The SNark S01E06 “Two by Two“

Previously on The Ark:

“You’re building a bioshelter farm on the ship! That’s amazing!“

“All the other doctors died in the event and I am left to deal with all
these injured people…“

“You work where on the ship?“
“Waste management“
“Yeah, well, not anymore“
“Alicia Nevins, you are now Chief Life Support”

“I’m doing another EVA“
“Why?“
“To figure out what the hell hit us, why else?“

“It’s some kind of crystal thing wedged in there. Lane! The glove’s
fingers are nearly off!“

“Get with Angus on the new element he’s been analyzing“

IAN: IT’S NOT AN ELEMENT!

“It’s an early warning system in case we come within range of the element
again.“

IAN: IT’S NOT AN ELEMENT!

“What will it take to get us back up to near lightspeed?”
“We only have one engine, and if it blows we’re dead in the water“
“We’re just going to have to push it as far as we can“

“I’ve seen your medical records. They’re too perfect to be real“

“There is something on the ship that you need to know about“

“I will save this ship for one simple reason… To save William Trust”

“Now it’s your duty to keep Trust safe”

3.2 EARTH MONTHS LATER

Department head briefing. For no obvious reason the cute assistant security
guard is there saying nothing but smiling inappropriately.

The engines are only running at 50% because they had to eject too much
uranium 238 during the meltdown.

Glasses Girl says they are “running a spectral analysis on every chunk of
rock we pass on route. You know, planets, planetoids, moons…”

NONE OF THOSE THINGS ARE IN THE VOID BETWEEN EARTH AND ALPHA CENTAURI!

Hot Serbian engineer says that if they don’t find U-238 in the next two
weeks, the ship will instantly stop stone cold dead, and never move again.

THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!

Before they go back to work, Angus MacGyver has a surprise for them in the
mess hall. What looks to be one tiny, red potato, each! The first harvest!

The farm is in the bioshelter, which is apparently what they call the domes
that are scattered all over the ship which are used for cargo storage. This
one, which is the top most part of the ship, is deck 3R. They call it that
because it’s the very top and it’s dead center.

Alone in a corridor, the android Brice collapses!

The android Brice wakes up in one of the stacks of bunks they share. He
asks assistant security babe Jelena, if she saw who moved him there.
Inexplicably, she didn’t.

Robotic clone Captain Garnet asks asshole assistant Lane over to get
drunk. Ian complains that Garnet is not the Captain. Fred suggests Ian
check his own Wikipedia, which says otherwise.

Long range sensors have detected a planet rich in uranium 238! Best of all
they don’t even have to detour. It’s directly ahead of them!

So the original plan was to go through this heavily populated area of space
at 4/5 the speed of light while everybody was asleep?

But they don’t have enough uranium 238 to get to the uranium 238!

Lane wants to use the solar sails! Captain Garnet says the sails are only
designed for use inside the Próxima system! She actually identifies the
star as Alpha Centauri, which removes my last possible fanwank, which was
that somehow they were calling something else Proxima B. They aren’t. They
are going to the absolute closest star to Earth and what at this point is
the absolute closest star to the Ark itself. So naturally, Android Brice
says:

“If we could find a closer star, would that be any use?“

NO YOU, SERBIAN SIMPLETONS. THERE IS NOT A CLOSER STAR! YOU ARE IN THE VOID
BETWEEN THE TWO CLOSEST STARS!

“Because we are about to pass a yellow binary dwarf system”

NO! YOU ARE NOT! STOP SAYING THINGS LIKE THAT!

Glasses girl chimes in:

“If we apply the Tisserand parameter to the momentum of the fastest star in
the binary, it should accelerate us toward the planet where the fuel is!
Ooo! And then we can open the sails, and gain a multiplier of at least
two!”

(Tisserand's parameter (or Tisserand's invariant) is a value calculated
from several orbital elements (semi-major axis, orbital eccentricity and
inclination) of a relatively small object and a larger "perturbing body".
It is used to distinguish different kinds of orbits.)

Yes, they are going to slingshot around the star. And that multiplier of at
least two should probably propel them translight.

Hot Serbian engineer turns out to be the one who somehow picked up Brice,
who must mass twice her, probably more with all his robotic parts, and got
him to his bunk without anyone noticing. They scream at each other in two
languages. neither of which I understand, nor does whoever writes the close
captioning. Romantic tension ensues.

Lane visits the corpsicles of Trust, and his hot cha-cha wife. A flashback
ensues in which we learn that only the early arks have near light speed
engines; the later arks have faster than light engines! Trust will be on
ark five. Assuming he works out the FTL bugs… she mentions closer
destinations like Proxima, B and Ross 128B.

(Ross 128 b is a confirmed Earth-sized exoplanet, likely rocky, that is
orbiting within the inner habitable zone of the red dwarf Ross 128, at a
distance of around 11 light-years from Earth.)

