Grrl Power #677 – Xeno economics
Sydney has a long road to travel before she starts acting like a wealthy person. Not that any amount of paper money from a world without an intergalactic trade agreement would be worth anything there, but with what Archon pays her, she should probably keep at least a grand on her in cash.
I imagine everyone on the team might have a card linked to a team account. Obviously all the expenses on it would need to be accounted for, but, you know, maybe Achilles’s car breaks down on the way to a supervillain attack and he needs a taxi or whatever. Since they’re domestically based, miscellaneous expenses might come up. The spending limit is probably tied to rank in that case.
Achilles especially probably doesn’t want to carry a bunch of his own personal stuff into a fight, since he generally runs at the most dangerous thing in any battle. I’ve drawn his clothes getting blown off or messed up several times already, but come to think of it, he probably would have his badge and the aforementioned card and a few other essentials strapped to one leg inside a wallet made out of the stuff they make black boxes out of. So the next time he gets all his clothes incinerated, don’t be surprised if he’s left wearing just a garter belt. Or I guess just a regular belt makes more sense. Just a really tough one, with a built in fanny pack.
The shot of the alien street scene isn’t nearly what I wanted it to be, but backgrounds have never been my thing, and what I pictured in my head would probably have taken several weeks to draw just by itself. So as with the shot of Fracture Station itself, try and imagine the street level scenes with about 10x the detail if you would. :)
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Seems like a perfect hive of scum and villainy….
Also… ARACHNID!!!! KILL ‘EM ALL!!! KILL ‘EM ALL!!! KILL ‘EM ALL!!!
KILL ‘EM ALLLLLLLLLLLL!!!
Poor Vance! I hope he does not read this terrifying threat!
And the alien depicted above, although having a spider-like body has half the requisite number of limbs needed to qualify as an arachnid.
Unless that dude in the purple cape and helmet is actually an arachnid? Keeping a low profile. Mind you if they can hide in Vance suits they can probably hide anywhere!
Sydney, are you feeling a little bumpy?
While true (arachnids, the Earth species, need 8 legs) the alien depicted above is a member of the Arachnid alien species from Starship Troopers.
I stand corrected, the only good bug is a dead bug!
If you want to know more click here.
Xenocide! Xenocide!
Didn’t the Speaker for the Dead teach you anything?! We should approach alien life with an extremely open mind, even slaughtering an entire ship might be a miscommunication on their part..
That wiping out your enemy completely prevents any future counterattack or revenge politics?
*wags tail innocently*
Ask a Husnock. Oh, wait, better ask a Douwd.
See now that is the problem, the failing to completely wipe out your enemy. So long as one remains there is the potential for revenge. Get every single last one of them at the same time.
The Douwd are a perfect example of how to do it right.
In the movie Starship troopers the aliens were called arachnids, or “bugs”, and they looked like the 4 legged one in panel 3.
to be more precise it is an Arachnid Infantry Drone.
Also the picture https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/dEgYh84.jpg mentioned in the comments looks like it was made by BOTH Osamu Tezuka and Hayao Miyazaki.
Would they even use money in space?
Very likely. Although really advanced cultures would dispense with it and directly track the items to be traded. We only use money because such exchanges are too complicated to do in any but the smallest of economies. If your cow is worth two pigs and five and a half chickens, to your neighbour, you can work a deal. But it becomes time consuming to do that with all trades, so a medium is useful.
But if your IT technology can handle that near effortlessly, and you don’t mind owning a 0.5 share in a chicken and a 0.01 share of a solar panel and a 0.3 share of a tree, rather than paper which only has value because we pretend it does, then you can dispense with cash (and digital equivalents).
I can imagine other systems coming into effect, but not the return of the trade system. The biggest issue is that the old trade system is that its very nature assumes all parties are creators or owners of produce in some way. That everyone involved has or makes something. However, as tech progresses and society gets more complex, you start to see things that need to be done that produce nothing, in directions that would be hard to directly use in a trade.
