After seeing this Picture I think it's safe to say that Rainbow Dash is somewhere on earth

4406658 Perhaps. She might have become briefly visible from Earth during a Sonic Rainboom, on the other hand. And that image would have been the result, but not with her anywhere on our world.

Still trippy though,

4406716
You never know, you just never know.

4406721 Fair enough.

4406721 I feel dumb, but... I don't see a picture.

4406864
Me neither...

4406869 Let's make a "We are dumb"-group here on Fimfiction!

Hmm, I´ve seen that a few times when I was still a kid, when flying to Bulgaria for the holidays. Thats how rainbows look from above. Never heard that you can see a full rainbow from the ground though. Still cool.

4406891
That sounds like an amazing group.

4406900 I know! You should have the honors of creating it, after all you were the inspirational beginning!

4406909
No, you should be the owner of the 'We Are Dumb' group. I insist.

4406914 Is a "We Are Dumb"-group even allowed?

I mean, they are kind of to find stories regarding something...

Not to say bad things against oneself.

4406922
Probably not.
Welp, there goes that genius and not at all insulting idea.

4406937 Yup.

4406658 I'll ready the SAMs.

4406943
She's too fast, they'd never get her.

4407099 ...Some advanced modern missiles are hypersonic... and capable of extreme manoeuvring, though I'll give it that Dash may still be able to out-manoeuver one because cartoons say fuck inertial forces, but the speed bit?

Nah.

Unless you're one of those Mach 10 Dash people, then shoo, I reject your reality and substitute my own.

4407124
Hypersonic is too slow, being only at Mach 6 or 4,500 MPH. According to this one video brony mathematicians figured that when Rainbow Dash is going her fastest age can achieve Mach 10, equal to 7,680 MPH.

Needless to say they'd be left in the dust.

This is what all rainbows look like

4406943 And you'll feel really stupid when A) Rainbow's already too far for you to aim and B) *antifun mode engaged* It's just a halo made by refracting ice crystals.

4407134 Yeah, but that speed is only obtained after she creates the Sonic Rainboom. Before that her limit is Mach 5. That same brony's math was used by Screw Attack to make the Rainbow Dash Vs Starscream death battle video. Check around 3:50 where they talk about Rainbow's speed; if you don't want to watch the whole video.

4406658 Oh my gosh... you guys really think that's RD? Because it's not. That's a solar rainbow. Nothing special really, i've seen them before over here in Puerto Rico millions of times. It happens when the sun reflects off a crystallized cloud.

4407134 And that guy is incorrect.

If Dash had reached Mach 10 she would've A: caught Rarity and the others in a fraction of the time, and B: basically had not even been visible in the stationary POV in the side view because she'd be moving too damned fast.

People look at the Mach Cone as the frame of reference however they seem to think that the show artists for a child's cartoon actually understand the mechanics of supersonic flight and sound barriers, which is inherently flawed because, well, they probably wouldn't, and even if they did they animated Dash as moving way too slow to fit that.

Not to mention the Cone formed before the barrier was even broken... so, silent sonic boom?

If you want to be technical, the show is too inconsistent to get a solid number, but using a more reliable method of distance and distance travelled in a certain time using the one stationary POV Dash actually comes out as subsonic in her frames.

But of course, that's again due to inaccuracies in animations, so I'll accept the original intent was for Dash to break the sound barrier, but I will simply not accept this Mach 10, or the even more ludicrous claim of relativistic speeds, as fact.

Particularly when it's being based on the least reliable of already unreliable methods of measurement due to a significant number of inconsistencies and other factors (Most notably the high probability of Rule of Cool overcoming reality which is common in animations).

(Also, hypersonic is Mach 5-Mach 9, not Mach 6 only.)

4407151 To the former statement: above reply, to the latter: shush I'm already killing the fun with my physics babble that I'm starting to learn from PT.

4407171
Yeah I've seen that video, a lot of people were pissed when RD won. I thought it was a good battle.

4407220
Personally I was only joking when I made this thread, just a sort of fun thing to share.

4407244
This thread is getting too mathematical for me. But I do agree that the show is too inconsistent to make an actual assessment from it, but I just don't think that the SAM would get her.

4407282 I'll have to agree to disagree. In terms of speed the missile has the advantage, Dash probably has the manoeuvrability, I'll give her that, but whether or not she realizes that instead of trying to just fly straight as fast as she can is another matter. After all, if this situation has her as to having little to no knowledge of Earth and its inhabitants' capabilities she'd probably be pretty surprised just at seeing the speed of the approaching missile, and due to her own strong arrogance she'd probably assume she can simply out speed it, after all, she believes she's the fastest thing in the skies.

Keep in mind anti-aircraft missiles are airburst, they don't actually make contact they use proximity explosions to launch a hail of high speed shrapnel that tear apart aluminium or titanium aircraft skin to shreds, all it has to do is get close.

But if she actually had the wisdom to try to out manoeuver instead of just trying to speed away, then she should be able to get away.

So it could go either way depending on what Dash does in the situation, but, personally, I think due to Dash's personality that she'd try to go flat out and out speed the missile instead of out manoeuver, in which the missile would overtake her before she could realise her mistake and change tactic.

At least in the situation where Dash is ignorant of missiles. Knowledge goes a long way into changing outcomes.

4407411
I agree with you on that, there is no way at this point in time that we could know what would happen.

4407474 Incorrect, we know exactly what will happen, we just have to do what hippy horse does.

Then we'll know. We'll know everything. We'll know the answer to life is not 42. We'll know what it really is.