Why did Lane have to go in person to visit the frozen lifeless corpses that
he hasn’t been near in 3.2 months? Why, so he could drop his tablet. Why
did he have to drop his tablet? So he could stumble upon the secret door to
the secret room within the secret room that has bunches of test tubes with
clear fluid marked things like snake, sparrow, sea lion, mallard, pig,
orangutan, elephant shrew …

I have no idea why this is a revelation, much less a secret.

Meanwhile, glasses girl has run her numbers and says the slingshot will
work. She has a hologram of the binary star system where the smaller of the
pair is about the distance from the larger that the moon is from the earth.
The sizes are about the same as well. So it’s a quarter of 1,000,000 miles
away instead of the hundreds of millions of miles away it should be.
Shirley this is only true of the representative hologram.

Serbian security robot confronts the doctor about her taking amphetamines
constantly for the last 3.2 earth months. I’m not really sure what he was
busy doing until this.

The ark gets really really close to the binary star system until the bridge
is blazing white before they lower the ships sunglasses. We can now see
that the two stars are maybe 3,000,000 miles apart so they’re only off by
hundreds of times rather than thousands of times.

They slingshot around the star! At a distance of a couple hundred thousand
miles. Also, the ark is clearly larger than the Earth.

Suddenly, there is a solar flare! At least they tell us there is a solar
flare. We didn’t see anything that looked like a solar flare.

A corner of one of the aft dozen solar sails has a crimp in it! This means
that instead of escaping the stars gravity well at greater than the speed
of light, they will fall back into it and all die horribly. Boy howdy this
ships systems are really all or nothing, aren’t they?

The ship stops completely, and begins to fall backwards into the star! Only
a suicide spacewalk can save them! Only a couple of Slavinsky cramps can
fix the sail! The women volunteer, because they already have Slavinsky
cramps! But the robot clone ginger Captain may be immune to solar
radiation!

The clamps are attached! The sales are trimmed! The ark lurches forward at
incredible velocity!

But the robot clone ginger Captain may not be as immune to solar radiation
as she thought. They’ve soaked little pieces of toilet paper and stuck
them all over her face to make her look like she has leprosy just like they
used to recommend in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.

Thrust is approaching breakaway! Everyone hold on! But they only said that
to the people on the bridge not the 150 people wandering around the ship
who are thrown violently into the walls!

Wait a minute. They were already going ridiculously fast away from the
star. What is this breakaway and why did it cause people to fly across the
ship at right angles to the direction of flight?

They continue to accelerate! They finally taper off at 3.8 times their
original speed!

Suddenly the alarms go off! The mystery planet they are headed for which is
just loaded with U-238 is also loaded with the evil element that rips off
your fingers, although only temporarily!

IAN: IT’S NOT AN ELEMENT!

After a Ryan Reynolds mint mobile commercial, which is amazingly even
stupider than the show, the stupidity of the show resumes.

So the magic planet, that they have the momentum, but not the fuel, to
reach, has both goodness and badness on it. Interminable arguing erupts as
to whether to make a change course or not. Nobody mentions that if they
change course, they will no longer be headed for Proxima B, and once the
momentum wears off they’ll just come to a stop going the wrong way and all
die horribly. There really don’t seem to be a lot of options here.

If only there was a way to go faster than the Ark!

On Sat, 11 Mar 2023 17:28:39 -0700, anim8rfsk <anim8rfsk@cox.net>
wrote:

>The SNark S01E06 “Two by Two“
>
>Previously on The Ark:
>

>3.2 EARTH MONTHS LATER
>
>Department head briefing. For no obvious reason the cute assistant security
>guard is there saying nothing but smiling inappropriately.
>
>The engines are only running at 50% because they had to eject too much
>uranium 238 during the meltdown.
>
>Glasses Girl says they are “running a spectral analysis on every chunk of
>rock we pass on route. You know, planets, planetoids, moons…”
>
>NONE OF THOSE THINGS ARE IN THE VOID BETWEEN EARTH AND ALPHA CENTAURI!

How do you know if you've never been out there? Perhaps space is full
of dark planets/moons/planetoids that we can't detect while stuck in
our solar system. ;)

>Hot Serbian engineer says that if they don’t find U-238 in the next two
>weeks, the ship will instantly stop stone cold dead, and never move again.
>
>THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!

Their laws of physics are clearly not the same as ours and aren't even
consistent from space to space even on board the ship.

>Before they go back to work, Angus MacGyver has a surprise for them in the
>mess hall. What looks to be one tiny, red potato, each! The first harvest!
>
>The farm is in the bioshelter, which is apparently what they call the domes
>that are scattered all over the ship which are used for cargo storage. This
>one, which is the top most part of the ship, is deck 3R. They call it that
>because it’s the very top and it’s dead center.

