Throwing bears into space

[Anders]

I just watched a review of Hercules (1983), and it looks awesome!!! Hercules takes a bear and throws it into space! There's a killer-death-robot that is defeated by a mirror! The main villain is motived by SCIENCE! (maniacal laughter optional)

Now, what kind of strength (or Super-ST) would you need to throw a bear into space? Assume a) that air friction is Hercules's bitch, and b) that the bear's mass is small compared to Hercules's ST.

[Ulzgoroth]

Page 355 of the Basic Set should deliver most of what we need, from a GURPS perspective.

The maximum throwing distance (for objects no more than .05*BL) is 3.5xST yards. This will probably apply, though we'll check that later.

From page 407, the actual range of throwing straight up will be half that of a 'regular' throw.

Using the Kármán line (100 km) to define 'into space', that means we need ST exceeding 100 km/1.75 yards. Which means a minimum of 62,493.

EDIT: When I said I would check the strength ratio later? Really not going to bother.

[Anthony]

The GURPS throwing rules are kind of broken, but the required force to throw something upwards is basically (weight of bear) * (height you want/need it to reach) / (distance it moves while you're holding it). Thus, if you are lifting the bear by 2 meters while throwing it, and you want it to reach 100 km, you need to apply 50,000x the bear's weight.

Which, if applied by your arms, will cause your arm to go right through the bear, and if you have some sort of scoop so you can actually throw the bear, will still result in liquefied bear.

[whswhs]

Circular speed is about 5 miles per second, which is 8000 m/sec. Under an acceleration of 10 m/sec^2, you need to be able to throw the object 3,200,000 m, or 3200 km, or 2000 mi, or about 3,500,000 yards.

With a maximum distance modifier of 3.5, you'd want ST 1,000,000. That would give you Basic Lift of 200,000,000,000; a weight ratio of 0.05 would let you throw an object weighing up to 10 billion pounds. That's clearly more than the weight of a bear.

Really, I think the table needs to be extended at the low end to get a more plausible ST requirement. We seem to have an impedance matching problem, big time.

Bill Stoddard

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The GURPS throwing rules are kind of broken, but the required force to throw something upwards is basically (weight of bear) * (height you want/need it to reach) / (distance it moves while you're holding it). Thus, if you are lifting the bear by 2 meters while throwing it, and you want it to reach 100 km, you need to apply 50,000x the bear's weight.

Which, if applied by your arms, will cause your arm to go right through the bear, and if you have some sort of scoop so you can actually throw the bear, will still result in liquefied bear.

Well, given that the ST I calculated implies a BL over 390,000 tons, I think being able to apply 50,000x the bear's weight probably is not a problem.

Aside from the structural issues for the bear, your body, and probably the ground you're standing on, of course.

[Anders]

I think we can safely assume that anything with Lou Ferrigno in it is cinematic in nature. :)

Now, I'm assuming that once into space the bear will fly forever. Because apparently, it becomes the constellation Ursa Major. This includes several galaxies - the bear will be flying for a long time. A looong time.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Really, I think the table needs to be extended at the low end to get a more plausible ST requirement.

Actually, it needs to be rewritten, because as written it means 2x the ST (4x the BL) can throw 4x the weight 2x the distance -- which requires 8x as much energy, so thrown object energy is order 3/2 in BL, and should be linear (in 3e, thrown object energy was order 2 in lifting ability).

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anders

I think we can safely assume that anything with Lou Ferrigno in it is cinematic in nature. :)

Now, I'm assuming that once into space the bear will fly forever. Because apparently, it becomes the constellation Ursa Major. This includes several galaxies - the bear will be flying for a long time. A looong time.

My throw isn't going to get you there. I only figured on getting to space, not on escape velocity. My bear toss is strictly sub-orbital.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Circular speed is

... not actually useful for this case. You can't throw an object into orbit from the ground with just the one toss. It's either in an ellipse, in which case it will at some point intersect the ground at the point where you tossed it (if not before), or you throw the bear hard enough for it to be an open hyperbola, greater than escape velocity.

Hercules need to throw the bear, jump into space himself to catch it, then throw it again to circularize the orbit.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Hercules need to throw the bear, jump into space himself to catch it, then throw it again to circularize the orbit.

Nah, it didn't actually go into orbit, he actually threw it up to get splattered on the sphere of the fixed stars.