Toxoglossa 2024/12/23(Mon)19:02 No. 1101553 ID: 86847c
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A gate opens in the bleak, unnamed landscape cursed by spite. For a brief moment, there’s an inrush of air, as the void beyond pulls greedily at the atmosphere.

Toxoglossa 2024/12/23(Mon)19:02 No. 1101554 ID: 86847c
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Something massive and grey comes hurtling through just as the gate closes: a perfectly cylindrical column of dust and rock, skating above the ground at impossible speed.

Toxoglossa 2024/12/23(Mon)19:02 No. 1101555 ID: 86847c
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Air fights to get out of its way, as the chunk of regolith starts to break apart, heating up as it's rapidly compressed

The combination of pressure and heat causes the whole thing to spontaneously catch fire: exploding into a cloud of glassy fragments that disperses its kinetic energy in a cone and further scarring the blighted terrain.

Toxoglossa 2024/12/23(Mon)19:02 No. 1101556 ID: 86847c
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Mr. Ochre removes his safety goggles and steps out from the impressive walls of the safety bunker before going to check that the photoplate array fired properly in sequence. Behind him, the three mice emerge and inspect the scene. The concrete wall built to measure velocity held up surprisingly well against the explosion: its black and white stripes streaked with silica and pitted by small impacts. Downrange from the testing site, a long, ragged streak is gouged out of the landscape, stretching nearly half a mile before fading.

Penetration testing~

What are we working on, rockets?

B+.
Could have made a bigger boom.

Things can get up to a fast speed in space, with the use of magic, can't they? You don't have to worry about the rocket equation with portals, do you?

Looks like you need to either figure out moving portals or try to figure out how to attach them to a different reference frame. I'd advise the latter, since you don't want to have to account for what's probably a lot of spinning and such.

hmm, that does seem to be a piece of the moon you caught, going the guess and check method? suppose that's a fair bit easier than huge quantities of math, or at least reduce the amount of math needed

The gang is channeling Mythbusters, I see~

>>1101556

Space is indeed going very fast. You can't just "tuck and roll" a moon-landing.

So we can safely conclude; the moon is fast.

Toxoglossa 2024/12/24(Tue)19:00 No. 1101593 ID: 86847c
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Back inside the bunker, Cecil pulls the glass photoplates out of a thin ink wash and spreads out the glass panes onto a table. He sighs and adjusts his glasses, examining the sequence with a scowl on his beak. “Well, my friends, this is what we’re up against.” He waves a hand at the photos, which show the cylinder of rock as in flight, allowing the precise velocity to be analyzed. “Its as you say: because gates are relatively static, it means having to account for the speed of other celestial bodies.”

Toxoglossa 2024/12/24(Tue)19:01 No. 1101594 ID: 86847c
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“So, how fast are we talking?” Gabe asks.

“If compared to a stationary point...” Cecil stares at the pictures and continues, “We’re talking about an impact of several thousand miles per hour.”

Kol whistles and scratches his chin, “I figured it was fast, but spite me…”

“Even if we could build a craft that would survive the forces involved, anyone inside would be, well, splattered against the inside on impact.” Cecil continues, “In theory, with the proper wards, a sealed suit and a supply of bottled air, a living being should be able to explore the surface. But getting them there safely in one piece is the problem."

there is also the issue that it must be two way, it is possible to more slowly accellerate into the entrance portal so you exit the other synched with the moon, but you would be stranded.
Maybe get Clio in with this project? her portals work different, moving them is kinda the whole point of hers, and the more common portals used are based on them, so having the original to base any changes on would help. IF this is the way to go

Well, Moot and Hekal managed it. Somehow. So we know it's possible, we just gotta figure out how they did it. Even taking into account Hekal's vampire status sparing him from the need to breath up there, he still had a physical body that wouldn't react well to being splattered. We need to look into what kind of magic could be used to cancel out inertia, or cushion impacts. Don't think about how stuff is MEANT to be used, but rather how it COULD be used. Maybe Flashing Feathers would have ideas?

I think maybe you have to wonder how portals lock to their relative point on the world's surface? Technically they move anyway - this is a problem that should already be solved if you make a long distance portal across the curve, or from a low altitude to a high one. Perhaps it's been baked in to the most fundamental calculations? Or something to do with the perceptions of the portal's creator?

>>1101594

The only way to accomplish it is from a point not too far above the lunar surface, and adjust the far gate's configuration to have an exit velocity equal to the moon's orbit ... but also in the same direction of travel, as otherwise those forces will compound tremendously.

Basically it's the equivalent of stepping off a platform and onto a moving cart passing underneath, compared to launching yourself so as to land upon it at an apparent standstill.

Gabe has got a LOT of math to do.

>>1101601
while portals DO move, assuming the planet itself does, they don't in respect to eachother I *think*. for all I know that's just a limit with the math used though

>>1101594
Question: can you orient the portal so that the velocity is "upwards", allowing gravity to slow you down, at which point you use portals to get back near the surface?

Your best bet would be to create supply drops. Use portal magic to send spherical capsules containing supplies, mana, and the components you need to construct another, stronger capsule for the ride back. Now that you don't have a timer, you could plan this expedition out over decades, sending materials to the moon until there's enough to build a lunar base three times over.

If there's no gate technique that lets it co-move with the moon or spit things out at orbital speeds, the only way this works is to match the moon's speed itself. The first idea that comes to mind is mitigating air drag with a giant lead dart, and then skydiving for much longer than normal as the world's gravity gradually gets you up to speed in a marathon-scale portal-fling. After using heat wards to mitigate any risk of burning up, and then figuring out a surefire way to bail anyways, the biggest problem is landing in the same gate over and over again: not only is this a nontrivial thing on its own, you're also fighting against crosswinds and the world turning under you, so either constant gate repositioning or a guided aircraft is necessary. It's better than hitching a ride on a giant ridiculous firework, though.

>>1101606

I think it's less that they move "with" the planet and more that they become a contiguous set of points within a single (larger) frame of reference.

It might be better to think of a gate, like a beacon, as being "relative to" a location, as opposed to an absolute coordinate -- at least the way I've come to understand them. That's what makes the ones we found on the map so weird; they're functionally static points because they're relative to the lunar orbit, rather than its surface.

And since a gate can't be opened somewhere you don't have tangential familiarity with, unless you can calculate it, that would explain why Augustine Moot was so desperate to make the correct time, since her calculations would be in terms of orbital mechanics and thus entirely dependent on the precession of the moon and our world in order to reach the correct real-space point again (and thus a known location on the lunar surface).

In short: gates exist relative to other things, so even with the beacons to guide us, we still have the problem that one point is at a relative standstill and have to compensate for it.

So... does this mean we have to build some sort of railgun? How well does everyone know their magnets?