Makes you wonder how a top of the ship can exist if the ship is
rotating and if that part of the ship does not rotate then how does it
maintain any semblance of normal Earth gravity.

>Alone in a corridor, the android Brice collapses!
>
>The android Brice wakes up in one of the stacks of bunks they share. He
>asks assistant security babe Jelena, if she saw who moved him there.
>Inexplicably, she didn’t.

She's a sound sleeper.

>Robotic clone Captain Garnet asks asshole assistant Lane over to get
>drunk. Ian complains that Garnet is not the Captain. Fred suggests Ian
>check his own Wikipedia, which says otherwise.

Ian can add it to his list of things to do.

>Long range sensors have detected a planet rich in uranium 238! Best of all
>they don’t even have to detour. It’s directly ahead of them!
>
>So the original plan was to go through this heavily populated area of space
>at 4/5 the speed of light while everybody was asleep?

Yep, there's nothing dangerous out in space. Or they have great
sensors that can pick up these dangers rogue planets and move the ship
out of the way automatically, but not if they encounter some unknown
element which should have been detected as a mass in space even if the
sensors couldn't identify it, but even so they can risk their lives
with this automated system (maybe Trust really is Musk in a different
life.)

>But they don’t have enough uranium 238 to get to the uranium 238!

Oh no!!!

>Lane wants to use the solar sails! Captain Garnet says the sails are only
>designed for use inside the Próxima system! She actually identifies the
>star as Alpha Centauri, which removes my last possible fanwank, which was
>that somehow they were calling something else Proxima B. They aren’t. They
>are going to the absolute closest star to Earth and what at this point is
>the absolute closest star to the Ark itself.

Except for all these stars they keep passing as they are traveling to
Proxima.

>So naturally, Android Brice
>says:
>
>“If we could find a closer star, would that be any use?“
>
>NO YOU, SERBIAN SIMPLETONS. THERE IS NOT A CLOSER STAR! YOU ARE IN THE VOID
>BETWEEN THE TWO CLOSEST STARS!
>
>“Because we are about to pass a yellow binary dwarf system”
>
>NO! YOU ARE NOT! STOP SAYING THINGS LIKE THAT!
>
>Glasses girl chimes in:
>
>“If we apply the Tisserand parameter to the momentum of the fastest star in
>the binary, it should accelerate us toward the planet where the fuel is!
>Ooo! And then we can open the sails, and gain a multiplier of at least
>two!”
>
>(Tisserand's parameter (or Tisserand's invariant) is a value calculated
>from several orbital elements (semi-major axis, orbital eccentricity and
>inclination) of a relatively small object and a larger "perturbing body".
>It is used to distinguish different kinds of orbits.)
>
>Yes, they are going to slingshot around the star. And that multiplier of at
>least two should probably propel them translight.

Makes you wonder where this star system came from unless we go back to
the idea that their universe is nothing like ours what with extra star
systems (enough that I would believe they are closer to the center of
the galaxy given how many star systems they appear to be passing on
the way to Proxima.)

>Hot Serbian engineer turns out to be the one who somehow picked up Brice,
>who must mass twice her, probably more with all his robotic parts, and got
>him to his bunk without anyone noticing. They scream at each other in two
>languages. neither of which I understand, nor does whoever writes the close
>captioning. Romantic tension ensues.

LOL. I at least picked some of his Scottish but only some. No idea
what she was saying but the tone suggested something other than
romance.

>Lane visits the corpsicles of Trust, and his hot cha-cha wife. A flashback
>ensues in which we learn that only the early arks have near light speed
>engines; the later arks have faster than light engines! Trust will be on
>ark five. Assuming he works out the FTL bugs… she mentions closer
>destinations like Proxima, B and Ross 128B.

Hence the thought that either writer #2 contributed to writer #1's
writing for this episode or the existence of a writer #3 that combines
#2's knowledge of science with #1's disdain for science so we get bits
of scientific facts tossed in with a complete disregard for the laws
of physics.

>(Ross 128 b is a confirmed Earth-sized exoplanet, likely rocky, that is
>orbiting within the inner habitable zone of the red dwarf Ross 128, at a
>distance of around 11 light-years from Earth.)
>
>Why did Lane have to go in person to visit the frozen lifeless corpses that
>he hasn’t been near in 3.2 months? Why, so he could drop his tablet. Why
>did he have to drop his tablet? So he could stumble upon the secret door to
>the secret room within the secret room that has bunches of test tubes with
>clear fluid marked things like snake, sparrow, sea lion, mallard, pig,
>orangutan, elephant shrew …
>
>I have no idea why this is a revelation, much less a secret.

Yeah, you would have to imagine they didn't think they were just going
to find a habitable planet full of life that humans can safely
consume. The natural plan is to take along as much as needed to start
the terra-forming process of planting grass/trees and seeding the
rivers/lakes/oceans. It's the most basic of ideas when considering
colonizing any new planet and yet it's treated as some amazing idea
that had to be kept secret from the rest of the ship.

