Why would the Silver Age Superman be careful of his space-routes?

[alschroeder]

Trivia question: why would the Silver Age Superman have to be VERY careful of what routes he takes when he's flying from star to star or galaxy to galaxy?

Answer: Because the vast majority of suns are red dwarf stars. If he was careless in which routes he took, and got too close to a red sun, his trip would end, and instead, a powerless Superman would suffocate and/or explode in airless space. He probably planned specifically to go through routes where there was a preponderance of yellow stars on his route, which would take careful planning.

I still think a great untold Superboy story would have been when Superboy first discovered he could go faster than light, and got in trouble---both losing his bearings and perhaps, losing his powers, by straying too close to a red sun....

And then we could have Tomar-Re, who was the Green Lantern in that sector of space, rescued a marooned Kryptonian youth....

Boy, that would have made a good story!---Al

[TELLE]

It's kind of scary, actually, to think that Superboy could have ended up powerless in the vacuum of space or that he could have lost his powers while traveling faster than the speed of light and just burned up or something, assuming that either would happen while traveling that fast.

[Johnny Nevada]

Not an untold story, folks--- in 1981's "New Adventures of Superboy" #20 and #21, a two-part backup story flashes back to when Superboy was 10 years old, where it's shown that while travelling faster-than-light through space on his own (guessing for the first time or one of very few times since becoming Superboy), he winds up near a red sun for the first time since leaving Krypton, and is forced to land on a planet with sentient giant slug-like creatures. Superboy does eventually get back home of course (*without* the help of Tomar-Re :-) ) and learns that he'll lose his powers under a red sun.

In the story, he immediately gets cold (losing his invulnerability) when near the red sun-orbiting planet, but manages to land on the planet before he winds up completely powerless (though is forced to use his cape like a parachute/splash into a lake)...

[alschroeder]

Huh. My bad. There were a few issues of NEW ADVENTURES I didn't pick up---obviously I missed those, because that doesn't ring a bell at all. Thanks!---Al

[Uncle Mxy]

This reminds me of a recent Legion Of Super Heroes cartoon, where Superboy loses his powers in the face of a red sun (Timber Wolf's home planet), but he hasn't obviously made the connection between "red sun" and "power loss".  It was at the "some places, he just loses powers", without exposition but with a big red sun in the background so it was clear to a Superman fan. 

At FTL, what does "light" look and act like?  Maybe he'll still be "super" as long as he stays at FTL, only becoming vulnerable if he slows down.  (Yeah, I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, but it sounds like Silver Age physics to me.)  So, he can breeze by red suns as long as he maintains FTL, which might not be something he could do perpetually or in a populated planet's atmosphere.  Hmmm... 

As far as plotting interstellar courses, I would think that the empty space in the galaxy would be a whole lot larger than the areas where a red (or blue or green) sun would dominate.  So he'd be ok some collosally large % of the time.  Of course, it'd help to get some idea of the "range" of the power loss in the face of the red sun really is.  Does he have to be within a light-hour of the red sun for its effects to take hold, or is its range closer or farther away than that? 

[Sam Hawkins]

I remember glancing at that New Adventures of Superboy story in a quarter bin about 20 years ago.  I think they were running a series called "First Times" or something like that.  No doubt lots of good ideas along those lines that have never been explored.  But I don't know which is the neater thing about that "comes out of warp under a red sun" story: Is it that, against astronomically long odds, he came out just close enough to a planet to glide(?) there, or that the story taught us that a human could fall out of planetary orbit and land safely on said planet using only the braking action of a cape?  NASA obviously must be trying to do this stuff the hard way.   

[davidelliott]

Forget all that... is that THE Al Schroeder whose letters I read in the lettercols back when DC was good?

[Permanus]

Forget all that... is that THE Al Schroeder whose letters I read in the lettercols back when DC was good?

Yes, it is him! I was as surprised as you were: http://superman.nu/smf/index.php?topic=2021.0