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The fact that they don't know it was a missile hit says interesting things about both their surveillance optics and their comm technology. They didn't see the missile from where they are, their satellite either couldn't see it from orbit or wasn't orbiting Earth, and the shuttle did not transmit a black-box dump when it was hit. Although that last one might be because the equipment for that was destroyed.
Also, for some reason they've suddenly switched to north-up maps.
I'm guessing their satellite is further out than geosynchronous orbit (a little over 22,000 mi or 36,700 km), but under lunar orbit (under 239,000 mi or about 384,400 km). Since the image doesn't show a zoomed-in view of the shuttle, I'm guessing their cameras were set to wide-angle at the time. Even with impossibly high resolution imaging, you'd never be able to pick out the surface-to-air missile that knocked them out of the sky.
Maintaining radio silence would be necessary for a stealth mission. Of course, they could have used a tight-beam (e.g. laser) communication to their satellite, though that still might cause issue if one of our satellites crossed its path.
It actually took me a bit to figure out the orientation of the planet, since we're looking at the night side. Yeah, that looks to be north-up (rather than south-up like the other displays).
Yes, it mentioned earlier that Alliance comms use laser signals by default. The fact that we don't is part of the reason Zane thought we were primitive enough for a survey team to safely sneak around. Ofc the downside of tight-beam comms is that you have to physically point your equipment right at the receiver, which produces several extra points of failure in the event of a missile hit.
If the satellite is of use that far out, a decent place to park it might actually be the moon's Trojan points. Orbits there are self-stabilizing, so no need for any station-keeping burns, and I don't think there's anything there now. Of course, the Alliance might think that's too obvious if they're being sneaky.
On another note, I once had occasion to calculate the orbital distance at which a tide-locked pair of Earth-like planets would experience a 24-hour day. Turns out it's about 27,000 miles.
Odd, given the clothing an uniforms I presumed that the shuttle was shot down and crashed in a Western, probably North American country. But that image shows it being shot down over Central Asia? Northern Iran from where the blip is in the 5th panel.
And this is why it's kind of dumb not to notify your superiors about the real tech level of the people you want to poke around. At the very least that shuttle should have been equipped with radar warning receivers and flares/chaff. I suspect an interstellar civ like this would have modular system modules, or at least some sort of native manufacturing capacity for modifying their ships and small craft. Simple enough to whip something like that up and put it on so yanno, your whole team doesn't die to SAMs.
The story takes place somewhere within a couple thousand km radius from the city of Volgograd in Russia, but the specific location is purposefully vague, not to mention that it might not even exit in the real life, like sokovia. =P
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There's no way to communicate faster than light. If you want to send your message to another solar system, your best bet is to use a courier spaceship. It can take even a month for it to finally reach the destination, but it still beats sending it as a transmission and expecting it to arrive decades or thousands of years later.
Comments (12)
Typos: "Satellite" doesn't take a double T. In the first panel, Zane addresses Quantum as "Quatnum."
The fact that they don't know it was a missile hit says interesting things about both their surveillance optics and their comm technology. They didn't see the missile from where they are, their satellite either couldn't see it from orbit or wasn't orbiting Earth, and the shuttle did not transmit a black-box dump when it was hit. Although that last one might be because the equipment for that was destroyed.
Also, for some reason they've suddenly switched to north-up maps.
I'm guessing their satellite is further out than geosynchronous orbit (a little over 22,000 mi or 36,700 km), but under lunar orbit (under 239,000 mi or about 384,400 km). Since the image doesn't show a zoomed-in view of the shuttle, I'm guessing their cameras were set to wide-angle at the time. Even with impossibly high resolution imaging, you'd never be able to pick out the surface-to-air missile that knocked them out of the sky.
Maintaining radio silence would be necessary for a stealth mission. Of course, they could have used a tight-beam (e.g. laser) communication to their satellite, though that still might cause issue if one of our satellites crossed its path.
It actually took me a bit to figure out the orientation of the planet, since we're looking at the night side. Yeah, that looks to be north-up (rather than south-up like the other displays).
Yes, it mentioned earlier that Alliance comms use laser signals by default. The fact that we don't is part of the reason Zane thought we were primitive enough for a survey team to safely sneak around. Ofc the downside of tight-beam comms is that you have to physically point your equipment right at the receiver, which produces several extra points of failure in the event of a missile hit.
I never though about the precise orbit numbers, but in my mind it was actually further out than moon's orbit, maybe twice as far?.
If the satellite is of use that far out, a decent place to park it might actually be the moon's Trojan points. Orbits there are self-stabilizing, so no need for any station-keeping burns, and I don't think there's anything there now. Of course, the Alliance might think that's too obvious if they're being sneaky.
On another note, I once had occasion to calculate the orbital distance at which a tide-locked pair of Earth-like planets would experience a 24-hour day. Turns out it's about 27,000 miles.
As for the map... I also read The Flying Cloud, so that swath of minor landmasses between China and Australia has become fairly recognizable to me.
Odd, given the clothing an uniforms I presumed that the shuttle was shot down and crashed in a Western, probably North American country. But that image shows it being shot down over Central Asia? Northern Iran from where the blip is in the 5th panel.
And this is why it's kind of dumb not to notify your superiors about the real tech level of the people you want to poke around. At the very least that shuttle should have been equipped with radar warning receivers and flares/chaff. I suspect an interstellar civ like this would have modular system modules, or at least some sort of native manufacturing capacity for modifying their ships and small craft. Simple enough to whip something like that up and put it on so yanno, your whole team doesn't die to SAMs.
Closer to Kazakhstan by my reckoning. Still, yeah, not where I imagined given that the human MCs have English-sounding names.
The story takes place somewhere within a couple thousand km radius from the city of Volgograd in Russia, but the specific location is purposefully vague, not to mention that it might not even exit in the real life, like sokovia. =P
So western Russia, eastern Europe, northern Middle East, or somewhere in the -istan region.
Defiitely not the middle east, considering how much skin the girl had shown.