>Meanwhile, glasses girl has run her numbers and says the slingshot will
>work. She has a hologram of the binary star system where the smaller of the
>pair is about the distance from the larger that the moon is from the earth.
>The sizes are about the same as well. So it’s a quarter of 1,000,000 miles
>away instead of the hundreds of millions of miles away it should be.
>Shirley this is only true of the representative hologram.
>
>Serbian security robot confronts the doctor about her taking amphetamines
>constantly for the last 3.2 earth months. I’m not really sure what he was
>busy doing until this.

He's been busy.. I got nothing.

>The ark gets really really close to the binary star system until the bridge
>is blazing white before they lower the ships sunglasses. We can now see
>that the two stars are maybe 3,000,000 miles apart so they’re only off by
>hundreds of times rather than thousands of times.
>
>They slingshot around the star! At a distance of a couple hundred thousand
>miles. Also, the ark is clearly larger than the Earth.
>
>Suddenly, there is a solar flare! At least they tell us there is a solar
>flare. We didn’t see anything that looked like a solar flare.
>
>A corner of one of the aft dozen solar sails has a crimp in it! This means
>that instead of escaping the stars gravity well at greater than the speed
>of light, they will fall back into it and all die horribly. Boy howdy this
>ships systems are really all or nothing, aren’t they?

It's a ship made for gamblers.

>The ship stops completely, and begins to fall backwards into the star! Only
>a suicide spacewalk can save them! Only a couple of Slavinsky cramps can
>fix the sail! The women volunteer, because they already have Slavinsky
>cramps! But the robot clone ginger Captain may be immune to solar
>radiation!
>
>The clamps are attached! The sales are trimmed! The ark lurches forward at
>incredible velocity!

shawn <nanoflower@notforg.m.a.i.l.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Mar 2023 17:28:39 -0700, anim8rfsk <anim8rfsk@cox.net>
> wrote:
>
>> The SNark S01E06 “Two by Two“
>>
>> Previously on The Ark:
>>
>
>> 3.2 EARTH MONTHS LATER
>>
>> Department head briefing. For no obvious reason the cute assistant security
>> guard is there saying nothing but smiling inappropriately.
>>
>> The engines are only running at 50% because they had to eject too much
>> uranium 238 during the meltdown.
>>
>> Glasses Girl says they are “running a spectral analysis on every chunk of
>> rock we pass on route. You know, planets, planetoids, moons…”
>>
>> NONE OF THOSE THINGS ARE IN THE VOID BETWEEN EARTH AND ALPHA CENTAURI!
>
> How do you know if you've never been out there? Perhaps space is full
> of dark planets/moons/planetoids that we can't detect while stuck in
> our solar system. ;)

Lol

>
>> Hot Serbian engineer says that if they don’t find U-238 in the next two
>> weeks, the ship will instantly stop stone cold dead, and never move again.
>>
>> THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!
>
> Their laws of physics are clearly not the same as ours and aren't even
> consistent from space to space even on board the ship.
>
>> Before they go back to work, Angus MacGyver has a surprise for them in the
>> mess hall. What looks to be one tiny, red potato, each! The first harvest!
>>
>> The farm is in the bioshelter, which is apparently what they call the domes
>> that are scattered all over the ship which are used for cargo storage. This
>> one, which is the top most part of the ship, is deck 3R. They call it that
>> because it’s the very top and it’s dead center.
>
> Makes you wonder how a top of the ship can exist if the ship is
> rotating and if that part of the ship does not rotate then how does it
> maintain any semblance of normal Earth gravity.

Also, why are they rotating those sections anyway? Wasn’t that all the
sleeping pods were everybody’s dead? They have to be using a ton of power
to keep those things going.

>
>> Alone in a corridor, the android Brice collapses!
>>
>> The android Brice wakes up in one of the stacks of bunks they share. He
>> asks assistant security babe Jelena, if she saw who moved him there.
>> Inexplicably, she didn’t.
>
> She's a sound sleeper.

