#Tiny Trooper Cobalt

[stormyblue90]

The Tiny Troopers have Valentines to give! Do you accept?

[stormyblue90]

We also have a Tiny Trooper mascot named Cobalt and cookies!

My fellow clone whores,

It would delight me so much if you’d join our clone wars/ bad batch server! It is a very positive and welcome community. We are actually working on some big changes to the server and i will be needing some mods soon! So come say hi!

[wild-karrde]

You want some positivity? Here have some love from Tiny Trooper Cobalt

I WILL ABSOLUTELY TAKE THIS CONTRIBUTION!!! THANK YOOOU!!! 💙

[gffa]

SO I WANT TO TALK ABOUT ROSE TICO AND HOW MUCH I LOVE HER. I think it helps that I read most of Cobalt Squadron before picking The Last Jedi novelization up, which is a great book for giving a person Rose feelings and Tico sisters feelings all over the place, for getting a person really invested in this character.  I am 3/4ths of the way through this book, so there’s still more to go, but I’ve hit a point where I’ve turned a corner on Rose’s characterization in this book. I spent a lot of time being really frustrated about Rose being pitted against Rey despite that they were never even in the same room--and while I’m not precisely pleased about it, I’m willing to believe it serves a greater purpose in making Rose a complicated person that I really feel a lot for.  Because we’re introduced to her with the above, that she’s absolutely devastated by the loss of her sister, that it’s quite like having the other half of her soul ripped away from her, that everything she counted on, everything in this galaxy that she relied on, was ripped away from her.  Her entire future was based around her older sister and now she’s alone and aching and miserable and has this emptiness insider her that not even her anger can fill. She starts out just wanting to be alone, that even though she’s far overqualified for the world she’s doing, even when she knows she should be insulted, without Paige there, it doesn’t really mean anything, and instead turns out to be a blessing in disguise, because she’s just nothing but grief and hurt right now.

The only thing that still sparks in her is her anger.

(For now we’re setting aside the lack of worldbuilding sense that makes--isn’t the Resistance voluntary?  How can you punish a deserter for something that’s voluntary and not government approved?  And further setting aside how I don’t like it as part of Finn’s narrative, because this post is focusing solely on Rose.) Then along comes Finn.  Someone handsome, she thinks idly.  And then realizes that he’s The Finn.  A hero!  A hero to this Resistance that Paige gave her life for!  Except he’s running away and taking one of their escape pods with him and he’s doing it for selfish reasons and then he distracts her with a problem (the tracking through hyperspace) and finally Rose has something to fill herself back up with again. Just a little bit.

She barely knows this guy, what does she care if he likes someone?  This is the beginning of Rose’s antagonism towards Rey, which is clearly stemming from jealousy.  The thing is, Rose has other far more important things going on, both in the plot and in her feelings, why is she suddenly hopping onboard this train so fast?  It’s pretty clearly sublimating her feelings about Paige’s death into this handsome guy she just met, because she wants something to fill up that empty space in her heart. And she feels for him--she knows what it’s like to have her world ground down by the First Order, how much they can take and take from you.  How much worse must it have been to actually be stolen by them, have even your name taken from you? She feels for him, she’s attracted to him, she needs something in her life, and she wants to look up to a hero.  And there’s Finn, right there. Except he keeps talking about someone else.

While I was in this part of the story, it bothered me because I’m not wild about how the female characters in this movie/story have the trend of women needing men to give them meaning.  I’m still unhappy about that being a theme with both of them, but I love Rose Tico enough to keep digging into this.  To look at why it’s not really about Finn (whom I love and wish he’d gotten this kind of character depth) but about her and her feelings.  That’s the only way I’m not eternally mad about Rose’s resentment and viciousness towards a woman she’s never even met.  It’s not really about Rey, either. Where I really started to turn around on this is when they get to Cantonica and they’re looking around the place, Finn is awe of all this spectacle, while Rose is:

LISTEN, I AM HERE FOR ROSE TICO TELLING EVERYONE IN HER WAY TO GO FUCK THEMSELVES. I am here for Rose’s anger at this beautiful awful town who is having the time of their lives, built on the suffering of others, built on the business of war that stripped her planet and killed her sister, like her and her sister’s lives mean nothing.  Because they do mean nothing to these people. And she slowly starts to soften, as she really considers Finn.