So while, in humanities history, money was mostly made to help merchants with larger trade deals, and the convenience of money over haggling over the value of a cow vs a couch. The need to change the economy into something that recognizes work as a trade-able resource would still crop up, and would still be valid far into the future.
They might have figured out a less corruptible economy, but they probably still do not trade directly in resources.
Humans of the planet Earth seem to easily forget that there is one kind of ware that almost everyone can supply, and that is WORKING, on spot or doing minor errands, or even the infamous “natural payment” i.e. sexual services.
Sexual services at an alien spaceport? You want our girl to catch something?
.
.
.
Thinking of that I just remembered this classic; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-me2inj1nNw
Course even with ‘Work’ you still run into the same issue as with cow vs couch in determining value. X hours putting fence up for 3 bags of rice, or is it 2.5 bags and a half dozen eggs?
That only works if the individual has a job for which the debtor has the skills for that won’t take too long and isn’t out of the way.
Sydney, for example is unlikely to find an offer to take her back to Earth in exchange for spending two and a half Earth years digging space potatoes to be terribly convenient.
Not at all, you can use all the mechanisms available in our present society, you just have to eliminate the money part of the system. Any society which decided to do away with it (or never adopted it in the first place), let us say on a religious principle, would still have all the same needs as our society does. Including sustaining the life of people who presently do not have a job, but who will be able to do something productive and useful to others in due course.
In this case Sydney could issue an IOU for goods and services to be supplied by Archon, if the galactic news / information network is up to date on political events in a backwater tourist destination. Halo featured enough in the world news that an investor would have reasonable confidence she matched the individual featured there. Which may even be verified by image matching software, isotope testing of her body or other such methods.
Plus, even if unable to get a line of credit (in promises of goods / services, rather than money), Sydney’s services potential is far above that of potato digging. She can do work as a mercenary, bounty hunter, soldier and (if she can figure out her navigation) as a courier, cargo or even passenger transporter. All of which could be invested in by a specialist ‘personal services futures’ speculator.
Biometric scanning should be able to verify her identity, against future non-payment claims, enough to secure her a modest line of credit just against those future services. Probably with a fairly hefty interest rate given her potential flight risk, lack of credit history, abode or local connections.
There’s two issues with that:
One, it assumes that the other party will actually have such a job that they actually need done (and also, Sydney’s temperament actually makes her poorly suited to mercenary or bounty hunting jobs).
Two, the system you’re describing is complex enough that it wouldn’t be advantageous to a fiat driven currency.
I think they would use a Rolls Royce, rather than a Fiat. And the only declaration would be “don’t use money”, everything else could be market driven or otherwise work as per our society.
The complexity could be handled several different ways. One could be just sufficiently advanced IT infrastructure and processing capability. We even have rudimentary technology which could evolve into such a system in time. For instance every object could be tagged with devices indicating its location, condition (functional, damaged, in need of servicing, etc), who owns what shares of it, who is obligated for its storage and repair, who has rights to use it, and how much it may cost to rent it or buy it, as compared to current demand.
That way everybody’s material wealth could be tracked by adding up all the bits and pieces that they have full or partial ownership of. Using More’s law there should be a point at which we can solve that just by having good enough technology.
Or we could borrow simplicity from nature. Like how a flock of birds or swarm of fish have very complex movement, as a whole, but the individual rules and reactions are simple for each individual within the whole. You don’t need to search through every object on the planet, to find your stuff.
There is only so much that a normal person owns, so those can be tracked on an individual basis. Then it is just a matter of checking with their transponders, to make sure that what they have ‘on paper’ matches the live record (which would need the usual periodic auditing to counter fraud).
This would eliminate various problems in our society, not least of which is that there would be no risk of a loss of confidence in the currency. So could not lead to a run on the banks, and world-wide recession.
Although things which could disrupt or destroy the IT infrastructure (such as an EMP) would be significantly devastating to such a society. Printing out statements of account, on a regular basis, could provide a contingency against such disruption though.