As is everybody else

>
>> Robotic clone Captain Garnet asks asshole assistant Lane over to get
>> drunk. Ian complains that Garnet is not the Captain. Fred suggests Ian
>> check his own Wikipedia, which says otherwise.
>
> Ian can add it to his list of things to do.
>
>> Long range sensors have detected a planet rich in uranium 238! Best of all
>> they don’t even have to detour. It’s directly ahead of them!
>>
>> So the original plan was to go through this heavily populated area of space
>> at 4/5 the speed of light while everybody was asleep?
>
> Yep, there's nothing dangerous out in space. Or they have great
> sensors that can pick up these dangers rogue planets and move the ship
> out of the way automatically, but not if they encounter some unknown
> element which should have been detected as a mass in space even if the
> sensors couldn't identify it, but even so they can risk their lives
> with this automated system (maybe Trust really is Musk in a different
> life.)
>
>
>> But they don’t have enough uranium 238 to get to the uranium 238!
>
> Oh no!!!
>
>> Lane wants to use the solar sails! Captain Garnet says the sails are only
>> designed for use inside the Próxima system! She actually identifies the
>> star as Alpha Centauri, which removes my last possible fanwank, which was
>> that somehow they were calling something else Proxima B. They aren’t. They
>> are going to the absolute closest star to Earth and what at this point is
>> the absolute closest star to the Ark itself.
>
> Except for all these stars they keep passing as they are traveling to
> Proxima.
>
>> So naturally, Android Brice
>> says:
>>
>> “If we could find a closer star, would that be any use?“
>>
>> NO YOU, SERBIAN SIMPLETONS. THERE IS NOT A CLOSER STAR! YOU ARE IN THE VOID
>> BETWEEN THE TWO CLOSEST STARS!
>>
>> “Because we are about to pass a yellow binary dwarf system”
>>
>> NO! YOU ARE NOT! STOP SAYING THINGS LIKE THAT!
>>
>> Glasses girl chimes in:
>>
>> “If we apply the Tisserand parameter to the momentum of the fastest star in
>> the binary, it should accelerate us toward the planet where the fuel is!
>> Ooo! And then we can open the sails, and gain a multiplier of at least
>> two!”
>>
>> (Tisserand's parameter (or Tisserand's invariant) is a value calculated
>> from several orbital elements (semi-major axis, orbital eccentricity and
>> inclination) of a relatively small object and a larger "perturbing body".
>> It is used to distinguish different kinds of orbits.)
>>
>> Yes, they are going to slingshot around the star. And that multiplier of at
>> least two should probably propel them translight.
>
> Makes you wonder where this star system came from unless we go back to
> the idea that their universe is nothing like ours what with extra star
> systems (enough that I would believe they are closer to the center of
> the galaxy given how many star systems they appear to be passing on
> the way to Proxima.)
>
>> Hot Serbian engineer turns out to be the one who somehow picked up Brice,
>> who must mass twice her, probably more with all his robotic parts, and got
>> him to his bunk without anyone noticing. They scream at each other in two
>> languages. neither of which I understand, nor does whoever writes the close
>> captioning. Romantic tension ensues.
>
> LOL. I at least picked some of his Scottish but only some. No idea
> what she was saying but the tone suggested something other than
> romance.
>
>> Lane visits the corpsicles of Trust, and his hot cha-cha wife. A flashback
>> ensues in which we learn that only the early arks have near light speed
>> engines; the later arks have faster than light engines! Trust will be on
>> ark five. Assuming he works out the FTL bugs… she mentions closer
>> destinations like Proxima, B and Ross 128B.
>
> Hence the thought that either writer #2 contributed to writer #1's
> writing for this episode or the existence of a writer #3 that combines
> #2's knowledge of science with #1's disdain for science so we get bits
> of scientific facts tossed in with a complete disregard for the laws
> of physics.
>
>> (Ross 128 b is a confirmed Earth-sized exoplanet, likely rocky, that is
>> orbiting within the inner habitable zone of the red dwarf Ross 128, at a
>> distance of around 11 light-years from Earth.)
>>
>> Why did Lane have to go in person to visit the frozen lifeless corpses that
>> he hasn’t been near in 3.2 months? Why, so he could drop his tablet. Why
>> did he have to drop his tablet? So he could stumble upon the secret door to
>> the secret room within the secret room that has bunches of test tubes with
>> clear fluid marked things like snake, sparrow, sea lion, mallard, pig,
>> orangutan, elephant shrew …
>>
>> I have no idea why this is a revelation, much less a secret.
>
> Yeah, you would have to imagine they didn't think they were just going
> to find a habitable planet full of life that humans can safely
> consume. The natural plan is to take along as much as needed to start
> the terra-forming process of planting grass/trees and seeding the
> rivers/lakes/oceans. It's the most basic of ideas when considering
> colonizing any new planet and yet it's treated as some amazing idea
> that had to be kept secret from the rest of the ship.

Yep, it didn’t ever occurred to me that they did not have at least seeds or
somethings stored away.

