Grrl Power #817 – Morning Q/A (Questions and Aerobics)
For those of you who were really looking forward to Aranea’s booking process, I guess, uh, just imagine it going down however you like. There’s a slew of charges that could be brought against her, complicated by the fact that she has killed several actual properly evil demons doing properly evil things. Technically illegal, but the sort of stuff The Twilight Council and their Semper Vigilatis would themselves be doing.
I spent a fair amount of time trying to google something a bit more clever to put on Anvil’s top, like an actual math equation that describes soft body physics, but for all my effort I mostly just found a lot of articles complaining about sexism in the video game industry… which is definitely there. On the other hand, boobs jiggle. Most of the time they way it’s implemented the woman looks like she has implants made out of flubber (for those of you old enough to get that reference) but I digress. Most of the rest of what I found was articles on implementing soft body physics in Unity. Maybe I need to subscribe to scientific journals or something if I want to get that deep in the weeds – for a joke that like, 3 people would get. Those are the best kind of references if you’re one of the few people who do get them though. It’s like watching an episode of MST3K and they make a reference to the singer of an obscure band or The Galaxy Rangers and you’re certain you’re the only person in 100 miles who got it.
I suspect “soft body physics” is probably not something that can be accounted for in a single nice, neat equation like E=MC^2, but I still think it would have been funny to try and cram one of those “people doing science” chalkboards full of math onto her top.
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We know know that Cora ‘dropped off the Alari refugees’. Any idea where? With the others here on Earth? On another planet? Into the sun? Can’t wait for the debriefing. (insert Dabbler ‘debriefing’ joke here)
Now starting the official betting pool on what Earth will call their first FTL spaceship:
Enterprise
Excelsior (a group vote by Trek and Stan Lee fans)
Galactica
Millenium Falcon
Serenity
Tardis
NSEA-Protector
Nostromo (aliens sold separately)
Andromeda
Orville
Moya
Planet Express
Heart of Gold
Red Dwarf
Spacey McSpaceship
Pretty sure Earth’s first FTL spaceship is going to be Machina One.
I vote for this one since Deus will definitely be creating the first FTL drive… probably even before humans get Cora’s ship… although he’ll probably release it AFTER they get the ship just to make it more plausible.
Or some ancient Vampire has been keeping several beginning humanish already constructed for centuries just waiting for it to become plausible that earth developed the technology. He keeps Ghouls trained up on them.
Select the one which matches what Cora brings back; give the ghouls a refresher course on it and then have them give it a makeover. The Ghouls present “their work” and profit.
Sorry Deus. You were beaten to the punch centuries before you were born.
And when you’re thirteen hundred years old, you’ve learned to plan.
Underestimating Deus means you’re already defeated. :)
Plus if that were the case, Deus probably would just invent time travel, go back 1301 years ago, develop it first, kill the vampire who invented it when he or she was still young, leave a note for himself tomorrow, and invent it again, first. :) Deus is David Xanatos levels of self-made man :).
Plot Twist! Deus IS the 13 thousand year old vampire!
Love the reference to my favorite self made multimillionaire
Ugh. NOBODY is self-made. We all rely upon the efforts of each other to get anywhere–including literally learning language, which we are taught by those around us. (Though we may, occasionally, create new words, grakz it?)
Personally, I think Deus is a super himself, one with the superpower of being able to uncover “inconvenient / hidden knowledge.” Not sure which it is, aka inconvenient for others to know, inconvenient for anyone to get at, deliberately hidden knowledge, things that just nobody should be able to access but him…
How else would he know–and have recorded–all that footage of that one king he deposed in that little offshoot country in Africa? How would he know about the Shadow Council’s races of aliens and demons, etc, in order to have a “check that off my bedpost notch-list” relationship with so many of them that he has a whole row of journals for sketches and notes on each of his amorous “conquests”…? Let alone how would he know about the strange geode half that splashed geode water on Maxima as a young teen? If he didn’t have a superpower to know “inconvenient for ther people to know this” information…?
No, we don’t get to say “money talks.” The Veil would have already covered that up, making mere humans forget the information they were told, and come to believe that their funds were used up by some other venture. Supers aren’t covered by the Veil–as established in canon!–but normal humans totally are…so Deus has gotta be a super.
He didn’t make his billions; he superpower-stole the secrets of others and used that information for his own purposes…some of which are genuinely good, and some of which are at best morally ambiguous.
…Which makes him frikkin’ awesome as a charactger, because he’s doing with his powers what most of us would do, without actually crossing over the line into full-time villainy, and with genuine good deeds mixed in amongst all the rest. (Plus, he defeated a lethal drap with a potted plant. Poor plant…but excellent choice!)
> And when you’re thirteen hundred years old, you’ve learned to plan.
Is that a Pern reference? If so, you win!
The Pern books and the Crystal Singer series are rereading staples.
The resistance to laminar flow of an incompressible fluid having viscosity in a closed tube. Might work for an equation. The standing wave is inversely proportion
How about the Tantalis?
I personally pledge fifteen votes to this.
Dabs already HAS her own ship, that’s where she keeps all the guns she ‘ports in with her mechanical arm.