So you would need to go swimming in statements rather than a pool of bank notes.
Trading in real goods also have the problem of being perishable. $1M in fresh vegetables wouldn’t buy you a house, because even a grocery store couldn’t use them up before they rot.
A really advanced culture might dispense with money internally, but they’d probably still find it necessary to have some unit of trade for dealing with other cultures. For example, in Star Trek the Federation, operating under a post-scarcity economy, had issues dealing with the Ferengi until they were able to set up a currency.
I’m personally a fan of “energy-backed” currencies, as occur here and there in fiction.
Entropy/consuming energy is pan-cultural. Everyone with the same laws of physics can understand it.
At any point before full-on post-scarcity it makes sense. You can translate megajoules into any form of Work (both physical labour and in the physics unit-of-work sense).
Want to move a planet? Sure that’s gonna cost the megajoules the Galactus-sized thrusters burn.
Wanna buy a chicken dinner? Sure, just pay the energy used by the replicator!
Wanna rent a room on a space station? Sure, the oxygen producing gear uses X energy credits per hour.
I haven’t yet found something that wouldn’t work :-)
Why would it need to be backed by anything? As long as the unit of trade is acceptable to all parties and is given a reasonable value that isn’t subject to excess inflation or deflation, that’s all you really need.
You want some form of “proof of work” to prevent untrusted partners from creating money out of thin air. (E.g. Zimbabwean hyperinflation). The proof of work is a brake on the inflation.
Even fiat currency as we have it today is “backed” by trust in the stability of the issuing government, as recently shown by the Turkish Lira these last few months, and the Italians this week.
The googly eyes will be the currency, after all what is the likelihood any other species ever invented googly eyes? A rare item from a planet whose visitors have to be under strict observation and rules. Chances are getting Earth items off planet has some limitations.
-let’s just hope materials like plastic don’t turn out to be the equivalent of crack to some species and she is busted for contraband.
“Oh, we don’t use a primitive economic system like capitalism. Just go ahead, the portal is already configured for your home planet.”
Also… the https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/dEgYh84.jpg picture looks like its
a world made by Osamu Tezuka and Hayao Miyazaki.
Yes your pic is extremely cool. If you want to check out a webcomic which is insanely into very detailed backgrounds, i recommend K6BD https://killsixbilliondemons.com/
(The author is not affiliated with this publication)
Holy crrap, my desktop background for couple of years, already!
There’s night version of this pic, that I autoswap at sundown.
Link?!
Knowing Sydney, they might end up -pushing- her on a trip home after she insults an alien’s cooking.
“You call this hot?!”
Perform the sci-fi trope of “We did a scan of your gut and your gut bacteria to determine your optimal diet….”
“it appears miss you consume large quantities of what to us is a highly toxic substance…”
The standard “Hero’s Journey” story always finds the protagonist down on his/her luck and in need of a quick way to make a buck. The opportunity will always present itself to take advantage of a previously defined skill or ability of the hero. For Robin Hood he will run across an archery competition. For Sydney, she will find herself in front of a restaurant offering an eating contest for the spiciest food on twelve planets.
Someone recognizes the orbs as talks her into helping them with a “bully”. Sydney is tricked into assassinating the local police chief.
Are those Kerbals?
Yes, Yes I believe they are. :-)
I knew they’d make it to the stars one day. I’m so proud of them :’)
Nobody’s sure how they got there without FTL drives. When asked, they just shrugged and said something about “more boosters”.
And they did it without blowing up there Sun! Or did they?
man i dont now how ok i would be landing somewhere that lets arachnid warriors and s’pht freely roam around.
Don’t worry, the Vorlon will protect you.
You can also submit yourself to the protection of the Ur-Quan, I see some of their battle-thrall ships coming in just now!