>
>
>> Meanwhile, glasses girl has run her numbers and says the slingshot will
>> work. She has a hologram of the binary star system where the smaller of the
>> pair is about the distance from the larger that the moon is from the earth.
>> The sizes are about the same as well. So it’s a quarter of 1,000,000 miles
>> away instead of the hundreds of millions of miles away it should be.
>> Shirley this is only true of the representative hologram.
>>
>> Serbian security robot confronts the doctor about her taking amphetamines
>> constantly for the last 3.2 earth months. I’m not really sure what he was
>> busy doing until this.
>
> He's been busy.. I got nothing.
>
>> The ark gets really really close to the binary star system until the bridge
>> is blazing white before they lower the ships sunglasses. We can now see
>> that the two stars are maybe 3,000,000 miles apart so they’re only off by
>> hundreds of times rather than thousands of times.
>>
>> They slingshot around the star! At a distance of a couple hundred thousand
>> miles. Also, the ark is clearly larger than the Earth.
>>
>> Suddenly, there is a solar flare! At least they tell us there is a solar
>> flare. We didn’t see anything that looked like a solar flare.
>>
>> A corner of one of the aft dozen solar sails has a crimp in it! This means
>> that instead of escaping the stars gravity well at greater than the speed
>> of light, they will fall back into it and all die horribly. Boy howdy this
>> ships systems are really all or nothing, aren’t they?
>
> It's a ship made for gamblers.
>
>> The ship stops completely, and begins to fall backwards into the star! Only
>> a suicide spacewalk can save them! Only a couple of Slavinsky cramps can
>> fix the sail! The women volunteer, because they already have Slavinsky
>> cramps! But the robot clone ginger Captain may be immune to solar
>> radiation!
>>
>> The clamps are attached! The sales are trimmed! The ark lurches forward at
>> incredible velocity!
>
> I never knew that solar sails could act like a nitrous kick to a car
> engine.
>
>> But the robot clone ginger Captain may not be as immune to solar radiation
>> as she thought. They’ve soaked little pieces of toilet paper and stuck
>> them all over her face to make her look like she has leprosy just like they
>> used to recommend in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.
>>
>> Thrust is approaching breakaway! Everyone hold on! But they only said that
>> to the people on the bridge not the 150 people wandering around the ship
>> who are thrown violently into the walls!
>>
>> Wait a minute. They were already going ridiculously fast away from the
>> star. What is this breakaway and why did it cause people to fly across the
>> ship at right angles to the direction of flight?
>
> That's the nitrous kick that solar sails give you. As I said in my
> response to WDYW it's not an instantaneous kick, but one that takes a
> few moments to build up and then WOOOSH!
>
>> They continue to accelerate! They finally taper off at 3.8 times their
>> original speed!
>
> So they are going faster than light now? I said the normal rules of
> physics don't apply in this universe and this bit of the show just
> proves my point. Or the writer of this bit hasn't a clue how the real
> world works or cares to learn.

On 2023-03-12 02:14:52 +0000, shawn said:

> On Sat, 11 Mar 2023 17:28:39 -0700, anim8rfsk <anim8rfsk@cox.net>
> wrote:
>
>> The SNark S01E06 “Two by Two“
>>
>> Previously on The Ark:
>>
>
>> 3.2 EARTH MONTHS LATER
>>
>> Department head briefing. For no obvious reason the cute assistant security
>> guard is there saying nothing but smiling inappropriately.
>>
>> [snip - I'll get to the rest in my own followup!]
>> Robotic clone Captain Garnet asks asshole assistant Lane over to get
>> drunk. Ian complains that Garnet is not the Captain. Fred suggests Ian
>> check his own Wikipedia, which says otherwise.
>
> Ian can add it to his list of things to do.

Actually, *I* am the one that added to Wiki that she is the "de facto
captain". But, yeah - she's not ranked captain - they've all just
decided to go along with her making herself "captain"!

>> Lane wants to use the solar sails! Captain Garnet says the sails are only
>> designed for use inside the Próxima system! She actually identifies the
>> star as Alpha Centauri, which removes my last possible fanwank, which was
>> that somehow they were calling something else Proxima B. They aren’t. They
>> are going to the absolute closest star to Earth and what at this point is
>> the absolute closest star to the Ark itself.
>
> Except for all these stars they keep passing as they are traveling to
> Proxima.

Yeah, I'll get to this in my followup too.

>> Suddenly the alarms go off! The mystery planet they are headed for which is
>> just loaded with U-238 is also loaded with the evil element that rips off
>> your fingers, although only temporarily!
>>
>> IAN: IT’S NOT AN ELEMENT!
>
> It's a tumor!

Out of all of the DVDs I checked, my DVD of "Kingergarden Cop" looked
by far the worst - it's was almost unwatchable on the new TV: it wasn't
just the resolution levels - it's that the colors were also off! (not
"HDR"?!).

>> [snip]
>> The shuttle is headed for the mystery planet! With copilot Eva just in case
>> Robot Brice passes out again!
>>
>> Eva starts hen pecking him like the wife in any of these Medicare advantage
>> commercials, causing Robot Brice to almost immediately pass out!
>>
>> Eva panics! “Wake up! I can’t pilot this hunk of metal alone! WAKE UP!“
>>
>> So… What exactly was the point of you going along then?
>
> She was going to pretend to have medical knowledge (or maybe they
> instantly pick up such knowledge when the situation calls for it) or
> maybe she was going to call back to the ship and ask for help and then
> spend the next hour going back and forth over what was happening and
> why she didn't tell anyone about it until the shuttle mercifully rams
> the planet.

