Who put those giant bugs in there...
Transcript
Talita: The jack measures the Runaway at about 120 kilotons. But the tanks are empty– And I have no idea how much fuel we’re going to get out of that old hydrolysis plant.
Panel background: The empty tank of the Runaway is shown with a moth flying around inside it. The derelict hydrolysis plant interior is shown with a cobweb and spider over it.
Idrisah: Luckily the gatehouse can accommodate day-of changes to mass.
Talita: Good, because I wrote a low estimate.
She looks sheepish.
Talita: 10 tons.
Idrisah squints.
Idrisah: …Will the ship even make it to the wormhole?
Talita: Sure! Just… Very slowly.
Idrisah: Yikes. I guess that’s fine if you can eat sunlight while you coast for decades…
Panel background: The Runaway drifts through space with its solar panels extended.
Idrisah: I go crazy enough on the 2 week trip to Nexus Jovia. Where’s that AI traveling to, anyways?
She hands Talita her tablet back.
Talita: They haven’t said. Without money and assets their options are pretty limited.
64 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 151”
Mr. Skeleton
Where else you gonna store giant bugs?
creetur
Giant terrarium, of course!
JoB
[points to last vignette of AMA 3]
ImJustaTourist
To all the numbers banter going on, is that 10 tonnes of fusion fuel or reaction mass? I’m no engineer but those are two very different things…
Also liked the Expanse references. For those who haven’t read any of the books (huge recommend) the Epstein drive is depicted as a torch drive in print, every ship a veritable Death Star and the night skies are filled with thousands of artificial comets. Fusion has made energy essentially costless in this scenario and the petroleum of this economy has become reaction mass, specifically water, and lots of it.
The ice must flow.
JoB
> those are two very different things…
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True, but since Idrisah and Talita are specifically talking about the launchtime mass of the Runaway, I trust those 10 t to include both consumables.
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(Using pricey ²H and/or ³H for reaction mass is certainly wasteful, and IIUC you’d want to use far heavier atoms for that, though. But seeing that that hydrolysis plant’s going to make O2 as a by-product, anyway …)
Guest
Do you think Talita could button up her little shirt buttons with her trunk?
JoB
With only her trunk (ever tried to do buttons with just one hand?), or … ?
Jess
Was having a rough day and decided to give your comic a reread as a little distraction. Your world and characters are so immersive. I can’t wait to see how the story unfolds even more – so far, it’s been an absolute delight <3
Vinemaple
Well, *this* sounds pretty fraught… but I still can’t get over how Talita’s head, even without a brain, is almost the size of Idrisah’s entire torso! How did I never internalize just how big centaurs are until the last 2 pages?
Phasma Felis
I felt exactly the same way the first time I met a horse up close.
Jordan Aster
Mostly I’m looking at how huge her hands are compared to a human’s hands. I can’t imagine how self-conscious she must feel. She’s gotta feel like she takes up too much space. I know some really tall humans can be self-conscious about their height, and my partner definitely feels weird if he feels like he’s taking up space or is in the way. This woman deserves to feel like she belongs anywhere.
arf
Calling it now: the Runaway employs a novel drive using the beams from moon moths.
All the gang needs is a source of nectar…
JoB
“Imagine … the power of a thousand wings!“
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love idrisah’s muppet face on the bottom left
JoB
The mathematician in me wants to point out that with a total mass of “about 120 kilotons”, ten tons of fuel would be firmly in the error margin. (A hundred tons would likely still be.)
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Maybe the empty tanks are an explanation why Bip was unable to dodge that “moving object”? Kept running/dodging pursuers they weren’t faster than ’til they couldn’t anymore?
Enai
Okay, so I’ve done some math about it. The Runaway is 200 m long, yes? Estimating that she’s less than 50 m wide in both directions perpendicular to her axis, that gives her 200x50x50=500’000 cubic meters volume, likely much less. 120 kilotons equally distributed through that volume means she’s got a density of 2.4 kg per liter, putting her close to the density of solid aluminium. That seems unrealistically high for a vessel that is designed to exclusively operate in microgravity. Does she have lead shielding all around or something? Do they use a different ton than the SI?