Excuse me miss, you seem the honest sort. I need some help moving some gold pressed latinum bars that fell off my truck, I’d gladly pay you for your assistance. (VERY toothsome smile)
For a dyson sphere even around a pulsar that thing is way to small, as long they don’t use some sort of anti gravity. The pulsar may only have 20 km diameter but between 1.4 and 2.16 solar masses. You would need a massive sphere around it for ~1g surface gravity. Even the sun is at 28g so you would need about 40 times sun radius for your sphere.
You could however have a artificial black hole at the center and use it for gravity and as a mass energy converter with hawking radiation. At that mass the power output would be gigantic though.
I do not think it is. Just what Sydney guesses from external visual observation and general geekyness. Do you really think they have a dozzen stargates in there?
No. I don’t think that universe runs on stargates, but if it where that black hole would be able to power them.
Good to see the New Alliance of Free Stars is doing well for themselves. That Eluder is flying backwards though, is someone expecting trouble on the other side of that gate?
…what am I saying? It’s a Spathi ship. Of course they’re going to assume that their destination has already been consumed by dread powers from beyond the stars until proven otherwise…
I’ve seen this before!
All you need is some lint, a bubblegum wrapper, and some random assorted bits of junk.
I think it’s fairly safe to assume that Sydney has nothing of real rarity to offer besides the orbs and her limited information on them.
So it’s either that or asking nicely.
I vote for the latter.
The Playlist in her Smartphone.
In some sci-fi series the biggest commodity Earth has to offer the universe is “entertainment tech”; the idea being that the unique blend of abstract imaginative sapience (allows for not just planning and deducing outcomes of experienced events but coming up with unrealistic blends and new ideas), mimic instinct (psychology, the evolution of entertainment starting with dressing up as animals and people to tell stories), along with various consumer cultures has resulted in Earth developing a much larger variety and focus on Entertainment based avenues than any other sapient species could; even after being aware Earth is doing it.
Thus Earth’s tv shows, movies, videogames, toys, ect…are the sort of thing that stands out in the Universe and makes Earth unique to them…this is often a good thing…aliens want to buy it as novelties of strangeness….
…sometimes bad for Earth *coughmusicisaneldritchabominationcough*…sort of setting.
Bet you the brown orb is a universal translator.
That seems like it’d be a function of the comm ball.
I’m a little confused by the floating hair thing Sydney currently has — the fly orb provides localized gravity. Or, at least, has done in the past.
She’s not currently holding the flyball.
And, yeah, there it is in orbit around her head. I guess I’ve just started assuming that, unless she’s got a specific reason not to, her default pairing is flight/shield. Guess she let it go to get the picture before, and hasn’t bothered calling it back to her hand yet. Had to count her money, after all.
If she really wants to travel with universal currency in a material form, she need stuff that is rare and hard to find. Things further down the list of elements, rarer isotopes. Outside of material stuff, I would expect music and tv shows would be worth a bit. Only problem is do universal translators know MP3?
If the air orb is a replica then it may only be a few upgrades before she doesn’t have to worry about money.
It’s okay, when Disney (spit) slash Marvel buys the rights and makes this a movie, we’ll get to see Sidney in the environment you envisioned, Dave. ;)
Quip quip quip and Sidney being reduced to a 1 dimension joke in exchange for a higher budget backdrop? As long as Dave gets the money to keep us entertained and no loss of quality in the webcomic I’m ok.
Eh, the garter idea for Achilles is probably better. One, because a fanny pack or belt would be more likely to get the brunt of whatever he gets hit with, since they’d be on/close to center mass. Two, Achilles wearing garters is just a really fun idea.
It occurs to me that there are several possibilities.
1. Something she has on her might be infinitely valuable.
2. Something she has on her might be shockingly illegal.
3. The orbs may convey some sort of status.
4. The cost of interstellar transport my exceed the value of the United States.
5. She’ll probably meet some friends to help her out.
I’m betting on 5.