She’s scornful towards someone she’s never met, for the sheer audacity that Finn cares about her, but even as I was making >:/ faces about that, I was softening as well.  Because Rose is aching here, at the idea that someone could so dismiss this vital cause that is the only thing fighting back against what destroyed her home, what her sister died for. She’s being kind of an asshole to him, she’s treating him like he’s a child (in fairness, the narrative does this as well, so she’s reacting to something that’s there), but she’s doing it because she’s in a bad place in her life and every step of the way, we’re reminded of that, of her loss and her anger. Where I really turned a corner with all of this was when they’re in the jail cell and just:

ROSE WOULDN’T QUIT.  THE MOMENT SHE SPOTTED THE GUARDS SHE WAS BACK AT THE BARS YELLING AT THEM.  “YOU CAN’T BREAK SAND!” I’m dying at tiny little Rose Tico just telling everyone in this whole town to either go fuck themselves or that they’re dumb as shit. It’s an adorable image but also you get that, for someone who actually isn’t really an angry person in general (which was the sense I got from the movie itself, but then was definitely backed up by her characterization in Cobalt Squadron and her Forces of Destiny comic) so it’s coming from somewhere. And, look, one of the things I really love is complicated female characters who are emotionally messy, who get to have reactions that are less than perfectly capable.  Who are angry, who are trying to keep soldiering on, who try to grab onto something else even when we know it’s not what they really want, who aren’t always kind even when they’re a good person, who ultimately believe in love despite their fury and heartbreak and hurt. Because sometimes she’s unfair.

And I hurt for both of them in this moment.  Because her anger comes from that Finn has a point--maybe she would choose Paige, maybe she would choose the Resistance, I’m not sure even Rose really knows the answer, she certainly can’t answer it here.  That’s not the point though--the point is that she has all these feelings and just because they’re not always kind feelings, that doesn’t make them less valuable as a story to explore. God knows I’ve been less than perfect when I’m hurting.  I’ve certainly swung from fury to depressed “nothing even matters anymore” when I’ve been dealing with loss. I have to remind myself to be kind sometimes.

And this is about the time when I really let go of a lot of my frustration, because also Finn gets a moment to be finally capable of something, when they infiltrate the Supremacy and Rose is practically fidgeting in her uniform, hyperaware that she doesn’t fit in.  Finn, meanwhile, is cool and calm, even as he’s obviously scared, too.

I feel more charitable (after so many instances of how Finn talked about mopping decks, how many comics have made him comedic relief, how his story as a former First Order trooper isn’t really dealt with in much of any kind of serious way) because he’s good at this, even when we know he hates it.  That, when it was real, the implication I took away from it was that he was terrible because some part of him absolutely did not want to do or be this. He questioned orders because he was more than just a number.  He was a terrible shot because he couldn’t do the monstrous things he was ordered to do.  He mopped decks because he wasn’t a villain.  It still means he’s naive about a lot of things simply because he wasn’t exposed to them, he’s a fish out of water, he’s in this entirely different world where he didn’t fit in, he had no reason to jump from one cause to another, when he just wanted to stop fighting and finally have himself able to be a self, to have a name. When I saw Rose really get that, more than in just a pitying way, when it was real empathy and it touched briefly on the real effects that would leave on someone, I gained a lot of empathy for the story as well. Maybe I’m being overly charitable about the things I’m reading into the writing, but I will take complicated, messy, less than perfect women because I don’t get nearly enough of them in media, especially ones I can resonate with and feel empathy for them and the people around them at the same time.  And I really, really fucking love Rose Tico, like, so much.

[cobaltsister-a-blog]

❛ you’re always one decision away from a different life. ❜

VARIOUS ╱ not  accepting@chasiingfreedom

SHE’D  HEARD  of  him.  stories  (  *  it  was  always  stories,  wasn’t  it  ?  )  traveled  far  in  these  galaxies  &  there  was  naught  an  ear  that  hadn’t  heard  about  the  stormtrooper  that  turned  his  back  on  the  first  order.  that  made  the  split  decision  to  save  commander  dameron  (  *  poe  had  told  them  all  that  the  trooper  did  it  because  it  was  the  right  thing  to  do.  paige  thought  that  was  probably  true,  but  the  trooper  also  needed  a  pilot  didn’t  he  ?  ).  she  knew  finn  had  been  with  them.  that  he  had  made  the  decision  to  come  back  all  for  a  friend  he  barely  met,  but  time  had  made  no  difference.