No that Harris is gone, Eva wants to *jump* Brice!!

>> Back on the ark, Captain Garnet awakens with her face completely covered in
>> white cream. Let’s call it Greek yogurt.
>
> Geek yogurt.

Looking like that, I don't think Angus is going to be dreaming about
her as a sexbot anymore!!

--
"Who would ever do this to him!?" - HottCiara on DOOL (04-27-2020), asking
who would stab Victor Kirakis... How about ANYONE WHO'S EVER MET HIM??!!

On 2023-03-12 00:28:39 +0000, anim8rfsk said:

> The SNark S01E06 “Two by Two“
>
> Previously on The Ark:
>
> “You’re building a bioshelter farm on the ship! That’s amazing!“
>
> “All the other doctors died in the event and I am left to deal with all
> these injured people…“
>
> “You work where on the ship?“
> “Waste management“
> “Yeah, well, not anymore“
> “Alicia Nevins, you are now Chief Life Support”
>
> “I’m doing another EVA“
> “Why?“
> “To figure out what the hell hit us, why else?“
>
> “It’s some kind of crystal thing wedged in there. Lane! The glove’s
> fingers are nearly off!“
>
> “Get with Angus on the new element he’s been analyzing“
>
> IAN: IT’S NOT AN ELEMENT!
>
> “It’s an early warning system in case we come within range of the element
> again.“
>
> IAN: IT’S NOT AN ELEMENT!

Like I said in WDYW? they could amazingly fix a lot of the problems on
this show if they would just use different word choices, or revise
their premise a little...

> “What will it take to get us back up to near lightspeed?”
> “We only have one engine, and if it blows we’re dead in the water“
> “We’re just going to have to push it as far as we can“
>
> “I’ve seen your medical records. They’re too perfect to be real“
>
> “There is something on the ship that you need to know about“
>
> “I will save this ship for one simple reason… To save William Trust”
>
> “Now it’s your duty to keep Trust safe”
>
> 3.2 EARTH MONTHS LATER

OK, I was pissed off by that - Why did they introduce a "time-jump"?!
And why at this point in the show?! It all seems so unncessary... >:/

> Department head briefing. For no obvious reason the cute assistant security
> guard is there saying nothing but smiling inappropriately.

I didn't notice that she was there - but, yeah, she shouldn't be,
unless she's explicitly "security" for the meeting, and if so she
should be standing not sitting!

> The engines are only running at 50% because they had to eject too much
> uranium 238 during the meltdown.

Again, this is the WRONG FUCKING ISOTOPE!!

Geezus, this is just *basic* stuff they are getting wrong! >:E

> Glasses Girl says they are “running a spectral analysis on every chunk of
> rock we pass on route. You know, planets, planetoids, moons…”
>
> NONE OF THOSE THINGS ARE IN THE VOID BETWEEN EARTH AND ALPHA CENTAURI!

Again, that sentence gets fixed if she just puts the word "rogue" in
front - e.g.:

"...running a spectral analysis on every chunk of rock we pass on
route. You know, [rogue] planets, planetoids, moons..."

> Hot Serbian engineer says that if they don’t find U-238

WRONG EFFING ISOTOPE!!

> in the next two
> weeks, the ship will instantly stop stone cold dead, and never move again.
>
> THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!

Yeah, this episode was a werid mix of science that was actually right,
and "science" that was just very, incredibly, badly wrong!

> Before they go back to work, Angus MacGyver has a surprise for them in the
> mess hall. What looks to be one tiny, red potato, each! The first harvest!
>
> The farm is in the bioshelter, which is apparently what they call the domes
> that are scattered all over the ship which are used for cargo storage. This
> one, which is the top most part of the ship, is deck 3R. They call it that
> because it’s the very top and it’s dead center.
>
> Alone in a corridor, the android Brice collapses!
>
> The android Brice wakes up in one of the stacks of bunks they share. He
> asks assistant security babe Jelena, if she saw who moved him there.
> Inexplicably, she didn’t.

And she's a bitch about it too! For no reason!!

> Robotic clone Captain Garnet asks asshole assistant Lane over to get
> drunk. Ian complains that Garnet is not the Captain. Fred suggests Ian
> check his own Wikipedia, which says otherwise.

See my followup to shawn - I'm the one that added the wording "de facto
captain" to Wiki. But, yeah - she's still only ranked Lt.!!

> Long range sensors have detected a planet rich in uranium 238! Best of all
> they don’t even have to detour. It’s directly ahead of them!
>
> So the original plan was to go through this heavily populated area of space
> at 4/5 the speed of light while everybody was asleep?