I find it unlikely that the orbs will be recognised by any official organisation since Dabbler is widely traveled and didn’t recognise them which I’m talking to mean that they’re not from anything known about in this galaxy but some oddball or secret society might know about them and the squids knew about them (as the squids are another unknown I don’t think we’re going to get everything explained in one go).
Don’t forget, the orbs have been here before. Depending on what he last owner did while on the Fracture, Sydeny may be greeted with flowers or bullets, but I’m sure somebody will recognize them.
We don’t know the time frame though, as in how old this structure is, how long ago the orbs were on the ocean floor…let alone were here; especially as either they were storing their past locations despite not having the Aetherium Causeway upgrade yet; or degraded their upgrades from not being used; on that former the gate to Earth THIS way could be the bigger risk for her.
Of course the aliens running this station could be the types to have insane lifespans, or indefinite ones, and remember. But given the size and number of species and individuals that come through here unless they made a huge scene chances are they won’t even be remembered.
Actually, that may be an indication that the skilltree points Sydney started out with were not a leftover from the last owner, but simply what the orbs judged she coould handle at the time.
Yeah, I suspect she eas given an appropriate set of starting stats. Now if the last orb is for healing it is concievable that her possession oof the orbs may give her a demi or even greater god status. At max level she may be able to create universes.
Hmm, that is an interesting idea.
Kind of goes back to the (they are some higher dimensional celestial being’s toys) idea though. Like she was scanned, and determined “start player on level 5” type of situation.
Well, the orbs are probably a game changer, but in which way?
I eventauly see sydney out distancing CHroma ( or whatever relkaity hacking girl was).
“Hi I am the almighty Halo. I posesses the source code of the universe. Shall I hack your game for you”
1: Maybe, entertainment tech like her music and googly eyes might.
2: Melted plastic is a high addictive and illegal substance among several different species. And while she herself isn’t producing it on the spot, mammalian milk thanks to the lactic acid is a deadly poison for most species in the universe; possibly to use even a small amount to kill a great insectoid.
-although the funny scenario of humans discovering the incredibly dangerous toxic grass of a Mo’at world to taste like cheddar potato fries is still a funny one-
3: Among the Bio-Ships, shocked to see such a small new unit, figuring Sydney must be some new experimental test design.
4: “Sorry miss, that will be three units of 6th space exotic matter; where is your exotic matter containment/access drive card? We have a bank over there if you need to access some funds from your account”
5: Cora crew on the way.
Now I can’t help but wonder how Sydney would react to a proposal to let herself be milked to pay for her trip home… But I think I would like to see it from a safe distance. Like a couple of AU, preferably…
Then she is trailed by the interstellar assassins’ guild as their one opportunity to obtain the deadly poison of humanity after their last screw up where they barely managed to sneak someone to Earth only for them to grab a male human and learn awkwardly that it wouldn’t work.
A: But we got the human, see
B: This is a male you dundersnaps! Only the females produce the deadly poison.
A: But…but it has the chest based poison sack nipples see?
B -grab’s man’s chest- These are non functional, I said female! Female, with engorged poison sacks. Our one chance.
A *whispering* why doe they even have these poison sacks on their chests anyway?
C *whispering back* their offspring are nurtured by the poison.
A *stares in disbelief*…you mean their young latch onto them like parasites and grow from drinking this lethal poison? What kind of monsters are these humans.
B: You could have grabbed ANY fuzzy thing on that planet that was female. its a planet of DEATH and MADNESS, aaagh, after this fiasco the tourist board will be keeping a close eye on us.
A: What about this guy?
B: I don’t know, dump on some planet for all I care.
Sidney will reveal that she knows the recipe for Earth pizza, which will instantly make her the wealthiest woman in this sector of the universe. Actually, I’m guessing they recognize her orbs, since they had apparently been there before. I am hoping this is where Halo finally gets the backstory on them.
The only pizza accepted is Hawaiian
At least Sydney doesn’t make the opposite mistake. Poor people who suddenly come into a lot more wealth tend to overestimate it.