by  the  time  the  cobalt  squadron  came  back  from  aterra,  finn  was  out  like  a  light.  there  hadn’t  been  time  to  talk  after  that.  the  dreadnought  saw  to  that.

paige  breathed  out  through  her  nose,  brushing  back  the  sweat  slick  locks  from  her  sister’s  face.  rose’s  lips  moved,  breath  coming  out  in  tiny  pants  &  she  settled  after  a  moment,  paige’s  hand  never  losing  its  rhythm  from  where  it  sat,  carding  through  her  sister’s  hair.   ❛   we  are,  aren’t  we  ?   ❜   she  whispered.  he  was  filling  in  the  rest  of  the  holes.  rose  saved  him,  not  that  that  surprised  paige  at  all.  her  sister  had  always  been  cut  like  a  hero.   ❛   the  best  we  can  really  do  is  carry  on.  questions  like  that           what  ifs  &  everything.  all  it  does  is  take  away  from  what’s  here.   ❜   dark  eyes  lifted  from  her  sister’s  features,  small  smile  quirking  her  lips,  ❛   thank  -  you,  you  know.  for  bringing  her  back.   ❜

[strangewriterforhire]

Some Bar, Some Where.

The music had a heavy beat to it, interspersed with a sultry tone’s of a woman’s voice caught amid its gears. The voice wasn’t in Anglos, nor Russian Trade or any one of the Asian quazi-dialects that had melded together when the floods came. It could have been Japanese J-pop, or New Korean NJ-rattle, or some other consonant with a ‘pop/sizzle/whatever’ added to the end. It could have been a classical piece murdered by a Dumb AI algorithm programmed to make music that people want to move with, or get away from with delicious alcohol. The fact reminded the music was loud, the bass turned up to the point of worrying anyone with dental work, and it hid the murmur of voices and deals being wrought by those not inebriated beyond reason. Of course the poor lighting, at least the glow panels designed not to strobe with nerve stuttering flashes, couldn’t disguise the low quality of the booze provided to the patrons of ‘Nexus’. The chances of the glass before him coming into spitting distance of barly hops, or any form of natural fermentation, were next to zero. But when you were out here on far edge of The Limb, you took what you could get. Still didn’t make the swill taste any better, but booze was booze. He now felt somewhat better about himself, the engineered fluid alighting across his brains neural chemistry to release a raft of endorphins. He missed real, honest to God, brewed in a barrel, alchaol. Good, honest, mind numbing alcohol added in by nature and not as a feature. He personally blamed the current state of the Union, the worlds spanning conglomerate of nation states all braying for their slice of the action. The Union taxed every gram of matter lifted off of the surface of a world, and taxed coded it for a destination with varying degree's of severity. At this distance from Scotland, Earth, Sol System Relay...a bottle of single malted goodness would be worth more than his life. Ship included. But hey, if he waited long enough maybe the Union would fizzle out? From United Polity before the Burst, and then it became the Unified Polities of Near Earth Space after the Burst, and now it was the Union of National Polities. UP, UPNES, UNP: that was a lot of hull designations to scrub off the nose cone of any ship. At least they kept the paint scheme roughly the same across the century and a half since mankind had burst free of planet Earth. This made ‘Polity Blue’ the cheapest per gallon across the Union and its neighbours to G-North and G-East. But that might also explain the amount of independent merchant skippers who just can’t find the dollars to pay for a paint job, and go out into the black with bare metal to the stars. “You said you had something for me?” The drinker said after a moment’s contemplation over his drink. Yavik Valentine rose from where he’d been slouching in his chair, his dreads flickering in sympathy to the strobes, and focused all four of his eyes on him. Oh don’t worry, Yavik won’t bite your hand off or anything like that. But its so easy to stereotype genies into their respective chimeric categories, that most folks just avoided registering the tiny black pupils set into recessed sockets above his brows. Somewhere in his genetic past some egg head from Earth, or that freak show Venus turned into, had thought hominid DNA and a dash of spider would be a great benefit to the species. A lot of ‘brilliant ideas’ had been made in those dark days, before Venus was intentionally nuked back into a furnace of radioactive particulates by Union sanction: Earth didn’t need a terraformed Hell a few light minutes away. But the fire hand't arrived fast enough before a new niche species of humanity had arisen: the genies. Genetically modified hominid gene stock with animal traits. Most live normal lives, and for the most part you‘d never spot them unless you went looking for them. But then you get examples like Yavik with his four eyes, or that NK-pop sensation Karim-2/40. She