Comment from Alex
I have really enjoyed all the Pern books, reading some of them several times over.
Indeed I read Sky Dragons in under 2 days.
However I must say how disappointed I was that you decided to make the ships move, it almost made me stop reading the book altogether.
>From what I’ve understood in the previous books the ships were stuck directly above Landing and that was why AIVAS could not be moved. It had to stay in the same location to be able to link with the Yokohama, and also why they managed to find Landing again in “White Dragon” (they noticed the DawnSisters never moved)
Actually this got me thinking so much I decided to go back through “All The Weyrs Of Pern” and found this extract just by flicking through (Lucky stop of my fingers)…
“Does the view stay the same?” Mirrim asked. “I can’t see Benden from here.”
“Or Ruatha, ” Sharra added.
“I can barely make out Eastern Weyr,” S’len put in, “and I thought it was pretty big!”
“That’s what a geosynchronous orbit means, my friends, the ship stays in the same position relative to the surface of the planet,” Jaxom said.
So really its there in black and white that the ships didn’t move.
I do want to end by saying that I DO like your books, and I’m impressed how well you handle the time within time loops, it just doesn’t feel right when things seem to have been changed to fit.
I do hope you continue writing the books as I would hate to see them stop.
Hi Alex,
I’m sorry you got confused by the Dawn Sisters. I’ve already answered this same issue with Lancer4 you can read it here.
Fundamentally, the orbit of the Dawn Sisters has to move with the dawn (hence the name) and so has to be sun-synchronous (moving with the sun) rather than geosynchronous orbit. This makes more sense in the bigger picture, too, as an Earth geosynchronous orbit is at around 22,000 kilometers (about 13,750 miles) while Low-Earth Orbit is only about 200 kilometers — those numbers would be similar for Pern.
All this was pointed out to Mum when we worked on the book and she agreed with it.
2 Replies to “Comment from Alex”
Hmmm…AIVAS makes for a very interesting problem to be resolved now that it’s clear the Dawn Sisters are not in geosynchronous orbit. Is this worked out in the “After the Fall Is Over”? Or would answering this give away part of that story?
Haniel,
That’s a good question to which, for the moment, I have no answer!