OMG! Is that really Ambassador Kosh?
No.
She just turned up during a cosplay convention.
“We are all Kosh”. :-)
I would suggest she keep a debit card in her utility belt so she cana ccess her vast funds rather than trying to carry large sums on-hand, but even then, doupt an alien civilization would have anything that could read it let alone connect to the US banking system.
If I was a globe-trotting PAID superhero, aside from a thousand in “Oh S***” funds, I’d be carrying several Krugerands, several 1-oz silver bars, and a 1-oz bar of platinum in my utility belt and hidden pockets. Never can tell when you will be stranded on a part of the Earth where paper money is worthless. -And now apparently offplanet as well. Hopefully gold would be a “universal” money too.
If they are advanced enough to build an enclosure to siphon energy from a quasar or whatever to build massive ship port star gates then things like gold and diamonds and the like are probably worthless and given to the children of species who like shiney objects for their arts and crafts projects.
Go back to Dabbler and the gold inside the Earth thing earlier in this comic. If a species can build on a planet size scale *while this one is smaller, a typical Dyson Sphere’s mass would be insane; you couldn’t link every planet in your system together and expect it to cover the sun, the mass of the collectors alone would be so great you’d have to have some other means to gather and produce the materials needed…to the complexity level that you likely developed some other source of energy in the meantime making the concept of a Dyson Sphere obsolete…sci-fi tends to reflect knowledge of technology of the time like needing building sized and planet sized computers for a human like intelligence in old sci-fi. But I digress.
the point being just to build something like that you’d likely need molecular assembler tech, massive ones at that, able to gather molecules, (possibly even localize exotic particles) and assemble them into the massive sheets of material needed to build such structures. At that point pretty much any common element *gold, carbon* in any state is easy to produce.
Not to mention before you get to that point you’d likely developed a way to filter wanted elements from surrounding elements in large quantities.
in space gold is pretty common. Problem human currency is based on material scarcity and imagined value (Gold is shiny like the sun, Gold then represents God the Father, humans like shiny things because of an instinct to seek out fresh water, ect…and it just becomes engrained in the cultures so even those who don’t think of it that way just accept it as having value as the majority do and its part of the financial system they have to live in).
Already covered in the comic that gold isn’t that rare. It is just that the large deposits are really hard to get to for humans.
One guy on earth with the power to manipulate metal has several swimming pools full of gold extracted from the Earth’s core with his powers. If dumped onto the market the world economy would crash but he is only releasing a very small amount at a time to support a comfortable life style.
Yaaay calling it! Called it! Gimme the phone cause I knew it! Dabblers team are gonna find her in some alien cafe eating food not digestible by humans and it doesnt even touch the sides!
Achille’s black box material garter belt suffers that question commonly asked about black boxes: Why don’t they just make the whole plane (or in this case, outfit) out of it?
It occurs to me though that if he did have some small garment of highly survivable cloth, he could hide his junk… where he hides his junk. Since he’s prone to getting his clothes blasted off, blast resistant underwear would leave him censor bar free in action sequences. In real life this would probably not be terribly practical (people might be leery, for example, of examining his badge once he’d retrieved it). But it might make it easier to draw him after a cloth destroying blast: no need for tricky framing, censor bars, reasons to leave him buried under rubble, etc.
I can think of a few possible materials issues. The reason they don’t make planes out of black-box material is because it’s too heavy, and frankly, only structurally sound in small areas, which are way easier to reinforce.
Carbon nano-tubes are about as tough as anything ever can be, but IRL, we’re lucky to be able to make one a centimeter long. Longest to date is 2cm.
Achilles’ black-box-belt thing might have similar limitations. Too heavy, too rigid, or limited in size, it may not be something you CAN make clothes out of… or at least, not anything large and still structurally sound.
I wasn’t seriously asking about why planes aren’t built like black boxes. It’s just a refrain I’ve found amusing.