could well be living proof that bad girls don’t always change their spots, but when the fur grows out you might need to shave them. In Yaviks case what you ended up with was a scheming masterpiece of a baseline human with some odd optical genetics, twitchy reflexes that made them neurotic as hell, and Velcro like hooks protruding from their skin instead of follicles. This usually made T’antula genies cover up more than a nun in a nudist camp, and more often than not usually ended up with them working in the industries aligning with the production of medicinal canaboids. Well something had to help the grippy freak mellow out. Yavik ran a gloved hand through his dreads, a little pulse of blue light shimmying along them as he did so. “Might do, might do.” He said slowly through a mouth filled with close knit narrow teeth, his eyes still looking deeply into the face of his companion. “Course what I have, as a business man, don’t come free ya see? Ya wanna see what I got, ya gotta pay up front.” “Interesting sales pitch seeing as I got the call from you to meet you in this dive.” The drinker retorted gently, taking another sip of his drink and wincing: coudn't his taste buds take the hint and die already? “I stand corrected: a dive would have better swill than this.” “Hey man, hey!” Yavik cooed, as he slowly sank back into his chair “That's the finest glitter gin this side of the Limb, you treat that with re-spect.” The drinker hated it when people put extra definition on their syllables. If this turned into a paying job, something worthwhile, his rate was going to go up just for that. He gently pushed the drink, now identified as glitter gin, across to Yavik. The T’antula took a single look at the gesture, and almost dived across the table to grab it. The drinker might be a expert of boozes and rot guts, but he was all for drinks that didn’t make you blind when they got to your optic nerve and made you see things. “There, you happy now? Can we do business?” he asked, as Yavik hungrily licked the rim of the glass, his four heavy lidded eyes overflowing with pleasure. The genie merely nodded slowly, reached into his jacket and extracted a battered PassPort from within. As the jacket slid open, the drinker took a second to admire the interior lining for all the latest accessories that were all the rage this season. No guns. No gas. No knives. Maybe this was on the up and up? “Yeah man, yeah,” Yavik sighed contently as he barely held himself upright in his chair and slid the PassPort over the table top. “Yeah we can do business. PassPort’s name is Oronoco, ask the little lady that which you wanna know man.” The drinker eyed the PassPort, before gently flipping it open to reveal the complex gold and platinum design carved into the interior. As quantum computers went, PassPorts were on the low end of the scale. But given all QuantComps are parallel processing super geniuses to begin with, even the ones on the low end of the totem pole ended up being insufferable know it all’s. He placed a hand gently over the gold etching on the PassPort, and allowed his left eye to close. But instead of utter blackness, or the simple loss of depth perception, a woman appeared as his implant mugged his optical nerve in a dark alley. And as soon as he saw the beige coloured uniform, equipped naturally with beige coloured beret, with the cyan blue shoulder boards with that single white tassel braid, the drinker knew he was in trouble. “Implant tag identified: Lieutenant Commander Damien Kitcher. Union Navy ID 33K56-A2. Status: Deserter.” The woman, or more precisely the generated self image of a genderless computer spark, had a trio of seconds to state that name and rank before he yanked his hand free of the PassPort. His eye snapped open, closing off the connection between the PassPort and his optic implant. That didn’t in any way change the intensity of his glare at the laconic drunk on the other side of the table. “Sorry man,” Yavik said with an easy grin, his sense of self preservation already checking out of Motel Lights Out. “Lady paid first, and Union dollars are pretty sweet.” In a split second Yaviks fate was decided: Kitcher didn’t have the time to give the T’antula the proper beating he rightly deserved. His time was now rapidly running out, and the damn NK-rattle music wasn’t doing him any favours. He stood up, watching as the glass of glitter gin soared into the air as his leg struck the plastic table top. He glanced towards the clubs entrance. And right into the smooth armoured faceplate of a Union marine. The troopers armoured carapace shimmered from full active camouflage into something more solid and imposing, looking nothing unlike a cobalt blue human shaped beetle, with semi automatic death on its mind. His eyes flicked from left to right, and caught sight of the similar fuzzy blobs marring his vision: the one at the door was for show, the others scattered around the room were the hazards. They’d be the ones with fingers on triggers, the ones with orders to shoot