Talita is doing her job on-page for once, lol. One (or more) of the antennae on this communication tower is malfunctioning and creating outages, and it's a mishmash of original avian equipment and human equipment that was slapped up and attached to any power cord that wouldn't short it out, and nobody bothered to record which doohickey was on which breaker, so... They are having to try all of them. Maintenance on Dirtball frequently only happens when things break.
Transcript
In the pit with the Runaway, a frontloader positioned in front of a row of frames containing hydrogen gas tanks holds its manipulator arms as if it were a human with its hands on its hips.
Bip: But the solenoids on the transport tanks have these caps with an awkwardly positioned guard ring. I can't grip them with the frontloader claw fingers, and the worms aren't strong enough.
One of the frontloader claws uselessly pinches the guard ring.
SFX: click click
Talita: So cut the guards off.
Bip: I thought we were trying to avoid hydrogen tank explosions.
Talita rolls her eyes.
Talita: Well, then, wait. I don't have time this week to run errands on the clock.
She looks up from the electrical box on the ground in front of her and switches radio channels.
SFX: clk
Talita: Alright, none of those antennae are causing the issue. Let's move the lift and test the next array.
She is speaking up to Adam and Yao, who are on the fully extended platform of a large scissor lift next to a short radio tower covered in dozens of mismatched radio antennae. Yao pulls cables from the side of the antenna they're next too, while Adam slouches against the platform railing, doing nothing. In the regolith around the base of the radio tower are the tracks left behind from the scissor lift repeatedly being extended, retracted, moved, parked, and extended again many times.
49 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 223”
halley
i wonder what the symbol on the avian vers of the danger sign is meant to represent
Hunter
I wonder what the gravity is on Dirtball. Could they jump from that high and just float down?
jdeltia
oh i know this one, it’s 0.79g! you can see it on this website by clicking world > locations > dirtball
jdeltia
so, probably not
Duke 1337-o
Based on perspective, let’s assume they’re using a cat class 300-5050 scissor lift at maximum extension. That’ll put them at a height of ~20 meters. Assuming a combined mass of 150kg (70kg body, 80kg EVA suit and gear), and taking into account Dirtball’s canon gravity field of .79G (7.7m/s²) we’re left with an impact velocity of 17m/s. Assuming their EVA suits have the same 8cm of padded insulation that NASA ones do, those folks will experience an average impact force of 280 kilonewtons. Talita’s interns don’t seem that bright, so I’m assuming they’re just gonna belly-flop instead of tucking and rolling or whatever. That’s lethal deceleration. Don’t jump out of lifts.
Felixscout
Just remember, no matter how inconvienent and frustrating it would be, lower the platform fully before moving the lift.
HeadWood
Would there be a hydrogen tank leak in that atmosphere? A leak would be inconvenient and an unfortunate waste but I do not think there is any oxygen on dirtball.
JoB
Dirtball has a near-vacuum for an atmosphere, and if its regolith is anywhere near our moon’s, there’s not much oxygen to be obtained from the ground, either. Still, Bip (re)filled the Runaway with an oxygen(ized?) atmosphere obtained from the plant as a by-product of hydrolysis, so you’d certainly want to watch where you let your pressurized deuterium canister rip itself, and possibly something else nearby, a new one.
(Also, we have no idea what the back-then miners did with the surplus oxygen they produced. I suppose that Dirtball isn’t cold enough that we could have a pool/lake of liquid oxygen, but better be wary of all unchecked containers dating back to their operation.)
Duke 1337-o
The atmosphere is a vacuum, and those tanks are probably kept under a lot of pressure. Cutting into one would probably cause an explosive leak.
tyrone
And this is where Bib gets inventive with a termite-laden “suicide mission” worm .
The Flash shall lit up the entire Starry sky.
sugar-goat
Is… is Adam just chillin’ up there wile Yao does all the work..?
TeacupAngel
Honestly, at this point everyone might be happier if Adam doesn’t touch anything. Him actually doing something seems like a coin flip of whether you end the day with more work to be done than what you started it with.
JoB
Sabotage his suit and leave it to himself to (stay in the habitat,) try and repair it, then. :-3
Insufferable guy
Pendantically, antennae is only plural for organics. Antennas for mechanical.
DasGanon
Given the bio-tech that the Scuds use (the crab phone for example) there’s a non-zero chance it *is* organic. (But probably not as it’s Human and Avian)
Comito
Careful, that’s spoilers for (presumably) way later in the story!
Enai
That rather depends on the language, if we’re being pedantic. Latin only has “antennae” as a plural for antenna, for instance.
.
Yes, I learned Latin in school and I’m completely normal about it, why do you ask?
jdeltia
actually, it can be both! see Wikipedia:Plural of antenna (the title includes the Wikipedia: part)
Pathfinder
This reminds me of the discussion I had with my coworker. We were packing a shipment of office supplies and I asked where the computer mice were, and they said it was computer mouses, not mice. Internet says it’s usually mouses, but doesn’t say saying computer mice is illegal, idk.
23 Vast Eyes
I love how in the first panel, Bip using the frontloader looks like he has his hands on his hips. “This darn thing!” kinda body language.
Lezzlebit
Firing the they/them reminder beam at you
Anon
Every time someone calls Bip a he, an avian loses its wings. 🙁
Common Handle
[joking] Going to start she/her-ing them instead. Gotta balance out the incorrect assumption with an equally incorrect one!
dokki
The platform car’s tire tracks are such an impressive detail
JoB
> nobody bothered to record which doohickey was on which breaker
*siiiiiigh* or connected to the LAN by which RJ45 jack in the office’s floor. (Or what its MAC is so that I can look it up in the switches’ ARP tables.) Welcome to IT life. At least we’re not in the building where, thanks to the use of nonapproved clamps in the central installation, the tri-phase’s neutral once literally disconnected and fell off anymore.
