Skinsuit acceleration limits in space for a flying brick character

[chasrob]

Spider silk can handle 109,000g? Amazing. So if the superman takes off from Earth orbit in the traditional flight stance, in his spider silk duds, I calculate he will land on Mars little more than 15 minutes later. Thanks.

Oops, my bad again. 25-26 minutes travel time.

 

[Klystron]

Given Mr. Brick's unexplained abilities and as a long time Superman fan, why bother with decelerating?

Unless you have a pressing plot point midway in the trip such as an alien artifact for Brick, just have your hero zip to Mars. Superman only accelerated as required by the graphics and story lines and rarely bothered decelerating AFAIK. Ka-El simply 'absorbs' his momentum with a superhero landing on his strong legs.

Heinlein describes a "skew-flip" maneuver in "Have Space Suit -- Will Travel" so that his protagonists, Kip and Peewee, can determine they are halfway to Luna and also give the characters something to do during the boring trip. The propulsion system is otherwise not described. Kip Later calculates trip times and distance then velocities and accelerations for the alien flying saucer -- actually shaped as an oblate spheroid according to Peewee -- given a 5 day trip Luna to Pluto to occupy his time while trapped in a dungeon by the Wormfaces, but I digress.

Note: I have not read a Superman comic for many years but I have seen most of the major films and would be amazed if Ka-El now bothers to turn over midway in a trip to decelerate. For skin suits consider coping Flash?

 

[chasrob]

Given Mr. Brick's unexplained abilities and as a long time Superman fan, why bother with decelerating?

Unless you have a pressing plot point midway in the trip such as an alien artifact for Brick, just have your hero zip to Mars. Superman only accelerated as required by the graphics and story lines and rarely bothered decelerating AFAIK. Ka-El simply 'absorbs' his momentum with a superhero landing on his strong legs.

Heinlein describes a "skew-flip" maneuver in "Have Space Suit -- Will Travel" so that his protagonists, Kip and Peewee, can determine they are halfway to Luna and also give the characters something to do during the boring trip. The propulsion system is otherwise not described. Kip Later calculates trip times and distance then velocities and accelerations for the alien flying saucer -- actually shaped as an oblate spheroid according to Peewee -- given a 5 day trip Luna to Pluto to occupy his time while trapped in a dungeon by the Wormfaces, but I digress.

Note: I have not read a Superman comic for many years but I have seen most of the major films and would be amazed if Ka-El now bothers to turn over midway in a trip to decelerate. For skin suits consider coping Flash?

According to the SUVAT equations, if Mr. Brick comes to a stop in one second (from 99,555 miles per second), his spider silk suit will suffer 16 million and change gees. He can absorb that, being invulnerable, but the suit will shred and the Martians will charge him with indecent exposure. :) The aliens also outfitted the suit with an altimeter, speedometer (so he wouldn’t trash the suit going faster than 4,000 mph in atmosphere), and a timer, which comes in handy when he wants to know when to coast or de-accelerate during interplanetary ventures. I could just give him an invulnerable outfit like Supes or Flash, but I thought I’d throw in that suit problem to give him another thing to deal with after he’s transformed into a super.

That Heinlein book "Have Space Suit -- Will Travel"? Have to give it a read, sounds very interesting, how he calculates trip times, etc.