first and ask question at some predetermined point in time after his blood had cooled to room temperature. So instead of leaping for the exit, of making a break for the service door behind the bar, or even in using Yavik as a human-ish shield, Kitcher slipped back into his seat with a growl. “You’re a dead man.” Kitcher said through tightly pressed together lips, as more of the Union troopers flickered into being. They began to usher the crowd out, using their armours echo assist to basically toss the free floating revellers up towards the entrance portal to Nexus and out into street. The music hid the screams and shouts, but one look at the soldiers made people realign their priorities. “Might be, might not be.” Yavik said lazily before he slowly pushed up from his seat, leaning over slightly “Then again maybe I ain’t the one to be a dead man shortly? I’m just gonna skip out, seeing as this part of the meeting ain’t mine.” “No, it’s mine.” Came a thin, reedy voice that matched the figure of a older man that slipped into Yaviks chair the moment he left it. Tall, almost deathly pale in skin colour, his morticians complexion complimented the funeral suit of midnight black with its high choking collar. The skin over his bald skull was pulled tight, giving his small eyes a constant surprised look. But it was the opal blue eyes, to bright by half, that gave him way: ManKin. Or to put it bluntly, in the parlance of the 20th century, a robot. And ManKin liked working with numbers, problems, and the horrendous political orrery of the Union. Add in the marine guard, and his presence in non Union territory, meant the man in black was working for only one organisation. “Clockwork.” Kitcher said bluntly, looking at the man as a thin smile spread across his lips. He nodded at the still open PassPort. “She one of yours as well?” “Oronoco?” the pale man asked with a slight nod. “In a way. Like any good Union citizen, even a artificial one, she is serving her Polity with national service. Quite diligently so, I hasten to add. Maybe she, like myself and others, will find her higher calling within the Union Navy? Who knows? But as I am sure you know, Mr Kitcher, service can be a harsh mistress. But it is a mistress that holds our freedom hostage until she is done with us.” The ManKin reached out and closed the PassPort. “And that mistress is not finished with you, Mr Kitcher.” Those opal eyes flicked to one side, distracted by some tidbit of information provided to him. Kitchen hated when machine's traded to ape human behaviour, It could be having a half dozen conversations and solving pi without appreciable lag in the conversation. “So you’ve come all this way to get me back in the grey and blue,” Kitcher said with a smile on his face. “I’m thrilled my tax dollars are paying for this will punt out to the edge of the Limb. Didn't know Charlamains Rock was on the approved travel list?” “Oh those tax dollar’s paid for a rather limited manhunt, after all the Union Navy has boarders to protect, worlds to police-” “Uprisings to smash, colonies to manhandle with gunboat diplomacy?” Kitcher finished. “In either case, we have found you. And I have been given full discretion by Earth to provide summary judgement upon your case.” The ManKin smiled, as out of the corner of Kitchers eye, two of the marines drifted down from the clubs upper dance volume. Full body armour, echo assist strength amplification, and what looked like a newer model of the Heckler & Kosh solid state laser rifle. They looked ready to take on a army singlehandedly, and sometimes that had been the case. “So...re-enlistment? Do I get back pay?” Kitcher asked, wishing he still had a drink before him. "At a Lt's wage bracket that could get pricey." “Permanent, non reversible neurological death.” The ManKin intoned darkly, his eyes narrowing down to azure slits as the two troopers brought their H&K’s up and levelled them at Kitcher’s head. The two dots of painted laser light now attached to his skull didn’t hurt, but should the troopers squeeze their firing studs he’d have a very interesting though pass right through his head before the end. The ManKin smiled. “Of course that is my choice, and it just so happens it is a choice I do not want to make yet.” The ManKin smiled and tapped the PassPort again. “I really did expend a lot of resource to find you Mr Kitcher, to offer you a job. Its rewards will see you free of Union complications for the remainder of your life, and you’ll be able to return to Union space. Its been a while since you’ve been home to Midowin colony Mr Kitcher, away from your family. I understand the Midowin culture prizes community and family, if I recall correctly?” The ManKin raised a hand, and if it were possible the two marines stances became more taunt and threaded with a delicate sense of impending violence. “Of course, if you choose not to listen to my job offer...” “I get it,” Kitcher growled and nodded to the artificial person. “Looks like you got yourself a ship and a captain.”