.
Btw: please don’t feel like you (JoB) have to know the answer / have a plausible explanation for this. You just seem to be the person most likely to do some back of the envelope calculations about this, so I’m nattering at you.
Enai
Nevermind, found a thread about this topic. Sorry for double posting.
Phasma Felis
Well, share the link for the rest of us 🙂
JoB
> Well, share the link for the rest of us
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That’d be over here.
Sen
Love the visual little treats of the butterfly and the spider to imply empty and unused ^^
8
spider in space… so far from home……
underwater
I love her big toothy sarcastic smile in panel 4
Arcstone
Was gonna say. 😀
Big ol toothy human grin that probably would have been taken as a threat on ones life on her native planet, and cause like twelve spears to be pointed at her.
0xabad1dea
has Bip tried calling their parent AI and asking for lunch money? I know the relationship’s strained, but, well… usually works for humans.
Ginkgosauras
I heavily suspect the reason their relationship’s strained is because bip chose to do crime, in which case their mum(iirc) might just turn them in to the authorities
zaratustra
Everything Bip has done so far indicates they’d rather die than get exposed.
OccidentalAvian
I just noticed that Talita’s antlers are starting to show! Which reminds me, about how long has it been in-universe since the comic started?
antler ponderer
probably a few weeks, thats likely why they’re there – as an in-universe immersive way for the readers to be able to tell how long its been.
tyrone
“Who put those giant bugs in there.”
Thou should ask which poor Sod is to go in an get ´em ou…..TALITA!!!
Greebus
I love how they’ve all banded together to help Bip. They know it’s the right thing to do according to their moral compass, if not the law. I also love the diastema between Talita’s incisors and molars. It’s such an endearing design detail.
9
new word acquired thank you
Lilac
As soon as a few complications seem solved even more arise……..
Varyon
0.008% of the vessel’s mass in the form of remass is pretty ridiculously-low, yeah. I don’t think even the superscience Epstein Drive from The Expanse would be able to do much with that – higher estimates for that have a ship with a 97% mass fraction of remass having a delta-v of 0.24c; simplifying the rocket equation, that 0.24c would correspond to over 3x the amount of delta-v you’d get if you didn’t shed mass as you used up remass, so that would imply those 10 tons would get the Runaway to around 2 km/s (assuming you don’t need to slow down at the destination; you’re probably looking at less than 1 km/s so you can brake when needed). That’s around Mach 6 – amazing considering how little remass is involved, but an absolute crawl in space, particularly when you consider the ISS in orbit today is traveling around 4x that speed.
Famout
Oh I like the work you did a LOT.
I suspect it only gets worse too, at such slow speeds the slightest gravity tug from any planet is gonna greatly adjust course over time, and I suspect while moving so slowly it might be near impossible to actually set up decent gravity slingshots as well. It’s not a bad speed on a planetary scale, but going galactic or even just inter solar system? Yea that’s a problem.
JoB
Of course, Bip being all lonely in-system for decades but having power from solar panels means that the three girls are going to get daily unrefusable calls from them …
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… umh, maybe the three of them aren’t going to be aboard the Runaway right the moment it leaves the planet by skyhook but … ?
godspeed
I just bookmarked this page, just in case my toddler is asking me in the non-distant future why they need to learn math, lol.
(Currently really into machines of all kind, construction machines, autonomous lawn mower robots, cranes, excavators, industrial production videos…. Just everything.)
Love this community for being nerdy about hard sci-fi.
Varyon
Before people get too impressed, I feel I should clarify that I cheated a bit with my math here. That bit about simplifying the rocket equation? I stole the relevant values from GURPS Spaceships. Briefly, in that system, you design ships that have 20 systems, each representing 5% of its mass. For the Fuel Tank system, the author simplified the rocket equation by giving a delta-v multiplier based on how many tanks you have; the highest is 3x for having 19 Fuel Tanks (95% of mass), so I just used that here.