In Achilles case, some effort would need to be taken to explain why this particular item can survive most anything, or it will lead to the question.
Sure, sure – my meaning is that the answer to both is the same. It doesn’t need to be able to survive everything he does – it just needs to be the best possible thing you can make in that size, and if you’re only looking for a wallet or belt, your options are a lot better than if you’re looking to make clothes.
“black boxes: Why don’t they just make the whole plane (or in this case, outfit) out of it?”
Too expensive, also too heavy.
Oh Halo. First talking, then buying.
Really, Sydney? You became a superhero and DIDN’T get a Batman Credit card? Those are (Unfortunately) kinda cannon!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqon0nVWA4A
I see some Star Control ships in that background, including my favorite! The Spathi were hilarious.
Surprise and Terror!!
Gotta admit. I’m a Lil sad that no one has compared purple cloak guy to a certain character from Babylon 5.
Ah, wait, nevermind. Found someone who noticed the similarities. I am content now :)
And So it begins.
Noticed it, but I admit to not remembering the name…I do remember they were Methane breathers…
Yeah having some emergency money on you is a good idea, but with your limited inventory space I’d get some bigger bills. How big is this base? If it’s only moon-sized, there’s no way it’s a Dyson sphere.
Seems to be a Vorlon, front center and izzat a Mondoshawan off to the right? There’s a few other familiar but just-can’t-place-creatures. Great page Dave.
Dyson spheres are utterly impractical, in terms of physics. Which way would the gravity point? Towards the star, or away? It would likely have very little gravity despite its mass since it’s so widely distributed.
More importantly, it cannot orbit a star, but since a star moves, you would have no way of keeping it centered on the star it is to contain. Without spending titanic amounts of energy to keep moving this titanic amount of mass, what would end up happening is that it would go off-center to its star and the star would just burn through.
Uhm – what?
Physics doesn’t work that way.
None of that works that way.
Physics does work like that. Read up.
“There are several serious theoretical difficulties with the solid shell variant of the Dyson sphere:
Such a shell would have no net gravitational interaction with its englobed star (see shell theorem), and could drift in relation to the central star. If such movements went uncorrected, they could eventually result in a collision between the sphere and the star—most likely with disastrous results. Such structures would need either some form of propulsion to counteract any drift, or some way to repel the surface of the sphere away from the star.
For the same reason, such a shell would have no net gravitational interaction with anything else inside it. The contents of any biosphere placed on the inner surface of a Dyson shell would not be attracted to the sphere’s surface and would simply fall into the star. It has been proposed that a biosphere could be contained between two concentric spheres, placed on the interior of a rotating sphere (in which case, the force of artificial “gravity” is perpendicular to the axis of rotation, causing all matter placed on the interior of the sphere to pool around the equator, effectively rendering the sphere a Niven ring for purposes of habitation, but still fully effective as a radiant-energy collector) or placed on the outside of the sphere where it would be held in place by the star’s gravity. In such cases, some form of illumination would have to be devised, or the sphere made at least partly transparent, because the star’s light would otherwise be completely hidden.”
To be fair it is a concept from 1930’s sci-fi that is only named the way it is because Freeman Dyson used it for a thought experiment once that I wrongly thought he named after himself despite the pre-existing concept *turns out it was named after him despite his protests, points for him on that*; so my bad on not doing follow up.
But the main point we are also talking abiout an era in sci-fi where they had planet sized computers with whole buildings housing parts of them so a single AI could have human intelligence. An era of more “things we imagine must be made insanely huge with insane energy requirements” by advanced civilizations; rather than following Moore’s Law on tech.
In all likelihood on the path to being able to develop and even BUILD ships larger than most planets to encase a star to absorb power from it, you’ll either just keep that tech to much smaller ships that can stop by stars along their travel to refuel, and/or develop a much more efficient source of energy along the way. *just from the requirements of building those structures*.
If only she had money with Varia’s picture on it.. Sydney, you need to plan ahead. Three steps!