[hellofastestnewsfan]

Recently, a user of an online forum for science-fiction writing posed an intriguing question to the rest of the community. In the user’s imaginary world, spiders rule the planet. The arachnids have grown intelligent enough to build a spacefaring empire, and they need spacesuits to travel into space. So, then: “How to design a spacesuit for an arachnid?”

The inquiry made me giggle. It reminded me of those silly thought experiments involving animals and garments, like the long-running debate over how a dog would wear pants. I scrolled down, anticipating some funny responses.

But there was none of that. The people on this forum were serious, and they were serious about spider spacesuits.

“Terrestrial spiders breathe via almost all of their body. They don’t have particularly dedicated airways or efficient circulatory systems and as such are used to being surrounded by air in order to get enough oxygen into their vital organs,” one user wrote. “You need to keep a flow of air between the suit and the spider or they will suffer from the equivalent of hypoxia.”

“Have an enclosed pod that the spider can sit inside with legs folded and have mechanical arms/legs that support the pod and allow it to walk around,” someone else suggested.

“Are the suits needed for short space walks or would the [spiders] be wearing them semi-permanently?” another user asked. “This will determine if the suit needs air, heat, and durability to elements.”

The suggestions went on, and in great detail. Users discussed all aspects of spider physiology, from exoskeletons and joint movement to respiratory and circulatory systems. They wondered which spacesuit designs would provide the many-limbed creatures with maximum mobility and comfort. One user even suggested the spiders take some anti-nausea drugs while in zero-gravity, like astronauts do.

[Read: Tiny jumping spiders can see the moon]

The discussion now resembled something other than the dog-in-pants scenario: The very real conversations, decades ago, between engineers and scientists about how to make spacesuits for human beings. Those deliberations were not so different than the one on the science-fiction forum, because they were both trying to answer the same question: How do you keep something designed to live on Earth alive in space?

In the United States in the 1960s, the spacesuit business was booming. NASA was in the market for a variety of outfits for its first classes of astronauts, for use inside and outside of space capsules and, eventually, on the surface of the moon.  

According to ILC Dover, the Delaware-based company that designed the iconic Apollo spacesuits worn by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, engineers put different fabrics through rigorous tests to find those that would protect wearers from the extreme conditions of space. They exposed them to sweltering heat and bone-chilling cold, and folded and creased them every which way, bending them at each joint to see how the material would hold up.

Engineers also had to figure out how to prevent conditions inside the spacesuit from killing the wearer. They needed life-support systems that would circulate oxygen throughout the suit and remove excess heat and carbon dioxide and eject them into space. If temperatures in the suit rose, astronauts could become dehydrated. If exhaled carbon dioxide accumulated, they could die.

On top of that, engineers had to determine exactly how much life support astronauts would need. “At the start of 1962, a significant challenge to the development of the Apollo [ Extravehicular Mobility Unit] was lack of a detailed understanding of the metabolic performance requirements of a man in a suit,” according to NASA. “No one in the U.S. space community knew the correct requirements.”

Decades after humans proved they could survive in space with the right outfit, engineers are still working on spacesuit designs. Boeing and SpaceX, which are expected to launch American astronauts to low-Earth orbit next year as part of a NASA program, have spent the last several years designing spacesuits of their own. Both are pressurized suits designed for the in-flight experience, not spacewalks. Boeing’s cobalt-blue suit comes with a zipper down the back for entry, a soft, hoodlike helmet, and footwear that resembles sneakers, a departure from the traditional, bulky boots of the past. SpaceX’s white-and-black design resembles that of a Power Ranger or Storm Trooper, with tall, rain boot–like shoes and a traditional, motorcycle-esque helmet.

Others are thinking beyond the space above Earth. In 2015, NASA announced the development of a suit for Mars, known as the Z-2. Engineers began by turning to earlier designs for inspiration. “We start by testing those suits and understanding the different features,” Lindsay Aitchison, a spacesuit engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, explained to Mental Floss in 2014. “What type of shoulder works best for what type of activity, different designs of the hips and boots and the style of entry. Do you want to have a zipper? All those things.”

