Talita TIG welds some aluminum plating here. It was replaced because the original plates were bent and preventing the radiator joint from extending. The human-scale torch is kinda hilariously tiny in her giant over-suit welding gloves.
Transcript
Bip: The lag between all those phones was like thinking in molasses. I could barely keep up with our conversations!
Talita: I hadn’t noticed.
SFX: bzzzzzzzz
Talita is hunched over and TIG welding an aluminum seam, the curved glass of her helmet completely black against the blinding light of the welding arc.
Bip: That’s because you squishy people are made of molasses.
She looks up from her work, the black fading in a hexagonal pattern to reveal an irritated expression.
Talita: Well, if I’m welding too SLOW for you…
Bip: No, you weld about the same speed as these frontloaders. You've got much better dexterity, though. And these onboard cameras are impossible to get into tight angles.
46 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 141”
Artor
TIG welding would work very nice in a vacuum. You don’t need the inert gas to exclude oxygen, but helium works great, because it’s conductive. You couldn’t strike a spark in vacuum, but a bath of helium gas will allow the whole process to work.
tyrone
Hmm? I would have thought partial or hard-vacuum most likely would strip the inert gas away immediately rendering the arc exposed…Not certain anyone has ever tried, even as a HVAC chamber experiment ?
Enai
The gas needs time to disperse from the nozzle, because the atoms (in case of Helium, molecules for anything that isn’t a noble gas) move at relatively slow speeds (slow for atoms means at or below the speed of sound) and are not actually any faster than in an atmosphere. So, it would work basically the same. Though, since according to Jay Dirtballs atmosphere still transmits sounds it must still have enough pressure for fluid dynamics to apply, so: they are in fact in an atmosphere. Not much of one, probably like Mars? but an atmosphere that basically works like ours nonetheless.
GladHatter
Ok i dont know much about welding but that looks like a Very satisfyingly neat job talita is doing there.
Also giggling with delight about bip emoting with the vehicle arms. how are they so charming and so terrible
surreallamppost
Unironically seeing some TIG welding makes me so happy- went to college for welding and TIG, especially aluminum TIG, was the most fun of it all. I always really
love looking forward to these pages each week!!!
Ruby
They’re right, we ARE made of molasses.
Peter Jensen
I like the term the AIs in the Schlock Mercenary universe sometimes use for the organics: “Meat glacier”.
JoB
“I hadn’t noticed.”
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Well, yes, Bip *did* say that he *could* keep up his conversations with you and his other two accomplices. That’s nonetheless a tad sub-par for an AI who, according to
https://jayeaton.site/RunawayToTheStars/Sophonts/SapientAI
“can communicate with so many people simultaneously” …
DasGanon
I love how Talita’s EVA suit has auto-darkening for Eye safety.
Does it also auto tint if she looked at something else bright directly, like one of the main overhead lights (or the local star if it’s close enough)?
Peter Jensen
Dirtball is tidally locked, with the habitat and junkyard in permanent shadow. If she’s seeing the local star directly, something has gone terribly wrong, so she may not have designed her equipment to handle that. Of course, in her future career as squishy ship maintenance crew, it’s entirely likely that she’ll find herself working outside in direct sunlight, but she doesn’t know about that yet (at least not consciously acknowledged).
JoB
> If she’s seeing the local star directly, something has gone terribly wrong
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I suppose that the top part of the launch loop, going 80 km above the planet surface, might see direct sunlight. (Remember, Shikaviil port is sufficiently close to the terminator that they have solar panels set up over on the sunny side.) Which raises the question whose job it is to repair things *up there* when necessary …
Artor
Sure, but seeing a fusion drive taking off would be at least as bad, if not worse than glimpsing the local star.
Enai
Do we know what Dirtball is tidally locked to? It might be a gas giant or brown dwarf planet and her actual star might be so far away it doesn’t look much brighter than Venus. The worldbuilding article doesn’t specify.
I was puzzling over where Dirtball is, because the article doesn’t say that either. Our solar system *has* a dwarf planet named Ixion, but it’s much, much smaller than Dirtball and not much is known about it.