You’ve got to take into account that the plan isn’t really for them to pilot this thing everywhere. It’s someone else’s tech that humans will try to reverse-engineer so we can start building our own. I’m not devoted enough to pull a suitable parallel off the top of my head, but I’ll bet there’s something other commenters will know of that’s suitable.
Stargate. Humans eventually ended up building starships thanks to all the tech they were bringing back. One character was really annoyed they refused to call the first one “Enterprise”.
To be fair, a lot of technology they get is just inherited rather than reverse-engineering as such.
A better example of pure reverse-engineering is X-COM. Where all non-mundane technology is either developed independently by X-COM researchers, or reverse engineered from technology stolen from the alien invaders.
X-COM is also one of the more… extreme universes when it comes to the speed of reverse engineering. Since the game takes place on a time-scale of weeks/months rather than years or decades, meaning that Earth goes from being real-world 2012 to having technology superior to that of their invaders in (likely) less than a single year.
Oh, XCOM :)
You have the best engineers in any piece of media, I’m sure.
Not only do they develop the better tech, they also build it. That is also really impressive.
Yeah, but that’s a perfectly understandable reason in-universe. The first Earth-built FTL ship was a US military vessel. They couldn’t call it Enterprise because there’s already an active-duty US military vessel named Enterprise, the naval aircraft carrier. As this FTL ship was also a fighter carrier, albeit in space, that still would have made the confusion worse.
Gateship 1! I mean it’s a ship that goes through the gate!
Enterprise. The first space shuttle was named Enterprise, and it never flew.
Yup. Somebody at NASA got a real horse-laugh out of deliberately burning the name by assigning it to a non-flying aerodynamic test article, instead of anything that would actually fly. There’s no way that wasn’t deliberate.
The Enterprise shuttle went through several drop tests to validate the physics of the simulator and train pilots in flying a supersonic glider for a total of 5 free flights and more than 20 on the back of the SCS, a modified 747 used to ferry shuttles from landing sites to the launch facilities in FL and CA.
I believe the (NASA)Shuttles went ^beyond^ supersonic to HYPERsonic.
True for the initial re-entry phase, but not for controlled flight. There’s not much pilot training required for sitting in the cockpit and aerobraking down to a speed at which the craft will be controllable, or at least not the kind of training that needs to be done in the air.
Daedalus or Prometheus would fit better (can’t remember which was first)
Daedalus would not be a good image. Look up what happened to his son Icarus.
Probably not Prometheus either. He gave the secret of fire to humans, and was punished for it by the gods. You probably don’t want to link the concept of burning with spacecraft. Nor the concept of being trapped while tortured continually.
Daedalus should be OK as a naming reference; he invented the wings system, and flew with them safely across the sea. Not his fault if Icarus was a headstrong chancer who exceeded his vehicle’s safe flight envelope or was made to do so by a jealous god/goddess?.
It would however introduce some potential for confusion, as humanity has already looked into a (presumably very different) first interstellar spaceship concept designated Daedalus. Not quite as bad as I first thought; I’d got the name crossed with the earlier Project Orion, which was quite explicit in its suggestion of using thousands of military-grade nuclear warheads for thrust. But it’s still the sort of tech that might gain Earth the free offer of a working interstellar drive, just to make sure they don’t try to use the one they developed anywhere near anyone else’s system.
In order, Prometheus, Daedalus, Odyssey, Korolev, Apollo, Sun Tzu, George Hammond.
Sure hope General Carter’s/Selmak’s statement does not come back and bite the engineers in this universe, “You can’t just slap a US Air Force sticker on the side of a death-glider and call it yours. Advancement like that has to be earned.” Hopefully, Sydney will remind people of this quote.
Almost thought you meant the Hamster from the original “Top Gear”, then remembered his first name was ‘Richard’ :P
If Sydney won’t, or can’t, remind people, there is someone else who could (and get them to listen)- Maxi
Shumway Airlines
Make sure you ask for the vegetarian meal, just to be safe :)
In the Stargate franchise there’s a character named Senator Kinsey who is always trying to shut down the Stargate program because they don’t produce any value…and yet, here they are giving humanity an FTL drive. Every time he was onscreen it was a mix of funny and infuriating.
There’s also the Deathworlders universe. Humans start trying to build our own starships within a short time of being attacked by one that miscalculated the power of omnivores from a planet like ours. I think it took a few years before the first human-built ships stopped having the habit of self-combusting, but a few scrapped alien vessels gave us some help.
I vote for the “Take it apart” ship being called the Rosetta Stone and the first human FTL ship being Enterprise.
Well since the ship will be owned by the Yanks it will probably be named from a US made franchise. Hopefully the Brits will make a Red Dwarf eventually though. Speaking of Red Dwarf I would love to see a crossover between that franchise and Grrl Power.
It will have an integral domed forest as part of life support, and be called the Valley Forge.
What? Never thought of the obvious… SDF-1?
Ya’ ma tol’ you to say that.
the “three smaller ships in a trench-coat”
Some excellent naming in that series. :)
You know…. all those ship and TV series titles you listed and what theme do I have going through my head now? The theme from “Red Dwarf”. Maybe my subconscious thinks it matches Grrl Power.
Perhaps your subconscious just have a good taste in music?