But the Martian environment presents new challenges. Mars astronauts will need hardy spacesuits capable of protecting them from space radiation and winds carrying tiny dust particles that could scratch helmets or slice into the fabric. The suits astronauts use today to maneuver outside of the International Space Station aren’t especially bendy; astronauts “walk” with their hands, pulling themselves along railings and handholds that protrude from the station. Mars suits will have to be flexible enough to allow astronauts to walk around, kneel down to collect samples, raise their arms in the air to wave to their fellow travels, climb in and out of rovers, and so on. The soles of their shoes will resemble hiking shoes, made for traversing rugged terrain.

[Read: Spiders can fly hundreds of miles using electricity]

The whole getup will have to be as lightweight as possible. The weight of spacesuits and life-support systems matters less in low-gravity environments, like on the moon or around the space station. The complete Space Shuttle suit, for example, weighed a whopping 310 pounds, but weightlessness removed the burden. While the gravity on Mars is just 38 percent that of Earth, astronauts will still feel some of the weight of a 300-pound spacesuit on their bodies.

Engineers will have to make some aesthetic considerations, too. Aitchison, the spacesuit engineer, has suggested adorning flashy, bioluminescent stripes of different colors to Martian spacesuits, so that astronauts can tell who’s who when they’re out and about at night.

In a strange convergence of human and spider anatomy, an engineer at Lockheed Martin, a frequent NASA contractor, has even suggested that Mars astronauts could wear eight-legged, rocket-powered spacesuits and crawl and hop across the surface of some of the planet’s moons.

In any case, fictional, sapient spiders, like humans, will have to contend with a multitude of considerations to keep their space travelers healthy and alive. At least we only have to worry about four limbs.

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2RYx0bD

[stormyblue90]

The Tiny Troopers are enjoying their Halloween candy spoils!

However Fox is being indecisive…

And is that a little black Tooka wearing Fives’ helmet? 👀

[stormyblue90]

👻🎃 Happy Halloween from Tiny Trooper Cobalt and Lady Obsidian “Sid” the Loth Cat! 🎃👻

Have yourself a spooky treat!

[stormyblue90]

Today’s Tiny Trooper Treat…

🍓 STRAWBERRIES!!! 🍓

[stormyblue90]

Tiny Trooper Cobalt had a science museum day!

Giant frogs!!!

Huh… I wonder if the Jedi’s kyber crystals I. Their lightsabers look like these?

Maybe some of them Cob’ika.

Hey look! It’s the Captain’s namesake!

Itty bitty Rexling! And Big Rex!

Wonder if it’s the mom or dad rex?

Some T. rex relatives, wonder if the Captain had any batch mates named after them? Ooh a Troodontid skeleton!

[stormyblue90]

Echo and Cobalt just deciding which game to play, buuuut…

Thump thump thump

Oh no…OH KR-OOF!!!

FIVES! It’s good to see you Ori’Vod!

Fives, as happy as I am to see you, did you REALLY have to-

Yes! Yes I did Vod! So where’s Bui-I I mean Rex?

About that…

O-oh uh…hi Rex!

Yeeeah… shocking for me too, don’t worry about it.

I have my boys back!

[stormyblue90]

I found the Star Wars edition Oreos. The tiny troopers are eager to find out which ones they are!

Well, if it turns out to be Dark Side at least I can eat Palpatine’s face.

Well uh…that’s one way to look at it Fox…

We will just have to trust in the Force. Cobalt would you like to do the honors?

It’s Light!

WHOO!!!

Better than Palpatine. But I need some caf for these…

Guess you were right sir.

Of course Cody.

[stormyblue90]

Cobalt and the Dominoes are making cookies this Christmas Eve!

Fives is bringing the M&Ms as in his words he’s, “ALWAYS A SLUT FOR M&M COOKIES!”

Success!

Awww HELL YEAH!!!

Fives remember to save some for everyone else!

Uuugh ok fine Echo! I won’t eat ALL of them!

[stormyblue90]

The Tiny Troopers are getting ready for the eclipse! First gotta make sure the glasses are good to go!

Yep, all good! These are up to regulations!

This photo filter is good too.

Great! I think we’re good to go!

[stormyblue90]

It’s Star Wars Day! May 4th. So how are the tiny troopers celebrating?

🍪🍪COOKIES!🍪🍪

Cobalt and the Dominoes have decided to go for the triple chocolate.

Cody and Obi Wan chose the peanut butter.

My this looks quite delicious!

It does indeed Sir

Aaaand Fox can’t decide between the two.

So hard to choose… I’m gonna need some caf with these…