Latest blog post: Redraw of chapter 1 is happening (2024-05-11)

Author's comment:

So as I said earlier, from this moment forth, humans will enter the story, and they will stay here this time.



Add Comment

* Required information
30000
Powered by Commentics

Comments (5)

Avatar
Senior
Lord Eric (transfer from Disqus)

Erm... he expects to get a ground expedition loaded up and on the road, drive 120 km, and set up a perimeter when they get there in the span of an hour? Even if each endpoint takes only 5 minutes and the road is a direct line, that's still nearly 1.5x highway speed.

And if you apply the same logic to the helicopters, by my research that's faster than any non-experimental helicopter physically can go.

Avatar
New
Mersharr (transfer from Disqus)

I vaguely recall helicopters to go over 300km/h

The fastest military helicopter [,][...] the Eurocopter X3 [...]reached a level flight speed of 255 knots (472 km/h) over the south of France on June 7 2013.


But still, getting them loaded that fast sounds like a challenge.

Avatar
Senior
Lord Eric (transfer from Disqus)

I have heard about a few models that can exceed the usual 260 or so km/h limit, but those are all highly specialized multirotor designs, whereas the ones the airbase scrambled are the regular single-rotor kind.

Avatar
New
Mersharr (transfer from Disqus)

Well, looking at it while somewhat awake (and having actually seen the helicopters in question): The Soviet Mi-35M (produced since 1972 and still in use with minor upgrades because, quoting my BF, it's the best helicopter design ever made), is the third-fastest helicopter (according to one top-10 list that doesn't feature a date. 8th on a top-15 list from 2020) in the world with a top-speed of 310km/h at level flight. It has a single-rotor and looks quite similar to the models on page 26 (though, there are some differences, like the doors and cockpit shape).
The Mi-35 is also the source of my vague recalling. I saw one in a museum a couple weeks ago and listened to BF swoon about it for a while. I hadn't known/realized at that point that it was even in the top 10 of fastest helicopters.
By the way, only the top 2 of the top 10 have multi-rotors.

Looking at Page 29, they are clearly NOT Mi-35, but Mi-8/17 (which I've also seen in that same museum)
Most likely a recent model like Mi-171Sh, which has a cruise speed of 260km/h and a top speed of 280km/h.
So yes, getting them loaded in time to make 120km in half an hour is a tough call.

Avatar
Regular
Dreadogastus (transfer from Disqus)

Tthe bullet-headed military officer. Always a useful tool in modern story-telling.






Share this comic



TRIVIA
Artificial Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence are not the same thing.
AIs, much like in real life, are not conscious or sapient and are more like really advanced scripts.
ACs - like Quantum - on the other hand, are properly sapient persons, but their functioning relies on a specific hardware setup as much as on code, so they cannot upload themselves to other computers.

The Back o' Beyond