As dubious as I am of Star Trek , Enterprise really is the correct name–not because of Star Trek , but in spite of it. The name “Enterprise” was chosen because it is so fitting for the first vessel to undertake an exploratory mission. Roddenberry nailed this.
Nah, ‘Endeavour’ is a better choice
Roddenberry? There already was a long line of ships of the late 18th century bearing the name Enterprise.
Viscoelastic parameters as discriminators of breast masses: Initial human study results includes standing waves in healthy tissue.
Now there’s a snappy name for a first-contact ship!
Iain M. Banks would have loved it.
I like the names for the three advanced ships built by the Gao (basically bipedal raccoon-like aliens) from reverse-engineered tech in the Jenkinsverse collaborative fiction series. Background note: the large amount of tryptophan in turkey creates symptoms in Gao similar to alcohol intoxication in humans, except that the hangover is more gastro-intestinal. The names were, in order, as follows:
1. Drunk on Turkey
2. Drunker on Turkeyer
3. Silent But Deadly
Btw, I highly recommend the series. The Jenkinsverse Essential Reading Order is a good place to start.
I second the recommendation! The main story by itself is some 3+ times longer (by word count) than the LotR trilogyb and there are a bunch of canon side-stories.
Drunker on Turkeyer, final answer.
Misfit.
Ditto the recommendation on Deathworlders (the JVerse, although the Harry Harrison novel was interesting for its time). The Reddit threads are pretty well maintained, as is the essential reading order index, although pulling the ebooks from the official site to my Kindle was a much better experience given the massive word count. But once you’ve caught up, definitely keep watching Reddit for new episodes and stories.
The ship names are also great – I like to think that’s partly a tribute to SpaceX’s great craft names.
Thanks for reminding me that exists…. I’ve gone down a different rabbit hole the last year, can’t wait to see how far things have progressed now….
what about the S.S. Halo or something sense the mighty halo vanished and then the aliens brought her back to safety type thing.
In tribute to her recent (mis)adventure, Sydney votes for Jupiter 2, but only if it comes with an arm-waving robot.
If you mean the purchased slightly-used ship, I’d bet “Pandora”, “Daedalus”, or “Salvage-1”.
If you mean the first result of retro-engineering, “Enterprise” definitely seems the front-runner so far, and a safe bet given the first prototype Space Shuttle in the NASA fleet was given the name.
“or “Salvage-1”.” that was the name of a ship, to go to the moon and salvage parts, from the lander. On TV many years ago.
I always wondered about the premise of that show. Andy Griffith manages to build a spaceship out of scrap that is somehow capable of flying to the moon and back. His goal from the pilot: “I wanna build a spaceship, go to the Moon, salvage all the junk that’s up there, bring it back and sell it.”
If his goal is to turn a profit I would say: Dude, you have a WORKING SPACESHIP DESIGN that can leave orbit for practically no cost. Sell it for tens of billions of dollars and retire a hero who gave spaceflight to the masses. Instead, he wants to desecrate a world (sorry, LUNAR) heritage site of one of the biggest achievements in human history just to plunder the artifacts and sell them off for scrap.
Lighting McLightface, obviously.
If we’re going that way, then why not use goblin names from Goblins?
My favorite name is “Dies Horribly”.
I vote for “Hold My Beer”.
I was reading through all of these waiting for something like this. I am sure that, given the choice, most of us would vote for it. Look at Boaty McBoatface in the UK.
Although, I would have said “Spacey McSpaceface” might be more fitting.
Only the brain damaged vote for that kinda brain damaged name. Unfortunately there are many brain damaged ppl.
…Or maybe we just have a sense of humor that isn’t the exact same as yours? Like how British humor isn’t the same thing as American humor, which isn’t the same thing as Japanese humor, which isn’t the same thing as Congolese, which isn’t…?
Twelve votes for Moya, all submitted by me.
But only if its biomech.
with the stargate theme- The Odyssey
Bob
It is not going to be earths first Spaceship. It is going to be the US’s first spaceship. And Deus’s first spaceship.
Humanity has no unified government, but the tech should eventually leak to everyone.
As for names, it depends a bit on if the first ship will be armed and what it was previously. Tardis, Nostromo, Moya, and Heart of Gold are specifically know to be unarmed.
As for additional names, I propose “Orion”, from “Space Patrol”. While they go through Orions quickly in both the original and Stargate Atlantis, the ship tends to bring all the crew back alive.
TARDIS would be a good choice, although there’s also the time machine of Dr. What^7, the Dean of the College of Temporal Happenstance, Ultimate Lies & Historical Undertakings (C.T.H.U.L.H.U.) in GURPS IOU (Illuminati University (what’s the O stand for — you’re not cleared to know that): the clearly marked, very blue Public Temporally Oscillating Interdimensional Lift with Endochronosynclastic Tendencies (Public TOILET).
Earth has had plenty of *space*ships. Every rocket that’s ever gone up is a spaceship. This would be our first *star*ship.
Any Human spaceship named Orion could be rather unpopular with the neighbours, if they mistake it for having an Orion drive. Although that could be one way to get hold of a better drive system, if it’s the neighbour’s price for the Humans not using the drive they came with when the time comes to go home.
What was the name of the ship on Futurama?