For reference, this would mean the Epstein drives installed on the Nauvoo would have a nominal delta-v of roughly 120,000 mps (that’s miles per second) per fuel tank in that system. I don’t know if there’s enough data available to work out what the maximum acceleration a 5% mass-fraction drive would have, but based on the performance of the ships in the story, 10G+ wouldn’t be out of the question (which would mean if you don’t need that much power, you could easily use a smaller system – that’s what the Nauvoo would have needed to do).
Chrysalis
As a fan of the non-diegetic giant rat, I’m delighted to meet their new friends, non-diegetic giant moth and non-diegetic giant spider. (Members of an as-yet-unseen non-diegetic ecosystem?)
Paroxysmall
wonder what niches the pawed airplane and eraserhead baby would fill
Trees
‘We also need to factor in about 400kg of jam to placate the mega-moth in the dorsal fuel tank.’
Darth Biomech
120000 tonnes of dry mass is surprisingly hefty for a 200m-long spaceship. In my setting, that would be a mass of a warship twice the size…
Bip is so dense, huehuehue~
Light_In_The_Fog
Yeah, I wonder what portion of that mass is Bip’s processing hardware? I bet they’re pretty dense lol.
Of course 200 meters is a good amount of ship idk
JoB
IIUC yours aren’t torchships, either. In radiation shielding, “dense” is good. 😛
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(FWIW, the 269 m Titanic had a displacement of 52.3 kt …)
Light_In_The_Fog
oooh i didn’t consider that. yeah, i bet the radiation shielding (both from interplanetary stellar radiation & from the engines) is pretty massive
Peter Jensen
I’m reminded of an exchange in another comic, while on a spaceship one character is explaining radiation and what’s needed to shield against it to the other: “Wow. That much material wrapped around a spaceship would be heavy… and expensive to accelerate… and we don’t have much shielding, do we?”
Enai
Okay, so I’ve done some math about it. The Runaway is 200 m long, yes? Estimating that she’s less than 50 m wide in both directions perpendicular to her axis, that gives her 200x50x50=500’000 cubic meters volume, likely much less. 120 kilotons equally distributed through that volume means she’s got a density of 2.4 kg per liter, putting her close to the density of solid aluminium. That seems unrealistically high for a vessel that is designed to exclusively operate in microgravity. Does she have lead shielding all around or something? Do they use a different ton than the SI?
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Please excuse me posting this twice, I hadn’t seen this thread that’s much more suitable for my estimated calculations than the post I replied to first.
JoB
Umh, I fear that you’ve made a mistake there … 120’000 t / 500’000 m³ = 0.24 t/m³ = 0.24 (1000 kg/1000 l) = 0.24 kg/l = 0.24 g/cm³. A 50 m x 50 m shield of lead would need to be “only” 427 cm thick to weigh 120 kt alone …
Enai
Factor Ten, my nemesis, strikes again! *shakes fist against the sky in impotent rage*
.
You’re right, that’s a much more reasonable estimate of the Runaways average density, subjact to her actual measurements of course. Still seems high, though.
Fallingfeather
“That AI” you know their name is Bip, Idrisah. >.>
eden
wait, so the runaway would be going slow because they are low on fuel? I’m sorry I don’t know how ten tons is significant if it’s going to be filled the day they leave.
Enai
Well, you can only accelerate so much on very little fuel, especially since you’ll have to preserve some for any further adjustments of speed and direction.
.
Will Bip claim ownership of the quantum phones? If so, they could sell them to pay for *some* expenses…
Daedalus
Talita’s lowball estimate is that the ship will get 10 tons of fuel from the electrolysis plant before launch. That’s not a lot of fuel for a ship of that size. And yeah, to conserve fuel they can just go slow. Just burn a little to get going in the right direction and then coast.