Well, in their defense, they may not have known it was there.

But against the writers - again, the odds of what they need being
exactly on their flightpath is massively, incredibly *low*!! (And it's
now happend 2 or 3 times in 6 episodes!)

> But they don’t have enough uranium 238 to get to the uranium 238!

WRONG ISOTOPE!

> Lane wants to use the solar sails! Captain Garnet says the sails are only
> designed for use inside the Próxima system! She actually identifies the
> star as Alpha Centauri, which removes my last possible fanwank, which was
> that somehow they were calling something else Proxima B. They aren’t. They
> are going to the absolute closest star to Earth and what at this point is
> the absolute closest star to the Ark itself.

Yes, so there should be absolutely no "stars" in between Earth and
Proxima. Certainly nothing larger than the tiniest red dwarf or a brown
dwarf.

So, again, they get it COMPLETELY WRONG!!

And this is so easy to fix: later in the episode, they talk about going
to Ross 128 if they had just had Ark 1 going to, say, Ross 128, then
finding other stars (and s**t) along the way becomes a lot more
fanwankable!!

If you want to do this kind of idiocy, then don't have they people
going to Proxima!!

> So naturally, Android Brice
> says:
>
> “If we could find a closer star, would that be any use?“
>
> NO YOU, SERBIAN SIMPLETONS. THERE IS NOT A CLOSER STAR! YOU ARE IN THE VOID
> BETWEEN THE TWO CLOSEST STARS!
>
> “Because we are about to pass a yellow binary dwarf system”

Yeah, no - there is *no way* they'd be yellow dwarfs. This is just dumb. >:/

> NO! YOU ARE NOT! STOP SAYING THINGS LIKE THAT!
>
> Glasses girl chimes in:
>
> “If we apply the Tisserand parameter to the momentum of the fastest star in
> the binary, it should accelerate us toward the planet where the fuel is!
> Ooo! And then we can open the sails, and gain a multiplier of at least
> two!”
>
> (Tisserand's parameter (or Tisserand's invariant) is a value calculated
> from several orbital elements (semi-major axis, orbital eccentricity and
> inclination) of a relatively small object and a larger "perturbing body".
> It is used to distinguish different kinds of orbits.)
>
> Yes, they are going to slingshot around the star. And that multiplier of at
> least two should probably propel them translight.

That's not how that works!!

Also, I am nearly 100% positive the "solar sails" wouldn't help with
any of this. I dunno how fast you can travel using (just) solar sails,
but I'm betting it's nowhere near the speed of light!

Also, from Wiki: "It is only when an object approaches speeds on the
order of 30,000 km/s (1/10 the speed of light) that time dilation
becomes important." So, even at the speeds they've been going, they're
already experiencing time dilation!

> Hot Serbian engineer turns out to be the one who somehow picked up Brice,
> who must mass twice her, probably more with all his robotic parts, and got
> him to his bunk without anyone noticing. They scream at each other in two
> languages. neither of which I understand, nor does whoever writes the close
> captioning. Romantic tension ensues.

Hey, Harris is dead, dude! Eva needs to *get some*!!

Hopefully, this ends with a c-c-catfight! between Eva and Jelena!!

> Lane visits the corpsicles of Trust, and his hot cha-cha wife. A flashback
> ensues in which we learn that only the early arks have near light speed
> engines; the later arks have faster than light engines! Trust will be on
> ark five. Assuming he works out the FTL bugs… she mentions closer
> destinations like Proxima, B and Ross 128B.
>
> (Ross 128 b is a confirmed Earth-sized exoplanet, likely rocky, that is
> orbiting within the inner habitable zone of the red dwarf Ross 128, at a
> distance of around 11 light-years from Earth.)

Again, a lot of the problems on this show would go away if they'd just
made Ark 1's destination Ross 128, or something else like that!

> Why did Lane have to go in person to visit the frozen lifeless corpses that
> he hasn’t been near in 3.2 months? Why, so he could drop his tablet. Why
> did he have to drop his tablet? So he could stumble upon the secret door to
> the secret room within the secret room that has bunches of test tubes with
> clear fluid marked things like snake, sparrow, sea lion, mallard, pig,
> orangutan, elephant shrew …
>
> I have no idea why this is a revelation, much less a secret.
>
> Meanwhile, glasses girl has run her numbers and says the slingshot will
> work. She has a hologram of the binary star system where the smaller of the
> pair is about the distance from the larger that the moon is from the earth.
> The sizes are about the same as well. So it’s a quarter of 1,000,000 miles
> away instead of the hundreds of millions of miles away it should be.
> Shirley this is only true of the representative hologram.
>
> Serbian security robot confronts the doctor about her taking amphetamines
> constantly for the last 3.2 earth months. I’m not really sure what he was
> busy doing until this.