Planet Express (listed, fourth from bottom)
I thought they were dropped off in Deustopia? (I forget the name of his African nation)
No, that was the other
enforced labourrefugees, the ones who arrived in their own shipI think the only scientists who are able to understand FTL are going to be nutty and genius enough to manage to set up a silly name and will call it something like, “Lucky Break.” Either that or, ‘It’s One of Ours, Sir,” so they can buy a few surprise rounds of confusion and get outta dodge.
LOL
What ship is that approaching?
It’s One Of Ours, Sir.
LOL
Krikkit One
It is the only logical choice.
I would vote for just about any of the ship names in Schlock Mercenary*. As well as using the Ob’enn ship names for drone targets.
* (sadly that wiki list is woefully incomplete)
The Dark Star.
Yes, THAT one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)
You can just imagine Dabbler telling Sydney to teach the planetbuster bombs Phenominology.
Dark Star One?
The Nimbus
Jupiter Ascending
Serendipity.
The “Oh dear I can’t say that over the radio sir”. And her sister-ship, the “Looks like I can’t say that one either”
USS It’s Just a Smudge On the Display Screen
HMS Sir First I Need To Tell You Something About Your Mother And I
STS Captain I Hereby Relieve You Of Command
HMS Rapidly Expanding Singularity
USS We Have a Containment Breach
UPS Why Are You Asking Me?
Spaceface
As long as it isn’t “Event Horizon” they ought to be alright. :P
Joel and Sydney (and partners) would make a fortune off the exclusive merchandising rights.
Red Dwarf is my preference
for future tank top shirts you could always make a critical role reference and just put “sleeves are bullshit”
Women who are built like Anvil should never wear sleeves.
Sidney is really running at 100 questions a minute.
The sound speed equation is a nice and simple soft body physics equation!
Something like c² = dp/dρ
@DaveB… Legit question about dabbler and Areanea… Do all set of hands have different finger prints? Also imagine the guy finger printing Areanea… Hehee.
Just to be clear, finger prints aren’t nearly as unique as the police would like you to think they are. Even if you took them all with the best technology we have for it today, you’d still find enough collisions if you entered *everybody’s* fingerprints that it’d be useless… especially since there are changes to fingerprints over time.
It’s unlikely Dabbler’s artificial hand *has* finger prints, unless she went specifically for retro tech to better blend in with people on Earth and somehow thought that would help.
As far as the other 9 hands… it’s unlikely any one of them has finger prints that exactly match another one of them. But chances are not horrible for them to have collision with at least one hand versus somebody else… a few times over, at least
Also depending on how her skin works Dabbler may not have fingerprints at all.
No, probably does have finger prints. We don’t have finger prints so we can be identified by police. We have them as texturing that improves our grips. They’re purely functional.
Mind, they could be funky finger prints, just a grid, or random bumps, or something like that. But they wouldn’t be smooth.
i once say a math formula of elastic properties of a bodies but, like most things in high school i did not find interesting, i completely forgot about it…
and Sydney’s puppy eyes are really something else.
They’re one of the very few things that can get Maxima’s invulnerability.
“get past Maxima’s invulnerability” — This is what happens when I type before caffeine.
I’m sure a previous comic had Maxima resist the puppy eyes. Think it was when she barged into the meeting of the president after the car park rumble.
The ship should be named the Boldy Go.
That sounds a little too much like an ad for a fiber supplement. (maybe they could sell ad space on the hull to defray costs)
oh gawd– what if Dabbler gets her hands on ( or more accurately–INTO ) the ship and “tinkers” with it– i can see trouble in the near future.
Why not just use the potted plant like Fry?
The ship is there explicitly to reverse engineer.
Dabbler was very specific she would not share her tech or even leave samples. And working on something in the RE process would be close to sharing.
Well, technically (the best kind of correct!) Dabbler wouldn’t be sharing “her” tech. She’d be working on a piece of Earth owned tech that we just happen to not understand at all…
you know one of the problems I’ve had with a lot of popular entertainment is the “no net change rule” is was a byproduct of serialization for sitcoms and series dramas. that way they didn’t have to keep the episodes in order and it made selling the episodes easier. Unfortunately, it seems to have affected comics as well. sure they have big events like crisis on infinite earths and such, but the death of a hero or villain is a rare thing and Gotham city is still the same city, even though Batman and Superman have access to post-scarcity technology. If DaveB follows through with the promise of introducing earth into the galactic community this comic will take its place at the top of my webcomic list.
Societies move slowly. We could have been post-scarcity a long time ago, but people are attached to how things are, and resistant to change. We define our lives around scarcity, our economy is dependent on it, and so people fight the transition tooth and nail. Admittedly, most people aren’t sure they’ll survive the transition, or where they’d be in the new order, and human history isn’t reassuring.
You’re both right about that. The “first world” has shifted to what the people in charge call a “service based economy,” which translates as “make up jobs so people can survive under the current system where work is required for survival.”
But Shane makes a great point about comics being static. Alan Moore was complaining about this – in the 1980s. It’s gotten worse.
Wait, what? It’s gotten worse? That’s a change! It’s time for a reboot.
Groan.
