If the Earth were 100 pixels wide • Hacker News Board

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#101

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:32 PM UTC

primitur wrote: post #100

ohazi wrote: post #51

Is anyone else a little bothered by the fact that the reported speed was 1/5 the speed of light, yet the flyby necessarily increased to well over the speed of light in order to actually get you to Mars before you got bored and closed the tab? Traveling at the speed of light would have taken 5-20 minutes. Traveling slower than that would have taken even longer...

I'm more bothered by the authoritative fact that 'the timeline for a manned mission to Mars is the 2030s'. Says who, NASA? They're not the only ones trying to get there.

[deleted]

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#102

Post by dinkumthinkum » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:33 PM UTC

I like this. Good job, very creative!

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#103

Post by stcredzero » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:33 PM UTC

DavePaliwoda wrote: post #89

Hey guys, Dave here, made the site.. Really amazed by how much coverage this thing has got, and really surprised by how poor my maths were. Not surprising given I failed both maths and physics at college. Really happy to be inspiring debate, I've gone over my sums and given it another shot Thanks!

"At the current state of space technology, it will take at least 240 days to get to Mars"

This makes it immediately obvious you haven't read a lot about proposed plans for Mars missions or even understand how transfer orbits work. 150 days is a likely practical limit for today's technology, but it's not a hard limit. Spend a little more fuel, and you could make it 149 days.

http://www.universetoday.com/14841/how-long-does-it-take-to-...

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#104

Post by Jabbles » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:39 PM UTC

ohazi wrote: post #51

Is anyone else a little bothered by the fact that the reported speed was 1/5 the speed of light, yet the flyby necessarily increased to well over the speed of light in order to actually get you to Mars before you got bored and closed the tab? Traveling at the speed of light would have taken 5-20 minutes. Traveling slower than that would have taken even longer...

For me it currently says "You're currently travelling at 7,000 pixels a second 200,000 km/h" - which is clearly wrong, as at that speed it would take an hour to get to the moon.

Good idea, well intentioned. But they got the numbers wrong...

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#105

Post by Unoeufisenough » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:43 PM UTC

Mars is pretty far, but 240 days doesn't sound so bad. In the age of explorers, the first human sailors to circumnavigate the earth took 4 years to do it. A handful of them even survived the journey!

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#106

Post by KerrickStaley » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:43 PM UTC

Mars is a desolate, inhospitable rock floating in an immense void. I can't understand why people are captivated by the idea of living there.

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#107

Post by CmdrKrool » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:46 PM UTC

Cool.

Unfortunately though, on my regular setup of Firefox on Windows, the background image abruptly 'runs out' shortly after the "You're currently travelling at 70000 pixels/second" message appears, leaving me with a blank white screen. I believe this is due to this browser bug I've just found out about: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=816917

Fine on Chrome though.

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#108

Post by millerm » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:51 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #77

millerm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about you just imagine the ship is rotating on an axis for artificial gravity generation. Then, if you were looking out the window, you would see the starfield whizzing by. :-) Edited for smiley.

Interesting idea - all the scifi I've ever seen has had ships rotating around the axis of travel, but never orthogonal to it.

The axis wouldn't matter. You wouldn't notice which direction you were going (well I suppose if you noticed the sun, darn).

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#109

Post by eevee » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:54 PM UTC

devgutt wrote: post #98

Why not? (function () { var d=1; setInterval(function () { $('#Earth-Illustration').css({'webkit-transform': 'rotate(' + ((d>36) ? d=2 : d++)*10 + 'deg)'})},100); }()); Please, consider Africa as Asia ;)

Perhaps you meant `transform`, which will actually work in WebKit browsers (you forgot the leading `-`) and also be translated by jQuery to other browsers' prefixed property names.

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#110

Post by devgutt » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:56 PM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #26

I'd love to see the Sun included on the opposite side of the scale. Its diameter is 109 times that of earth, making it 10900 pixels. Would be just as impressive a demonstration.

I didn't go through much, but I'm quite sure that in that scale, It would be a flat line