In the Halo universe how do spaceships stop? If you’re flying along in space on your ship and you need to stop how do you do it? There is no air resistance in space thus Newton’s First Law kicks in and your ship would keep going never stopping.
Take the end of Halo 1 for example, John speeds off the ring in the longsword and Cortana tells him it’s best to shut the engines off and they come to a stop. John then takes his helmet off as the camera pans out and then the events of First Strike happen.
Ok then, how did they stop? Simply stopping the engine is not going to slow you down in space.
Counter thrusters. Very common concept in sci-fi space travel. And the end of Halo:CE, they didn’t stop. They continued at the speed they had gained. The ship just stopped shaking from the massive thrust.
> Counter thrusters. Very common concept in sci-fi space travel. And the end of Halo:CE, they didn’t stop. They continued at the speed they had gained. The ship just stopped shaking from the massive thrust.
As the camera pans out you can clearly see it is no longer moving, and you never see any thrusters. And that is not the only situation this happens a lot in the other games and books too.
Sadly, this is a pretty common trope in science fiction (Especially Star Trek), about as common as spaceships always being the same side up… unless they’re derelicts, in which case they’ll be listing.
As for whether the Longsword actually comes to a stop, I’m not sure. Haven’t seen the actual cutscene in a long time, and it would be pretty hard to determine if the Longsword came to a stop, or just stationary relative to the camera.
> Sadly, this is a pretty common trope in science fiction (Especially Star Trek), about as common as spaceships always being the same side up… unless they’re derelicts, in which case they’ll be listing.
>
> As for whether the Longsword actually comes to a stop, I’m not sure. Haven’t seen the actual cutscene in a long time, and it would be pretty hard to determine if the Longsword came to a stop, or just stationary relative to the camera.
Actually in Star Trek they have Reaction Control Thrusters (RCS) which they use for slight movements at low speed and keep the ship stationary. If I had to guess they’re also involved in slowing the ship down as well.
I think they used windows task manager to “end now”.
But seriously I think it’s one of the those little details they overlooked, every sci-fi genre has them. Noticeable oddities that the creators missed or thought no one would care about. Ultimately, the answers get left up to fans or after market novels to solve.
I’m just glad it’s not magic like in fantasy genre. You can’t even bother asking questions in those, the answer is always magic of some sort. Like in Dora cartoons.
You’re used to using parallax to tell if an object is moving at a significant rate of speed. This doesn’t work as well in space, due to the distance from you to nearby objects. They’re so far away, they appear not to move at higher rates of speed. So, that longsword is very likely coasting at a high rate of speed.
To directly answer the question, whenever it’s explored, the answer is counter-thrusters (often many small ones, also capable of simulating orbit). Not that I recall it specifically being addressed in Halo fiction, but in space-faring sci-fi in general.
It’s worth mentioning that at some point, authors stop trying to explain details that can reasonably be assumed to have been solved. For example, they managed to put off the issue of how one wearing MJOLNIR managed to relieve oneself until very recently. You just don’t need to explain that in order to move the narrative forward.
The Longsword is still moving at the end of Halo. It doesn’t stop.
In universe a ship could gradually ‘stop’ relative to something by using it’s maneuvering jets, but the fastest way to kill momentum would be to do an end-for-end flip and point your main engines in your direction of motion. Bonus points of being able to teach an enemy ship the Kizinti lesson if they are close enough…
> > Counter thrusters. Very common concept in sci-fi space travel. And the end of Halo:CE, they didn’t stop. They continued at the speed they had gained. The ship just stopped shaking from the massive thrust.
>
> As the camera pans out you can clearly see it is no longer moving, and you never see any thrusters. And that is not the only situation this happens a lot in the other games and books too.
They are in space. Space is big. It seems they are not moving, but they are actually moving at extreme speed.
Theres nothing to suggest the longsword stops. Theres just nothing to judge it by. The fact that she tells him to shut the engines down suggest they have adequate speed already.
Also, it is implied that the UNSC has some sort of mass/inertia nullifying or anti-gravity devices, at least for the frigates. Think of those as thrusters.
All they would need are thrusters or reversing against movement like someone already said. In CE the ship didnt necessarily stop moving, there was nothing to judge against so how can you say it was stationary? In reality it would still be moving as fast as when chief shut off the engines, but since you have nothing to judge against you just cant see it. Also wasnt the ship facing back towards halo after the explosion? Because if that was the case then they had turned the ship around and slowed themselves to a stop when we werent watching them, maybe as we watched the ring shake itself apart
> > Counter thrusters. Very common concept in sci-fi space travel. And the end of Halo:CE, they didn’t stop. They continued at the speed they had gained. The ship just stopped shaking from the massive thrust.
>
> As the camera pans out you can clearly see it is no longer moving, and you never see any thrusters. And that is not the only situation this happens a lot in the other games and books too.
Not to be rude but how can you tell something stops in space from a distance without any instruments?
> In the Halo universe how do spaceships stop? If you’re flying along in space on your ship and you need to stop how do you do it? There is no air resistance in space thus Newton’s First Law kicks in and your ship would keep going never stopping.
>
> Take the end of Halo 1 for example, John speeds off the ring in the longsword and Cortana tells him it’s best to shut the engines off and they come to a stop. John then takes his helmet off as the camera pans out and then the events of First Strike happen.
>
> Ok then, how did they stop? Simply stopping the engine is not going to slow you down in space.
> > > Counter thrusters. Very common concept in sci-fi space travel. And the end of Halo:CE, they didn’t stop. They continued at the speed they had gained. The ship just stopped shaking from the massive thrust.
> >
> > As the camera pans out you can clearly see it is no longer moving, and you never see any thrusters. And that is not the only situation this happens a lot in the other games and books too.
>
> Not to be rude but how can you tell something stops in space from a distance without any instruments?
That’s kind of my point; if your closest objects are stars that are lightyears away, your frame of reference is way off. It’d be like saying that the Earth doesn’t appear to be moving, but dude we’re boogying, let me assure you.
> You’re used to using parallax to tell if an object is moving at a significant rate of speed. This doesn’t work as well in space, due to the distance from you to nearby objects. They’re so far away, they appear not to move at higher rates of speed. So, that longsword is very likely coasting at a high rate of speed.
>
> To directly answer the question, whenever it’s explored, the answer is counter-thrusters (often many small ones, also capable of simulating orbit). Not that I recall it specifically being addressed in Halo fiction, but in space-faring sci-fi in general.
>
> It’s worth mentioning that at some point, authors stop trying to explain details that can reasonably be assumed to have been solved. For example, they managed to put off the issue of how one wearing MJOLNIR managed to relieve oneself until very recently. You just don’t need to explain that in order to move the narrative forward.