More seriously, if her ARCHON I.D. has a chip embedded (and what isn’t chipped nowadays) even money Dabbler was allowed to add a little extra something ‘just in case’. Ya know, a ‘If found, please return to Earth, you’d be doing me a solid. Dabbler’ kinda thing.
I’m thinking of the credit card Dabbler issued to Hope Corrigan A.K.A. Astra in the crossover:
Downloaded the free sample on Amazon, but it didn’t grab me enough to put down money and get the whole ebook.
I’m not sure that letting go of the flight/travel orb is safe here. It doesn’t seem that she put herself into orbit, and the sensation of “zero gravity” near a large mass really only comes from free fall. If she doesn’t grab the fly ball soon she will find that the big cool space port is getting closer. I realize she should still have time to grab it later, but if she doesn’t realize she is falling and is distracted by other things it could lead to emergency collision avoidance rather than smoothly and calmly alighting on the surface.
Come on, this is Syd we are talking about here.
Engaging the meteorite anti-collision system would be right up her alley and could prove hilarious and embarrassing for everyone involved all around.
Helm – prepare the rule of funny – Engage.
I’m surprised no one tossed the obvious
’17 dollars, Now That’s Gangsta’.
If you want to see what can be done to fill a city scene or a battlefield I suggest looking up “Kill 6 Billion Demons” ….
https://killsixbilliondemons.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/SiegeofYrefullcolorv2.jpg
And there are a few more like that scattered throughout the story but my search skills are not up to the task today.
Please have her go into that little run down building and it be a intergalactic comic shop.
New reader, so I’ve skipped most of the older comments sections to catch up to the current strip, so perhaps this question was previously explained.
When Sydney got control of the orbs, was the skill tree reset to the starting point, or did she gain control with whatever levels the previous owner had already unlocked? I tend to think the latter since the orbs appear to have had a history of locations visited, and if the orbs were reset I’d think that would include erasing the history. And if that’s the case the previous owner must not have unlocked more than few talents before losing the orbs since the skill tree still has so many unlocked talents.
Just count the different nodes unlocked, some of them she didn’t have to unlock herself (just the 2 middle ones were there to begin with).
We don’t know for sure that the skill tree’s “reset mode” doesn’t already have some filled nodes, but then why display them at all?
Welcome to the community.
Sydney did start with various ‘skill points’ already filled in, the first time the skill tree opened up. Most folks assume that a previous owner will have picked these. However other options are available. For instance that it was reset (or never used up previously) when Halo found the orbs, and that certain things Sydney was doing picked skills by default, without her having to use the skill tree.
For instance trying to burn something could have put points into the PPO, as the skill tree would not need to be brought up to distinguish what she wanted.
Alternatively there could be ‘factory presets’. Certain default powers that it is assumed any user will need, so they are automatically unlocked.
Simple fact is, we don’t know. The Orbs are a massive We Don’t Know singularity.
Grrr… No edit function. That last line should read, “…since the skill tree still has so many locked talents.”
Soo 3 Kerbals, an insect from Starship troopers, a partially disguised Jumbaa, and what appears to be a transport ship from Star wars and that purple robed dude looks familiar too though I can’t place him, still thats alot of referances XD
Ambassador Kosh from Bablylon 5.
being purple he’s Kosh 2, the “evil” Kosh, the station security had to force out of his contact suit and shoot to death (turns out with enough shots a being of pure psychic energy whose species has manipulated other races to see them as religious icons; can be killed).
found another one, Earthworm Jim!
I have a funny feeling once she sets foot on one of the landing spaces she’ll set off a panic when they spot her orbs.
Or the opposite.
They see weird stuff and weird persons every day.
It’s common courtesy to pretend that nothing surprizes them.
If anything they’ll be a little disappointed that for an Earthican,
Sydney subverts the Earth Girls Are Sexy trope.
Well of COURSE!!! they can’t ALL be after our Water!!
17 dollars? Now that’s gangsta!