Freefall

I should have been more clear - I was reacting more to the specific flavors, not that they'd have fungus snacks in general.

For myself, I take the title of "omnivore" with pride.

Given the environment of both new planet colonization and also rampart excesses of industries, there are two ways these snacks could be made. A, genemodded fungi to remove their toxins while keeping the flavours, and thus easily available as staple foods for new planets. B, the snacks are purely artificial in nature and involve nothing more from the actual mushrooms than inspiration for the cocktail of flavour chemicals contained therein.

Shoot, the choice of flavors (or at least, the names) could be pure marketing. Like how hot sauces and spicy food are marketed, implying that you're brave for eating them.

Taunting gravity◊. Bold move, Cotton...

Narratively, it would have been a bit anticlimactic if the ship had exploded at launch, scattering bits of the protagonists across the landscape of Jean. Although that would have made a remarkable April Fools gag if the comic had moved a touch faster.

(I've been watching a lot of videos about rocketry of late, among them a recounting of the more spectacular launch failures.)

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 19th 2019 at 9:01:46 AM

What are fundemental forces of nature for if you cant antagonize them?

Sam practices heroic reserve◊.

People are inventive◊.

This is quite cool. I love the technical details of spaceflight, although I wonder why they're limited to .05 g.

They have 0.05g because they are accelerating at 0.5 m/s2. The number would be coming from some deep maths calculating the optimal usage of their fuel for the distance/time they need to go.

Edited by Adannor on Apr 24th 2019 at 1:44:53 PM

I never until now understood why scientists tend to use g with italics for gravity on Earth at sea level. I just spent a minute trying to figure out why people were talking about 5 hundredths of a gram.

I imagine one of the joys of a very low-g environment is that you find yourself able to get stuck in places nobody previously thought of, because it wasn't possible to reach them beforehand.

That's because capital G is taken by another gravity-related constant.

Sam's classification◊

I love the ship. We haven't gotten to hear from it in many, many strips.

It does beg the question - if Sam's a pet, who's his "owner"?

Obviously, he's his own pet

The ship's computer, obviously.

I assumed it meant Niomi, since the ship considers her in charge.

I imagine he's a family pet. Everyone on the ship is now a family. There's a sitcom in here somewhere...

Not certain if that's the Ship, or Nature and Stupidity...◊

Natural comedic serendipity. Ship wouldn't mess with acceleration plans just to mess with Sam.

The ship in panel 2 looks like it came from an old arcade game.

Problems of various difficulty◊ and a reminder that the comic dabbles in hard science.

Edited by FuzzyBoots on May 1st 2019 at 6:07:03 AM

That does seem like a design oversight.

It's an interesting scenario. Most current spaceships that carry humans are designed so that the axis of thrust creates the largest G-force perpendicular to the body's vertical axis, with people lying in chairs designed to cushion that force. These ships are not meant for people to get up and move around while under acceleration.

Indeed, a spaceship that is intended to take off and land horizontally like an aircraft, rather than vertically like a rocket, would find it much more efficient to adopt a traditional arrangement. Once you're in free-fall, it doesn't matter which way the seats go, and when you're in terrestrial gravity, it's much easier to get in and out and work that way.

Constant-thrust ships, however, might well adopt a less conventional seating and deck structure. It depends a great deal on the balance between those factors: movement in terrestrial gravity versus movement in microgravity versus movement under acceleration.

Edited by Fighteer on May 1st 2019 at 11:17:23 AM