The Equipment
How fast can the Thunderbirds go?
How does Virgil get out of Thunderbird Two?
Where and what is Thunderbird Six, and why hasn't it been used in your RP?
What interesting new devices are the IR team using now?
Why did you change the uniforms?
updated and edited 02/12/09
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How fast can the Thunderbirds go?
The following statistics are according to Bentley and Bleathman.
- Thunderbird One: Maximum speed, 15,000 mph or Mach 19.7. No cruising speed given.
- Thunderbird Two: Cruising speed, 2000 mph or Mach 2.6. Maximum speed, 5000 mph or Mach 6.6.
- Thunderbird Three: Standard acceleration, 1 g. Maximum sustained acceleration, 6 g. Emergency acceleration, 10 g.
- Thunderbird Four: Surface cruising speed, 40 knots. Underwater speed, 160 knots. Emergency launch speed, 30 mph.
- Thunderbird Five: No speed listed. It is in geostationary orbit to the west of Tracy Island.
- FAB-1: Land speed, in excess of 200 mph. Sea speed, 50 knots.
- The Mole: Maximum drilling speed, 15 mph. Trolley maximum speed, 50 mph.
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How does Virgil get out of Thunderbird Two?
According to the Bleathman cross-sections, there are a few different ways.
- He could leave via the passenger elevator.
- There's a small lift in the rear port corner of the main chassis; it connects with the normal sized door in the front of the pod. He could take that down to the pod and use some sort of remote to lift the chassis after he gets out.
- There's also an entry hatch at the back of the main chassis at the pilot's deck level that opens onto a catwalk at the top of the pod. He could exit there, cross the length of the pod, and climb down. Again, he'd have to use some sort of remote control to lift the chassis off the pod when he was out.
- He could use the rescue cage as an elevator, using a remote to send it back up when he was down.
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Where and what is Thunderbird Six, and why hasn't it been used in your RP?
In the movie of the same name, Thunderbird Six is a two-seater, Tiger Moth biplane that Alan and Tin-Tin use to fly to the start of their tour around the world in Brains's airship. Brains had encountered a lot of difficulty in creating a new Thunderbird from Jeff's vague requests, and at the end of the film, he declares the biplane - which had been used to rescue people from the airship by landing on it - as the new Thunderbird. It's kept in Thunderbird Two's hangar with the rest of the pod vehicles.
Why haven't we used it? We haven't come up with a rescue that might need it... yet.
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What interesting new devices are the IR team using now?
Well, there are a lot of them, especially considering how far our technology has come from when the show aired!
More will be added as they come to mind!
- satellite phones
- locator microchips
- antigravity stretchers and luggage floats
- Thunderbird Seven
- visors with Heads Up technology
- medical scanners
- earpiece communicators with boom mikes
- medical sensors in Thunderbird Five
- beds that sense vital signs (and download them to chips)
- keypad entry doors
- hand scanners
- laptops
- nearly bulletproof fabric (Penelar)
- data pads
- PDAs
- plasma screens
- temporary waterproof goo
- the Internet
- Global Positioning Systems
- video and audio disks
- inflatable splints
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Why did you change the uniforms?
To make them more unisex, versatile, and easier to clean. To get rid of the furry caps. And to get John out of lavender.
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