4407489
Awesome art, personally I'd love to read a good fic where the mane 6 get high or something. Sadly though a lot of people on this site frown upon such things.

4406943

I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Mr. Streamer. If you were , well......

You don't want your precious cello horse to get hurt now, do you? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

4407578

You don't want your precious violin horse to get hurt now, do you? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

She's a cellist.

Well actually, canonically that's what the writers say she is, however according to a musician who made a post about it somewhere on this site the size of the instrument, and the tones it produced at the Gala are actually more consistent with a double bass, as is the stance of playing while standing, excepting that the tuning knobs are more consistent with a cello.

(Cello.)

(Double bass.)

(Best pone.)

While I don't know enough about the tones and such to compare that myself, the stance, and size seem to fit the double bass, while the overall shape of the instrument seems to actually be a mix of cello and double bass, in that the top looks cello while the bottom looks DB.

At least from what I see when looking at the two instrument's pictures.

(Of course the size bit also depends on how tall the ponies are, the general consensus is around the three and a half foot to four foot mark, which would put an Equestrian standing on their hind legs about as tall as a human, or even more so, however using the smaller scales created from the EG Angel Bunny method where a pony stands under 3ft tall in normal posture that could be a, still fairly large, cello.)

Oh wait, I was supposed to have a reaction to the hostage thing, wasn't I?

Um... whoops?

4407662

I edited my post. Now have a reaction to my blackmail.

4407684 Fine...

4407578 You wouldn't dare, you monster!

4407578 Don't hurt her, you bastard!!

4407578 Oh wait a minute.

I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Mr. Streamer. If you were , well......

Mr. Streamer.

My mistake, I had thought this was addressed to me. Whoops.

4407578
4407812

4407857 Wait, Classy you're in this group... and actually active in it? Well at least enough to have seen this.

Huh.

4408745

This is now new HAS.

Time to fuck it up royally.

4408751 Oh boi, gois.

Break their will, as yours has been broken.

You won't return to home.

4407411
Counterpoint: SARH doesn't track targets that small and IR can't lock on to body heat, 'cause hitting any random bird on the way would kind of suck. Can't aim at what you can't see.

...goddammit, I can't believe I actually even seriously thought about this just now. Next thing I know I'll be talking about waifus.

4408764 Hmm, true.

There's always those manually or laser guided and detonated missiles, but they're mainly for anti-tank use, since they're not exactly easy to fly to hit something moving really fast. And they're only short range.

Though what exactly was the minimum size that radar is set to track? I don't recall offhand, but a pegasus is a good bit larger than even large birds, still probably small enough not to track, but just curious.

4408793
The best shortwave radar available can track individual raindrops. As you can probably imagine, not a lot of those see any military use. Half of it is convention - and because in practical terms there's really no point to even being able to track anything smaller than a potential missile drone. I don't know exactly how low the limit is, because that's obviously kinda classified, but I'm guessing "at the very least as big as a person." Then again, condors do get that big.

Laser guided kinda needs a very, very steady flight path. Quadratic growth of the hypotenuse with distance and everything.

4406864 In order to see that picture click the Word Picture

4407134 Yeah but can she go to ... Ludicrous Speed (If any of you get the joke then for u)

4409387
That spaceballs reference

4408795

"at the very least as big as a person."

What's with the quotes here?

But yeah I think it's set higher than that, as I don't think they track sky divers or the like, or some of the decently sized RC model planes out there. (However I do know that some missiles are capable of locking onto a target with the cross section of a door.)

As for the laser guided, I'd think the concern is trying to keep the laser trained on a fairly small target going Mach 1+ since most laser guiding systems use a manual aim to paint the target with the laser, whether it be a moving an entire handheld launcher, utilising a joystick with a laser mounted on a carriage system of some sort, or a handheld designator.

Laser guided kinda needs a very, very steady flight path. Quadratic growth of the hypotenuse with distance and everything.

Also, what?

Are you talking about laser blooming or something here? You didn't specify what was getting exponentially larger with distance.

Nor do they need to be held on a particularly steady flight path unless they're beam riding instead of radiation homing. Even as such while I'm not sure as to how much variance a beam riding missile can compensate for there are short range AA systems that use it while being manually guided, which doesn't seem like it needs a real steady flight.

For example Britain's Starstreak beam riding missile system.

In which the disadvantages don't say anything about the requirement of a steady flight path. The closest they have is my point on the manual aim.

The training level of the operator is critical since, unlike infrared guided missiles, the operator has to track the target exactly with the sighting unit aimpoint (SACLOS). If the aircraft detects the targeting laser, it has the whole period of the missile flight time to engage in avoidance manoeuvres, which adds additional challenge to the missile operator's target-tracking task.

Mainly the last part where it says a plane utilising avoidance manoeuvers increases the challenge of the operator keeping the target locked, whereas if a very steady flight path was required once a plane started manoeuvring wildly it'd be basically listed as an impossibility to hit.

4409367 Done!
Thanks.

4409530
God, I hate geometry so much, you don't even know. You'd think having to prove all the trig functions for course credit would make you remember this shit, but noooo... I was halfway through calculus again before I figured out my mistake. You better appreciate the kind of suffering I go through for you...

Sorry, my mistake. It's actually linear to the tangens of the angle multiplied by the distance to the target, times two. In other words, very small variations at the point of origin give huge variations at the target distance, meaning that even minimal turbulences mean that the laser slips off the target. Assuming it uses beam riding. If it doesn't, it's pretty much just SARH with light instead of radiowaves.

If you didn't get that, then you don't want to know.

4409776 So in other words you just said what I said about it being extremely difficult to aim.

4409794
...well, yes. But I told you why.

...