JoB
As far as I can tell, the only objects permanently in the system that have been mentioned are Dirtball (as a *planet*), its sun, and then the skyhook, orbital station, wormhole gate, and (lately) the fleet(?) of ferries passengers arriving in interstellar ships switch to at the station to make planetfall. The exact *position* of the system being rendered sorta irrelevant because traveling from and to another needs to be done by a wormhole, with the duration of the passage being negligible in comparison to the time spent maneuvering *within* either system, anyway.
Jay Eaton
Gonna make the astronomers mad and say the location doesn’t matter other than it being in Dominion of Tiiliit’s territory. So, the system is probably physically closer to the avian homeplanet than Earth. But physical distance between systems matters less in this setting because they are using wormholes to cheat at FTL.
Enai
@Jay:
I am mostly wondering how far Ixion is from its star. I thought it might be in the Oort cloud and had been sold to the Tiiliitians, bringing it under their jurisdiction. I mean, why would Jovia be keen on having to provide law enforcement to a dinky little outpost of 200 Avians or so? Apart from the logistics issues, the cultural differences would make that a bitch and a half (apologies to bitey female dogs. Even the most rabid ones pose much less fraught problems) (I also wonder how big the colonized space is. Are we talking the immediate galactic neighborhood (like, a hundred lightyears diameter) or more? But that is less exciting than the questions about Dirtball)
Arcstone
Hey jay, would dirtball have enough atmosphere for sounds to carry?
I ask because I’ve been mind-theatering these scenes with the only vibrations, radios and maybe sometimes breath as the only sound effects and I’m curious if I got it right.
Jay Eaton
Dirtball has a thin atmosphere of mostly CO₂. Sound carries, but much fainter and weirdly slow. People in exosuits would be functionally deaf anyways, because they are wearing a thick insulation layer and headphones. I add “sound” effects to these outdoors scenes to clarify motion and portray vibrations/sensations.
Boxthing
O.o since when do earthmoving vehicles have arms?
Vinemaple
I think we saw them in Chapter 1. Before Calcery left, it was Calcery who drove the heavy equipment, instead of the techs. I think these vehicles are designed for general salvage, and for AI operation, so they have complex mechanical arms that can do multiple things, because (a) ideally there aren’t any squishy folk out there to pick things up or hold them, and (b) when you have sapient AI that can just figure out how to use a grappling arm like that, the way you or I would use our own arm and hand, it makes a lot more sense to design and build such a thing.
Vinemaple
*temps, not “techs”
JoB
They’re actually multipurpose, thanks to exchangeable tools going on the front mount
https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/666828320596475904/random-visdev-for-the-book-im-currently-writing
, operate in an environment less than welcoming to humans, *and* during times the humans are off duty in the first place (thanks to getting preprogrammed for the “night cycle”). Chances are that the arms’ main purpose is to allow them to switch their own front tool unaided, *besides* whatever work full-fledged arms are better suited for to boot.
40
Why does Talita have Seth MacFarlane eyes 😭😭😭
Sabella
Because she’s been putting up with Bip’s antics for least a few hours now.
Duke 1337-O
I really hope centaur tendons are laid out fairly differently from ours because my hands are cramping up just looking at this ;_;
Eux
i love to see bip emoting with a frontloader. and talita’s visor is so cooooooooool!
Vinemaple
The visor, yes, what I came here to say. Not just the automatic switching, but the dot pattern like a car windshield just looks so cool!
Chrysalis
Bip is a high-powered desktop computer surrounded by squishy little mobile devices.
Also, I love the adjustable faceplate! So convenient!
Apollo235
Why are welding gloves necessary over the spacesuit gloves? Spacesuit gloves are already pretty thick, so I imagine the loss of dexterity by adding another layer or two is barely noticeable with how stiff they are by default.
Cat'O Moss
I imagine it’s because – as Talita said at the start of the comic – the Suit is for breathing. You don’t want to know what happens if it gets punctured or burned through. The gloves of the suit may be tough, but they’d likely still get seared through if they came into contact with the welding torch or molten wire. The welding gloves are just and extra defense to prevent that possible (and very deadly) outcome.