Are you sure? Have a read (if you can find it) of Toffler, “Future Shock” obviously, but also “The Third Wave“. Then consider the German idea of — literally — plastic-bagging icebergs for delivery to shore-base pumping stations.
We have about 750×10^9 souls on this planet, most of whom have no reliable source of water, and most of whom have had their staple crops raped and violated by mega-corporations in the name of “EFFICIENCY”.
Consider the predicament of — for example — Cape Town, which is on the edge of having no water. And don’t forget the predicaments of several US cities in the same situation.
We have not yet learned what scarcity is, and it is for sure the wealthy and poweful will last only weeks longer than the rest of us.
Which is why I have a hard time with most conspiracy theories. Sure, there’s some greedy people out there in powerful positions and nigh-unlimited, but even for them it’s not a good idea to tank civilization. Practically speaking, it’s where all their stuff comes from.
Hrmm…you seem to not be following either American or British politics of the last 3-4 years… There ARE people that stupid, and an unfortunately large number of them (“too many” would be the precise number) ARE in positions of power. People so narcissistic and unconcerned about the suffering of others to come that they literally do not care.
(I would like to reiterate my hard stance re the oligarchy: Do NOT Eat The Rich. They are riddled with the prionic brain-rotting disease known as “affluenza” and it is contagious & lethal once you start consuming things like they do. Burn them in the incinerators instead of, say coal. Also, apropos of nothing, on a “completely different” topic level…I know how to sharpen guillotines. It’s a fun skill, and I can teach others how to do it! After all, a sharp blade is a safer blade!)
try y(bx + 1/2cy) = ɛ, a pair of hyperbolae with asymptotes y = 0 and bx + 1/2cy = 0.
That’s about the best deal the US could have hoped for. At least Cora didn’t let them take the ship and wipe themselves out.
“Physics by Spandex” – LOVE it!!!
I picture a music video displaying huge boobs jiggling to the lyrics, ‘My girl’s got boobs/ that jiggle when she walks/ jiggle when she walks/ jiggle when she she walks/ My girl’s got boobs that jiggle when she walks/ jiggle when she walks with me!! Even in a sport bra/ jiggle when she walks/ jiggle when she walks/ jiggle when she walks/ Even in a sport bra/ jiggle when she walks/ jiggle when she walks with me!!’
Video already exists ;P
Gainaxers Anonymous
To be able to reverse engineer something, you need to have the technology in place to understand that item and to nearly be able to build it on your own. This is something to have in the background in a superhero story.
A race building it’s first ftl craft is worthy of a novel or two.
Would you settle for a movie called ‘First Contact’?
Its pretty common in super hero stories to have alien invaders (or time travelers) and humans to reverse engineer their ships. Even if due to the editor in chiefs always insisting the setting stay as contemporary as possible we never see any of this advanced tech become as common place as it should or build space colonies ect… Marvel and DC both do this in spades. Hell, some superheroes routinely fly off into space, have private inter-planetary/dimensional gates, there are government space stations like SWORD, ect… but humans as a whole never really go into space in anything so advanced. It stands out.
A story where humanity actually gets the tech and its not some secret space engines on the X-men’s black bird or the F4’s fantasticar would actually be something new/different for a superhero story.
to be fair in universe the heroes havent been around long enough, remember that both marvel and DC work on a sliding timescale so its not like the heroes and aliens and advance technology has existed for decades it has been something like 15 year tops since the first public supers started to appear so there hasnt really been much time for the big changes to happen, its been referenced in several comics that the instant either of those earths managed to go into space in a big way they are going to quickly rise into the schelons of empires and in fact a couple of alien invasions happen specifically to not allow that to happen
I exp0lain that once, but nobody listened. Why (reverse-engineering,) is nearly impossible.
It obviously would not be in the Grrlverse because the expertise would already be there.
As a lawyer that specializes in intellectual property law – ie, trademarks, copyrights, and patents (and by extension, also trade secrets), gotta tell you…
Reverse engineering is definitely possible, and rather standard, in fact. That’s why people usually patent rather than keep trade secrets. Because it’s usually exceptionally easy to reverse engineer technology. The only time they do a trade secret instead of a patent is when they processes used are so complicated or obscure that the inventor thinks it will take people a LOT longer than 20 years to successfully reverse engineer the invention, like with the invention of teflon.
It is possible to understand something but still not get it to work. The hew-mons may be able to draw up the plans to build their own starship but find that they need to make the power conduits out of room temperature superconductors and add about a half kilo of antimatter* into the fuel tank to make it fly.
*(yes I know the power levels are excessive, but you wanted the model with the seat warmers and surround sound stereo, right?)
And yet it’s been just within the last decade or so that they finally reproduced Stradivarius’s wood treatment technique using processes that were available in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Yeah, who was willing to pull one apart to see how it worked?
Was the formula and process for manufacturing Polaroid SX-70 film lost?
The recreated version isn’t as good.
Rather like the Taiwanese when they finally could get their hands on the Intel chips powering the PCs of the 1980s… And Steve Jobs tieing up the Apple Mac with more patents than you could fit in a suitcase :)
Anybody recall the DOS-base softs at the time being “x% compatible”?
And then the price of a PC fell like an apple from a tree, while the price of a Mac was making like an overinflated dirigible airship.