Avardent
I wonder how much you need to actually set up an intercept with the wormhole, or reach escape velocity of dirtball in the first place. The idea of you can get anywhere by just pointing at it, accelerating a bit and waiting only works in empty space with no orbits
Proxy
I believe that’s what the launch loop is for, it chucks stuff out of orbit so that you *don’t* have to waste fuel yourself!
Apollo235 (2,250+ hours in Kerbal Space Program)
In space the amount of fuel you have directly relates to how fast you can go, this is measured in delta/v – Difference in velocity. Unlike a car where fuel quantity equates more or less directly with how far you can go, more fuel in a spaceship means you can get there faster. If you burn with a d/v of 2 kilometers per second, then you are now going 2km/s faster in whatever direction you were pointed.
So Bip has different options to get to the wormhole station depending on how much fuel they have to burn and assuming the station is at Dirtball’s L-2 Lagrange point, directly behind it from the star’s perspective. The most fuel efficient (and as a result slowest) option is to burn prograde (same direction you’re already going) from Dirtball so that roughly half an orbit later they will meet up with the wormhole station this is called a Hohmann Transfer. Since the Runaway will only have 10 tons of fuel this is pretty much what Bip will have to use. The other option, presumably what the Runaway typically uses, is to spend half the trip burning towards your target, then half slowing down so you don’t over-shoot, at least in sci-fi circles this is called a flip-and-burn.
While my lacking skills of giving a simple answer are also at fault, it is really hard to understand orbital mechanics through words alone, if you’re at all interested I’d recommend watching some Scott Manley videos explaining orbital maneuvers, better yet play Kerbal Space Program, (THE ORIGINAL. DO NOT KSP2 GET KSP2 EVEN IF IT’S FREE) or just ask me if to clarify, i would like to improve my explanation
TL;DR (you triggered my special interest, wall of text is the consequence /hj)
The Runaway will only be given 10 tons of fuel at launch because Talita thinks that’s all they could reasonably get together with the busted electrolysis plant. 10 tons of fuel means they can’t do much once in orbit and thus will need to spend most of the trip drifting though space.
Chrysalis
Thank you for the explanation! People going into detail about their special interests are one of the chief joys of the Internet, especially when said special interest is relevant to the topic at hand.
Apollo235
PSA about KSP2, on Steam it’s still listed as early access and in development, IT IS NOT. Some time back the publisher, private division (spits in disrespect) axed the development studio yet later stated that it was ‘still being work on’. More recently it was sold to a private equity firm who still pretty regularly puts it on sale despite no intention or ability to resume development. If you want KSP, buy the original, if you want more, install the mod-manager CKAN and mod it to your heart’s content, it still remains an amazing game.
Jay Eaton
Traveling through vacuum is frictionless, so, imagine you are in a car on an endless plane of extremely effective air hockey table. The tank is almost empty, and you want to go, oh, 5 million miles or something. So instead of continuously pressing the accelerator, you can press it just enough to get the car going at like 60mph. Then you can sit and twiddle your thumbs, not using any gas until you’ve traveled the whole five million. At this point you’d better have saved half of the fuel you used to start going, because brakes don’t work without friction. Instead you have to turn the car around and press the accelerator to cancel the momentum you created five million miles ago. This has been a vast oversimplification of space travel.
JoB
And then, on the other side of the wormhole, Bip would still have to get to the pump, so they’d better use only a quarter of the fuel to pull away from Dirtball. (Going anywhere that’s down a gravity well and doesn’t offer a skyhook or somesuch to shed/reacquire the position energy “for free” would be right out, I guess.)
Gheesfellow
….To infinity and beyond?
Matt
Gosh, 10 tons really doesn’t sound like a lot, considering that a Boeing 737 already has twice that capacity! (Comparing apples to oranges on multiple levels here, I know…)
“low estimate” might be lowballing the lowball haha
Adrienne
Jeez. I had no idea just how much fuel air travel took… No wonder we’re destroying our planet!
Pathfinder
Lowballing? More like Dirtballing!
I’ll see myself out…
Matt
oops, sorry! I meant to write this as a new comment, not to reply to yours. My bad!