Can’t say that I see how those “guards” are supposed to move, or why a human in a vacuum suit would have less of a problem working them …
Enai
A similar problem combined with a short between the null and the ground in the TV once nearly killed my fiancé.
Fun times :/ It is quite an experience to hear a doctor excitedly call everyone in the vicinity to “Look at those current marks! Such deep ones you usually only see in the morgue!”. Fiancé didn’t even get a cool Lichtenberg figure scar for the trouble 🙁
glazeliights
the fact that the temps are right there keeps making me nervous that at some point talita is gonna make a mistake switching between channels and accidentally say some bip-related stuff where they can hear it
Mitta
Convenient that they also cant see that shes talking since her trunk is covered by the mask
Bruce Mickelson
I see no fall harnesses on the people on the lift platform.
JoB
No big surprise for one of the two, at least …
(Though I’d want to get myself strapped to the tower, once at height, rather than to the lift standing on uneven, probably non-compacted regolith with four tightly-grouped wheels and no hydraulic struts. That thing looks like Adam sneezing could tip it!)
Enai
Yes, there are struts, and you can even see that they deployed them every time they used the lift. Look at the tracks in the regolith, there’s 4 square imprints around each parked position.
I love how detailed this is <3
JoB
… those!? They hardly extend the base beyond the tires! For unsurfaced terrain and the elevation they go to, I’d expect something like this …
Enai
Fair enough, but unless that becomes a plot point, let’s cut Jay some slack for not being a certified OSHA inspector in addition to a competent biologist AND a wonderful digital artist AND a good storyteller. They need to leave some things for the rest of us.
JoB
> unless that becomes a plot point, let’s cut Jay some slack
I’m not directing any of that at Jay. Talita getting blamed – by Mel, Ohwitiil, the surviving temps, C-level Ixion, off-planet authorities, the media, or whoever – for an accident that was ultimately due to the generally sub-par make-do equipment on Dirtball would fit the plot(-to-be) quite well.
(And even if there is no accident, realizing ex post what a shoestring operation this is could still work towards her leaving it behind.)
izimb
I mean, even with struts, crane pads must be compacted (maybe not for a small one like this though)
Enai
My apologies JoB, I misunderstood. Yeah, this is a slipshod operation that skimps on safety. One more reason for Talita and the gang to ditch the joint asap
Teod
Hey, at least they haven’t moved the lift while it’s extended. Although I have a feeling that they’re about to do just that.
JoB
Catch! 😉
Vinemaple
One of the most nerve-wracking superiors I’ve ever had, was a former ship’s bosun who got demoted to cargo bosun after a couple ABs died when they tipped over a Travelift. The way I heard it sounded like they’d have had to completely disregarded his instructions, but he got reprimanded for giving them the chance.
He was a nerve-wracking supervisor because he obsessively followed every POSSIBLE safety procedure to the highest POSSIBLE interpretation, even when that was clearly not the intent. He would also misapply stricter safety standards to procedures that didn’t require them.
It repeatedly took us more than a week to stow the cargo holds on every voyage, because this guy would countermand the cargo mate and make us, for example, re-stack the stackable boxes only two high instead of the regulation three, then the cargo mate would come back and make us stack it his way again, so all day, every day, platform after platform, we would take things down and re-stack them three times before moving on to the next platform.
Nobody could ever get a forklift certification out of him. Nobody.
But, yeah, these lifts are dangerous, even the scissor types.
BearBeerBear
Oh my god, it’s sad, but also sad is that the boatswain has this uuuh, trauma. Well, at least that’s how it sounds.
Vinemaple
Oh, it was trauma. It was very much trauma. He dragged himself around the ship, rarely speaking above a mumble, always stooped over, always with an expression like a kicked dog.
That ship, almost everyone I worked with acted like a cartoon character archetype instead of a sane human being. It was terrifying. The cargo mate, the rig captain, the asshole who kept calling me a “homo-sess-u-ell,” the paint locker guy, the tool locker guy, all made me wonder if I was dreaming or something, they were all so one-dimensional and extreme.
HAL9000
theres something about the sea that does that to people i find. guess its the isolation
Jay Eaton
Hm, they ought to have them. This is a case of me drawing outside my area of expertise, having to rewrite and repanel this scene shortly before drawing it, and getting wrapped up trying to accurately draw a scissor lift in perspective with no 3d model. I might edit to give them FAS gear before printing.
bryn
the image of bip trying to use the frontloader claw fingers aw ;; talita looks so done with it here, buut i wonder if the lowered ‘eyelids’ are a little sign of her lowering her guard with bip, as well as her sarcastic and short demeanor with them while they interrupt her work. seems to mainly be her annoyance with bip interrupting at this current moment though. she doesn’t feel the extreme need to uphold her appearance or save face with bip, which could feel refreshing for talita whose already been hinted at relating to sophontic ais in her friendship with calcery; talita often feels under huge amounts of pressure to perform in certain ways to appease others/appease her own insecurities as well mostly especially when it comes to humans and her self image. and i think its getting clearer that Bip is under a lot of pressure too..! different situations but still stuck nonetheless!
Vinemaple
They’re trapped together at the bottom of the sea! Under pressure!
Tom the Dragon
Next page: hydrogen tank explosion.
Amanda/OwlBear
Schedule maintenance or your gear will schedule it for you
impzbot
every little detail about this webcomic’s illustrations are so wonderful , like look at the tracks from the temps trying to maneuver the lift bvbgfh
Enai
Looks like they already inspected at least two other spots of the antenna array…