think.
Anyways, I drew a thing, too. But I don't want to publish it places and all until I'm ready to "advertise" the finished re-write (like, once the already-written stuff is finished)... But I also really wanna share it!
So here's a tiny ant-version. Please don't post it other places. Though that would be really annoying, too, because it's so tiny.
(Actually maybe more like a mouse-version?)
Just developing some characters and stuff. You haven't met her yet. She, and this moment, are from the earliest dawn of the Blades of Night, when the organization first came into existence.
You know, I've been watching ReCreators, and I'm just thinking to myself... What would my characters think if they met me?
...They have no idea how cute I think they are, even when they're being intense and stuff.
Oh hai, how's it been?
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Life has been life, with all its crazy mundanity. Been going to college, launched a high-powered rocket on an engineering team, falling in love with Stellaris, actually getting into some of the meat of relativity, reading a friend or two's stuff, commenting on it, all that stuff. Also really falling in love with exploring the earliest days of the Blades.
Oh, that is p cool.
I've been doing "computer stuff" for various clients in the "Near DC" area for the last few years now. Managing to write a bit here and there - some pony and some HFY stories.
Speaking of rockets - you might find this interesting.
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Did you write it? The prose is a little crass, but very entertaining. At first I wasn't sure exactly what the deal with scooping the oxygen was - but then I realized it was for the return trip, which makes sense. Oxygen, after all, is like 8x the mass of the hydrogen - actually closer to 5, since rockets don't burn stoichiometic. Neat reference on the J-2. I don't know of any other engines that changed their mix ratio, but that was darn amazing that it did that. Really squeezed every drop of delta-v out of those propellant tanks.
Lol'd at the "really long straw" part.
That chapter seemed a bit heavy on tell than show, but that's almost certainly due to the sort of skimming-over nature of it. I, myself, thinking of times like this in my own fics I've considered writing, have wondered how to write these kinds of scenes. Interesting to note. Maybe I could also take some notes on how Apollo astronauts described their missions.
While the text was very flavorful and that was entertaining, I wonder if it wasn't a bit too strong - at least the impression of constant terror and a tin can of death. I don't think astronauts ever really speak ill of the craft that carry them. Just more amazed that they work as well as they do. Here's an amazing piece of work, probably my single favorite aerospace video ever. Not in the cynical "this is insane" sort of attitude, but more like "oh my gosh this thing is incredible" sort of way.
One little editorial note - it was also a bit hard for me to keep track of what was happening on the "There was a shrill roar as tiny rockets removed a great swath of our wing’s surface", then fans came in, but I think I got it now. It's like you were hiding helicopter rotors inside wings, and just took the wings off entirely, leaving the rotors. Though I don't entirely get why you'd be using rotors for 15 seconds instead of a small retromotor. Soyuz uses a small solid retromotor just a moment before landing to slow down for impact. But if you're landing the thing like a Falcon 9 first stage, standing up, then it makes sense. Well, kinda. I think? Might make more sense to use a little bit of the hydrolox. Though I guess it's not resuable, so if you can stage the rotors away then that might be better.
This would mean you've gone awfully far to only land once, though, if it's interstellar, as it seems to be.
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Yeah, little side story i started recently. More of it here.
I suppose this particular chapter is a bit telly, given that its locked into this guy's POV, and only describes what he's experiencing while strapped into his seat. As you might notice, he is a bit crass and dare I say, salty. Kind of a fish out of water, but he's not completely clueless, and the Belters aren't entirely without their flaws in reasoning.
Mostly this chapter was just a bunch of tech wankery describing how you'd land a crew of people on an uncharted inhospitable world, and reasonably expect to return them to orbit. Also showing off the Belter's batshit insane practicality when it comes to engineering.
Of course the rest of the story is about a ship full of assholes and a sexually inappropriate alien sand dragon exploring a dangerous world to find out what happened to a previous expedition.