Reverse engineering from a similar technology base is one thing. Though, there are definitely also instances of things being developed independently, which patent law punishes just as much as people who reverse engineer.
That having been said, this wouldn’t be reverse engineering from a similar technology base. Imagine, just for example, Dabbler attempting to reverse engineer Sydney’s orbs. It’s not possible, because those orbs are so incredibly advanced, nothing Dabbler can bring to bear can get a read on them.
It’s possible that we could reverse engineer something that was just a bit beyond our current technology. However, an effort to do that would be greatly aided by having a common understanding with whomever developed the technology. For example, anyone trying to reverse-engineer Nikola Tesla’s computers back in the early 1900s… oh, wait, they couldn’t. Even when he was trying to teach them how he made them. I’m not aware of anyone besides Tesla figuring out how to make a working computer that uses (depends on, even) AC current for its power. Sure, we plug our computers into AC circuits to power them, but we run that power through an AC/DC converter.
With reverse engineering this FTL drive, we’d be looking at something created by a mind that worked completely different from ours. It would be a challenge to reverse engineer something that such a mind made that was lower technology from us, let alone something of a higher level.
“complicated by the fact that she has killed several actual properly evil demons doing properly evil things.” Didn’t they establish early on in the first press conference though that super vigilantism was not excusable?
Self defense or defense of another pretty much overrules that.
Semper Vigilantis takes out supernaturals preying on humans.
And the temptation is there for demons who come to earth to do things.
Succubi profit if fragile humans are still alive to use again later. Some of the other demon types? Not so much.
So yeah, if Aranea wasn’t merely hunting every creature out there but was primarily intervening and protecting humans from attacks by creatures they were prevented from even seeing that might radically effect the equation.
Don’t forget that this rule has been set after the establishment of Argon. Not before.
1) it’s not technically vigilanteism if it’s a demon, unless you think there’s a law on the books about demon-hunting being illegal.
2) If the demons that Aranea has killed before running into Tamatha were actually evil killers, it might fall under defense of others – depends on when she actually killed them and the circumstances behind it. And that’s assuming that demons would be classified as the same as human. And even if they would be NOW they wouldnt have been when Aranea did it, and you can’t make something retroactively illegal in the past if it wasn’t illegal at the time she did it.
Although with Tamatha, this was kidnapping, which is obviously illegal. Tamatha can’t even be argued to have been doing anything to bring up a defense of Aranea’s actions.
Oh, and while Sydney’s still the wimp of the group, she seems to be getting better at that running thing. She’s done at least half a lap and can still talk!
Alas, it’s probably going to get named the Enterprise. At least if the US is the recipient doing the naming. The naming convention goes back to the War of 1812 and was (legitimately) used for the Shuttle and in Star Trek. Though there’s a current US carrier called the Enterprise, reverse engineering the entry level model FTL ship should take enough time that the first of the new class of ship could still take its name as it retires in 20 or 30 years. There should be plenty of other goodies built in the meantime from the tech anyway yo keep the comic going. A reasonable next step would be exploiting the solar system with Moon bases, Orbital colonies, Mars bars and Asteroid mining operations as Terra gains control of it’s near space.
The carrier Enterprise (CVN-65) was decommissioned for scrap about 2 years ago. So not on the rolls, name available for other ships.
USS Enterprise (CVN-80), a Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier is presently being built and will be the ninth ship to bear the name.
Keep in mind that it’s tradition for the first ship of a particular class to share the name. So the first Gerald R. Ford-class carrier was the Gerald R. Ford. The first [i]Constitution[/i]-class cruiser in Star Trek was not the Enterprise… it was the Constitution.
You know, putting “Soft-Body Physics” on the shirt would probably have been enough.
“Jiggle Physics” would also have worked, but is probably not Anvil’s style.
…
*OR IS IT*
Maybe give her a shirt with Jigglypuff on it :D
And then hide in the next universe :P
Loved the reaction that Anvil had to give.
All you name guessers are missing the obvious one: Comet
Also missing are: Ranger 3, Liberator, Lexx, Thunderbird, Yokohama.
As for Moya, that was a lifeform, not actually a ship. The first human piloted ship to leave earth’s star system was the Colaroy.
Oh yes, the Liberator, good old flying microphone :D
Oh, and Lexx was a living lifeform as well
Yes, it was.
As this will be the first FTL ship of the United States (Navy? Space Force?) Go back to the origins of the US Navy and the First Six Frigates: United States; Constellation; Constitution; Chesapeake; Congress; President. The USS Constitution BTW, is the oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat. HMS Victory is the oldest commissioned vessel but has been in dry dock since about 1922.
Not only is USS Constitution still afloat and still in commission, she can still move under sail and fire her main armament! OK, just saluting charges, and only courses and topsails, but lets see how well you dance at well over 200!
Syd’s getting in shape, good for her; running sucks starting out. She’s made quite a bit of progress from puking and nearly passing out,.
Anvil’s sporting gear makes me wonder if some intrepid company in this universe hasn’t made workout gear or just clothes in general for people with superhuman needs.
I vote for the E.S.S. Yorpie.
That’s a yorptacular response. I accept it.
*screams abruptly right in everyone’s ear*
I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!
