Close. Shiro's rocket forced the nose of the ship to turn slightly upward, thus changing the angle of the ship as it aproached Earth. That change in angle caused the cross-sectional area of the ship to change such that the force due to air resistance against the aerodynamic design gave the ship enough lift to level out and fly straight instead of slaming into the ground. Play with some paper airplanes, you'll see what I mean.

O, okay I get it now. Thanks.

Paper airplanes are fun.

So Genius just pointed the Skyjumper at the Mall and let 'er rip? No guidance? No thrust? No compensation for wind? Nothing? It wouldn't come anywhere close to the Mall...wind currents would have tossed it off course long ago, aerodynamic as it is.

At terminal velocity, a breeze won't have much influence. It's not terribly aerodynamic anyway, Shiro's thrusters were simply pumping out a whole heck of a lot of thrust.

I'm not sure I want to do this, but I am damned retintive. Under the spoiler is a direct quote from the book, page 607.

Spoiler: The tremendous thrust from such a limited point in on the Skyjumper's hull caused the nose to edge up ever so slightly. Then more. And more. And more until the Skyjumper was positioned horizontally. Which was problematic since it was built to be as aerodynamic as humanly possible to make it appear as though it did not indeed fly by a highly dangerous and largely untested process that was barely understood even by its designer Dr. Genius.

Well shoot. Darn thing must've had happy little mini-thrusters to keep it on course. Or something.

The point of the scene isn't the Skyjumper, it's what poor little Shiro's doing. Y'ain't suppose to care about the Skyjumper :)

All I need to know is Shiro messed up their plans. I don't care what's supposed to keep it on course initially, only what throws it off course. And the aerodynamics works works great for me.

Remember your core reader group Kurosen. Comic book/sci-fi/fantasy/gamer geeks. You had to know there would be massive debates over largey inconsequentional details. I mean, I've heard the theory that Luke Skywalker is an insestuous freak because he didn't seem weirded out about the kiss at the start of Empire Strikes Back.

Theres also the long standing debate that Star Wars is just a long movie about racism, yea, people like us tend to argue over the most minute of details :p

A good point Napoleon. I recall the theory that the clone army is a representation of Lucas's fear of the illegel imigrants migrating from Mexico because Jango looks Mexican. However, the actor is from Indonisia (or was it the Philipeans? some islands in the equatorial Pacific region) and Lucas has lived in England for a long time now. Though the Emperor himself was prejudice against non-humans.

I am a dirty name thief...

Yay! A post!

Also, it'd be great if someone could direct me to an Atomik Lad logo/insignia avatar or picture or something along those lines...