|
Post by mctoddridesagain on May 31, 2006 23:08:10 GMT
I always did wonder how the Martians managed to pack all their stuff into a 30 yard object. Origami Fighting Machines.
|
|
|
Post by Lensman on Jun 4, 2006 1:40:11 GMT
What was the time period between the first cylinder launching and it arriving? I think one web site puts it at roughly two years. There are two reasons for thinking the Martians reached Earth with only a short travel time. One is the Narrator describes them as "drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles". Do the math, based on a distance of 40 million miles; Charles (our resident Wells expert) suggests it was only two weeks. The other reason is that the gun started firing as Mars approached opposition. Now you want your spacecraft to arrive at the destination when opposition occurs. That is, you want to launch the spacecraft far enuff in advance that it will get there when Mars is at its closest approach to Earth, which is what "opposition" is. If it were to take an extended travel time, you'd want to launch the spacecraft well *before* Mars approached opposition. Now you *could* speculate that the Martians launched just prior to one opposition but didn't arrive until the next, but is this really supportable? After all the Martians brought bipedal cattle with them, presumably as food to eat on the way. If they had to spend months or years, travelling, their food stocks would have had to have been enormous. There's just nothing in the novel to suggest an extended travel time. All the evidence suggests a fairly short travel time, probably between 2 and 6 weeks.
|
|