Okay so Dave said we could imagine spiderloser’s booking however we want, so I figured out how it looked.
Haruko from FLCL showed up, as she’s an SV member and she sang her little head robot song while swinging her bass around, then smacked her in the forehead with it. Then she- [FOOTAGE NOT FOUND] [DATA EXPUNGED].
Yeah, that’s just all kinds of wrong. In the ‘discussion’ over salvage rights Cora allowed that Earth owned the Fel ship. She could charge a fee for hauling it away, and/or a fee for facilitating the collection of the reward, but that isn’t at all the same as ‘splitting the reward’ as though she had a stake in it. Because she doesn’t. Her ship didn’t even fire, Cora was just an observer. She might even owe Earth a fee for attracting a dangerous nuisance into its sovereign space, because the Fel were tracking her.
Cora had also ‘offered’ to tow the ship off the planet and chuck it into the sun, with no mention of charging for the service. Which indicates that our author just ass-pulled this whole salvage thing, or that he has a short term memory problem about his own story, or both.
Or, that was part of the negotiations that Sydney (and the readers) weren’t privy to
They hadn’t finished screaming at each other when Sydney left
Question, smart(arse) guy: how is Dirt going to collect on the bounty if they can barely reach their fucking moon?
Well, technically, Sydney has better FTL tech than the people they’d be collecting the bounty from. To the point where she can do a quick interstellar trip just to pick up some fast food.
The actual problem would likely be knowing where to file the paperwork, and how to document the kill. Though in all likelihood documenting it wouldn’t really be a problem after interstellar cops reported seeing it taken out.
So it really comes down to Cora knowing how to collect.
You are a lackwit, the question you asked was answered in the post you responded to…
But I’ll indulge you even though your idiocy doesn’t warrant it:
How is Earth (yes, that’s the actual name of our planet you tool) going to collect on the bounty on Fel ships? Well, you might recall, or you might not since you have very little capacity for recall, that aliens “called in” the fact that a Fel ship had attacked Earth. So, that’s how, you lackwit.
Because like is drawn to like, obviously.
You do know what ‘Earth’ means, right? Run that through a couple translators
If there is an embargo on giving pre-FTL planets tech above their station, why would the Space Cops even tell the Earthicans about the bounty? Let alone give them a ship capable of advancing their tech by centuries
The question was: how are they going to COLLECT on the bounty
Earth is indeed a synonym for dirt, but the proper name for the planet Earth is not ‘dirt’ it is Earth, at least in the language you’re currently communicating with. So either you are being willfully ignorant or intentionally derogatory in a poor attempt to sound witty. Much the same if my name were Richard and you kept calling me Dick with extra emphasis and a smirk knowing full well my name is Richard and I don’t like being called Dick. You’re not being witty, you’re just being a douchebag.
Note how mentioned using a translator? When talking to people from other planets who don’t speak Earth
Can remember reading a book in the 80’s called “Phule’s Company”, about this guy called Phule, they eventually encounter an alien race who don’t communicate with words, only telepathically with images. There was this funny scene where the aliens are communicating and instead of ‘saying’ Phule, they use synonyms, like ‘Clown’ or ‘Joker’
Noticed you didn’t say anything about ‘Earthicans’
It was supposed to be a joke, unfortunately forgot how pedantic some people can be
Some people may find your particular affectations endearing. What’s certain is that other people find them annoying.
Feel the same way about other people as well, unlike them though, don’t make fucking deal over it
I didn’t really get that bit as trying to be funny. Consider this, how would you say ‘Phule’ if you spoke in images? Names tend to be very problematic for such languages.
Admittedly, I tend to think in images, actions, and N-dimensional relational graphs, so I may be more familiar with the sorts of problems that names tend to present to such a situation than most people.
For what it’s worth, I do have a sense of humor. I laughed at Rose being the permanent comms officer for example. Despite the fact that it is a situation I’ve encountered in real life, it felt unexpected to me.
Wasn’t saying that the ‘Phule’ thing was meant to be funny (it was more of a case of visual mispronounciationing, like how ‘Louis’ can be pronounced ‘Lewis’ or ‘Lewie’), just that it was funny to me (and not even ‘funny-haha’)
To be honest, don’t really remember anything else about the ‘Phule’s Company’ books (there was more than one, right?) other than that bit about the name
Actually, earth isn’t a synonym for dirt, it’s a synonym for *soil*. And they aren’t the same thing. Which is why the Earth/Dirt jokes.
Technically Cora was more than just a “observer,” since she did help in the attack and was the one that told not only about the alien personal shields and the virus afterwards.
Fair enough. She was a non-combatant who was able to provide some intelligence which was helpful to the combatants. I’m still not sure that entitles her to any salvage rights, especially since she herself appears to endorse the G-men claim that the US government is the salvage rights holder.
This is the problem people have with you: you pick on technicalities that don’t matter, things that most people would accept as normal or reasonable to say or do. Humans are not rule-based creatures. Most of them do not care about strict adherence to a set of rules. They care about outcomes, and feelings, and survival, and only pretend to care about the rules when it has an impact on something they do actually care about.