JoB
Uhhh I wouldn’t want to be the guy who finds out that space suit material can *either* keep glowing material off the surface below *or* remain airtight but not *both* at the same occasion … :-3
Fallingfeather
If I had to guess, the small, intense, localized heat from welding is different from the broad-scale temperature and radiation ranges the suit is meant to withstand. It’d melt/burn. Talita even mentioned at the start of the comic that the suits are meant to keep you breathing in the (lack of) atmosphere, not act as a safety shield against debris. I suspect welding is similar.
Claire
I have to wonder how much research time Jay has devoted to specifically welding :3c
JoB
… hate to be that guy, but TIG welding is used to manufacture spacecraft parts *on Earth*:
https://blog.perfectwelding.fronius.com/en/welding-for-space-travel/
Whereas …
JoB
… the current favorite for welding *in* space/vacuum is electron-beam welding:
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Space-made_weld_scrutinised_in_ESA_lab
pelya
Let’s just pretend that Talita has only one welding machine, she just turns off the argon line when welding in vaccuum.
Adrienne
😏 DO you really hate to be that guy though? You are the most That Guy of anybody in this comment section
JoB
> DO you really hate to be that guy though?
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Let me elaborate: I *do* like to dig up background information and start discussions along the lines of “how could *this* work”, “how close could nowadays-RL we actually get to *that*”, “what’s going to happen if the plot takes the McGuffin to *those* extremes” etc. etc..
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That does not mean, however, that I’m oblivious to the fact that saying something to the effect of “uh, *this here* background info that the author researched umpteen years ago (see, for example, the date tag on
https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/159666137028/thinking-about-plot-junk-for-runaway-to-the
) with Lord-knows-how-much effort, and baked it into the storyverse? It seems to have aged quite poorly …” where they can see it isn’t going to make me very popular with *them*.
Avardent
Im thinking bip is just lazy lol
Peter Jensen
Probably also the onboard cameras don’t have the range to properly process the high intensity light during the weld, so they’d need to have some equivalent of holding welding glass in front of the cameras. Or plan the weld ahead of time and hope it goes well. Automatic welding robots follow pre-programmed plans, but also have various sensors to adjust the weld as it goes. But that’s highly specialized equipment, and if you’re resorting to using a frontloader to weld with in the first place, odds are it’s not available. Also, kinda want to see a drawing of the frontloader holding a hand-held welding mask in front of the cameras …
JoB
> kinda want to see a drawing of the frontloader holding a
> hand-held welding mask in front of the cameras …
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For electrode, filler rod, *and* a “hand-held” mask, you’d need at least three hands and, thus, *two* front loaders. 😛
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(No indication where those cameras actually *are*, but Bips last sentence suggests that they cannot be removed/extended from the vehicle and I don’t see any sus protrusion on the loader that you could put a suit helmet over without it immediately falling back off … say, I note a distinct lack of any kind of “Relativistic Tape” on Dirtball …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape#Military
😉 )
Flori
This is just reinforcing my imagining of the bips fixing the ship Papa G style, because in the scene one of the clones holds another’s hair out of the way while he welds- just in this case it’s holding up a welding mask, lol
Jay Eaton
The cameras are clearly visible on this page :^) There are eleven of them on each front loader. They are fixed to the frame and designed to give the autonomous vehicle a broad awareness of its surroundings and its arm positions, not do detailed manufacturing work. Imagine trying to weld something seen through a backup camera.
JoB
> The cameras are clearly visible on this page :^) There are eleven of them
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OK, so, a subset of the thingies on the front loader that look like the two lamps atop Talitas helmet, but do *not* emit light. (“Subset” because I see *twelve* candidates on this page alone.) All of them sit on some sort of edge, so, as I said, Bip cannot cover them with a space-suit-and-welding-combo helmet unless they *fasten* it in place somehow.
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… *and then* there’s the problem that they’re not optimized for close-by welding work, just like Talita’s (naked) eyes aren’t, either …
Enai
Way to smooth talk people, Bip. Did you get your social skills from the scrap heap, like your replacement parts?
evileeyore
Bip is not a smooth talking manipulator. He’s blatant and uses as big a lever as he can combined with being as persistent as thinks he can get away with… which in at least one case is pushing well past Idrisah’s limits.
Hopefully he starts showing positive qualities, enough to endear him to his future crew…