What difference does it make whether she collected a fee, or split the reward? The discussion might very well have gone something like “I’d charge you a fee to haul it away, but since you don’t have any currency that’s valuable to me, I’ll just take it out of the bounty on the ship. Deal?”
Other people’s problems are not my problem.
When there was no bounty at first, and then it suddenly appears, and a character who has agreed that salvage rights do not belong to her suddenly owns a share of those rights, and then there is inconsistency about even that, it is a jarring thing which erodes the immersion for an astute reader. Idiots may not notice, or may not care even if they manage to notice. But writing to the lowest common denominator should not be the goal of any author who wishes to improve their craft.
This is not a ST:TOS Mirror, Mirror “what was the combination” issue. This is not about irrelevant trivia which has no bearing on anything else. This is concerning the main focus of this entire comic. A main focus which is inconsistent with the main focus of previous comics.
The main focus of this comic… is Sydney, it always has been
Oh, you mean this page? Or maybe some other comic, like “EGS”?
Why is it that it is only you who has a ‘problem’ with this? o_O
The facts, as presented in the comic, and not in contradiction with each other — they’re only in contradiction with your overly restrictive interpretation of them. Cora splitting the bounty in no way implies that she owns a share of the salvage rights, which don’t really exist in any way beyond the people involved believing they do. I’ll give you that this page seems a little out of place, and that perhaps a bounty should have been mentioned earlier, but it’s also possible that, rather than throw the ship into the sun like she had said she would, Cora may have intended on turning the ship for the bounty and keeping it herself. Would it have been better writing to have hinted at that, maybe shown the reader a different side of Cora that the cast isn’t privy to? Sure, I’ll give you that. But I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect all the characters in a work to always know the truth or tell it, and contradictions between things characters say are not necessarily contradictions in fact.
Actually Oberon, her ship DID do a few things. Most importantly, her ship had the shields up to prevent the entire ARchon building from being obliterated in the opening salvo of the Fel ship’s attack, BEFORE Archon was ready for it.
y=(a/2) *((e^(x/a) +(e^-(x/a)))
Is the equation for a catenary curve, which will suffice for a first approximation.
One question per lap, or 10 push up’s, every 10 lbs of lift.
She’ll be in superhero condition within a week.
So there’s this thing called sufficient rest that you need after exercise, or your muscles can’t actually get stronger. Worse, if they continue to not get rest for too long, they can suffer from catastrophic failure, after which you’re at a point worse off than where Sydney started. Cross fit training is apparently especially prone to this, as they tend to go ridiculously high on the reps, with small breaks between.
I am, btw, assuming that you started off in better shape than Sydney.
True, I admit I was not thinking of real world training issues. However such an approach would still be an effective and amusing motivational tool with her.
inanis, lux, celeritas, navis, latin words in order that mean void, light, speed and ship
That font is weird. I think it was designed to be confusing so we’d have an excuse to stare at boobs.
Well I guess Aranea can get some leniency considering she did take out many actually evil demons.
The problem with giving her leniency on taking out the evil demons is, how many not evil demons has she also taken out just for being a demon?
Well if they are “actually evil” then they would have been doing things to people.
If they only have the capacity to do evil or have merely contemplated evil then that would only be “theoretically evil.”
Concerning the ship, Cora can take her sweet time with that. Earth makes enough trouble for itself without dragging the rest of the universe into its drama. Hell wouldn’t blame Cora if that was just a lie and we never see her earth side again. Unfortunate for Sydney and her furry boyfriend though.
Metal Makeup is right, everyone. Though, I hope they are actually getting a laughably old tech ship for them to reverse engineer, and in light of who might be looking for the model and their relationship with an Earthling, I think the ship should be called Red Rocket.
Earth may get a little more attention from this by the galactic authorities. If they ask how the Fell cruiser was taken down on such a primitive planet Cora may tell them that it was by a single unarmed human in about 10 seconds. If the rest of the universe has learned of Earth manga Col. Leander may get the nickname ‘Saitama’.
(yes, I know it’s Lt. Col. but I figure saving the planet is good for a promotion)
P.S. I also remember that the visiting space cop took a video of the fight to post on U(niverse) Tube.
I had an afterthought to my own question. The Earthies are free to name their new ship anything they want. But, Anvil already gave us the name of the ship we are buying with the reward money. The ‘Bounty’.
Need you be reminded about what happened on the last ship named ‘Bounty’?
Does it have anything to do with the paper towel brand?
… No, nor the chocolate-covered coconut bar
Plot Twist! Deus IS the 13 thousand year old vampire!
*blinks*
I’m not saying no.
I mean, it would explain this: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-408-oranges-golds-and-purples/
… and I just realized something. Did Dave forget he already made this reference, or does Lucy (Dabbler) have some ‘splainin’ to do?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-812-specism/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-408-oranges-golds-and-purples/
That is a fair compromise. It should be an interesting conversation with the Galactic Council. Because, while Earth does not have the same level of technology, our hero’s are stronger than most weapon tech in the Galaxy.
Earth might be in an interesting position to become mercenaries for the Galactic Council to help deal with the Fel threat. A very dangourous, and profitable position.
They may be stronger than most weapon tech in the Galaxy, how many of them can survive space without air or protection though?
Obviously not counting individuals like Les