Jeanie Bottle 386
Aug23
on August 23, 2016
at 12:00 am
and modified on November 26, 2022. at 11:14 pm
Chapter: Story 09: I Dream of Technicolor
Characters: Lord Guano, Rouyaa
We have a bunch of awesome new fanart in the Fanart Gallery! DeviantArt user soycrisp had a collegue who drew a few IDOJB comics, and he recently shared them. He gave me permission to post them here, so check ’em out! 🙂
Beach Rubdown 1
Beach Rubdown 2
Looks like you didn’t slip under the radar with Andy’s wish back then, Rouyaa. And luckily it was caught by someone who understands showing compassion with their authority. Just be careful how you behave and do with the position you’re in. 🙂
Considering what happens to Rouyaa’s bottle, I’m gonna guess she helps with the space program.
What happens to Rouyaa’s bottle? I think Jean’s bottle is/was Evee’s bottle.
And note the US Space program kind of went down hill for a while after 1969 . . . The Shuttle program was a low to medium orbit system that could not reach the Moon, or even geosynchronous orbit.
The Shuttle program was never designed to reach the moon, because there was no point any more. But there *was* a point in having a repeatably usable space vehicle for doing things like satellite repairs and building space stations.
I know the shuttle was never meant to go anywhere except to orbit and back multiple times. I was just saying how in the context of the comic this sort of fits history. NASA seemed to work miracles getting to the moon, then it slowed down after that goal was reached.
@ranck: The reason that NASA seemed to lose direction was mainly financial; after the moon landings, Congress decided there was no longer any political advantage to space flight, and slashed the budget. After that, NASA was trying to scrape by on pocket change, which is why all the plans for anything beyond low-earth-orbit flights had to be shelved.
While NASA’s budget was indeed slashed after the moon landings, they still had plenty of funding (still do in fact). The problem was the Shuttle. It ate up a disproportionate share of their budget, leaving the more successful unmanned missions underfunded.
To understand the Shuttle, you have to go back to the 1960s and 1970s. It was the height of the Cold War. The U.S.S.R. was a very closed society making it nearly impossible to insert field agents, and the U-2 had just been shot down. The USAF increasingly turned to spy satellites for reconnaissance. But they were spending hundreds of millions of dollars (billions in today’s dollars) launching each one into orbit, and they only carried like a couple dozen rolls of film. Each roll would be ejected after being shot, and an elaborate mid-air parachute catching system would recover it (google Corona satellite). After those rolls were spent, the spy satellite (basically a Hubble Telescope pointing down) was useless space junk.
The Shuttle was designed as a system to (among other things) retrieve these spy satellites in orbit, and reload them with film. That’s why its cargo bay is exactly the right size for a KH (Key Hole) spy satellite, and why the Hubble is almost exactly the same size as a spy satellite (it was designed to fit the cargo bay). While the Shuttle itself was more expensive than a new spy satellite, because it was re-usable you can amortize the construction cost over multiple missions thus making it cheaper.
The hope was to launch a Shuttle mission every week. The USAF would get to load new film into its spy satellites, NASA could use the Shuttle for other missions, and spreading the fixed costs over that many missions meant it would be cheaper than single-use rockets.
Unfortunately, the Shuttle only managed to average about 4-5 missions a year, making it horrendously more expensive than single-use rockets. And improvements in communications technology and digital sensors meant that by the 1980s the USAF no longer needed film in their spy satellites – they could take as many pictures as they wanted and just beam them down by radio. But by that time NASA was committed to the Shuttle program for the next 30 years, so had to keep operating that white elephant. Aside from spy satellites and Hubble, very few satellites are worth the cost of a Shuttle launch (approx half a billion dollars). So if a satellite was broken, it was cheaper to launch a new replacement into orbit than to send the Shuttle to fix it.
@Makaira: This is an interesting take on things, and one I have not heard before. I’m curious where you got this info?
I ask, because there’s something “off” about the timing you mention. The Corona program began in 1959 and lasted until it was discontinued in 1972, which was before the Apollo program was canceled, and even before the final Apollo landing. Whereas the shuttle program only began test flights in 1981 and didn’t start actual launches until 1982. Given that the Shuttle wasn’t designed until after the Corona program was already defunct, it seems unlikely that it would have been conceived as a way to service the Corona satellites.
By the way, by 1972, video technology had already advanced to the point that film was no longer in use for satellite reconnaissance. All subsequent spy satellites used electronic video cameras. So there wouldn’t have been any point to designing the Space Shuttle to handle film issues. (Although they certainly did deploy military and and other types of reconnaissance satellites, as well as other things.)
The KH-9 (Hexagon) was the last spy satellite to use photographic film, with the last one launched in 1986.
(KH10 was a manned observatory.)
KH-11 (Kennen) was the first spy satellite to use electronic imaging, and wasn’t launched until 1976. Do note that earlier CCDs were (far) inferior to film in both resolution and sensitivity, which was why they were still launching KH-9s.
The Space Shuttle’s design began in the late 1960s. Multiple designs for a post-Apollo reusable launch vehicle were proposed, and the final one selected in 1970. The SRBs iconic to the Shuttle (and which had never been used on a launch vehicle carrying people) came courtesy of the USAF, which wanted a vehicle with a larger cargo bay and a bigger payload. Strapping on SRBs was the compromise.
Ooooh, boy. looks like there’s a bit of a story behind this one…
Considering Hitler lost the war with a genie, it’s hard to see how the Allies won without a genie. This could bear on Haji’s warning to Rouyaa.
Evee probably ran out of magic, and so the final years of the war (probably everything from Stalingrad on) were fought without magical aid from either side.
That’s pretty much confirmed from Kazom’s line from way back when we first learned about Evee during the Melvin arc. He specifically mentions using magic on a global scale being one reason that a genie might run out of magic quickly and die.
So it’s safe to assume that Jean found Evee’s empty bottle.
Not necessarily. We have no idea how many empty bottles there are floating around, waiting for a new occupant. It could have been Eva’s, but it also might yet turn out to be Rouyaa’s, if she decides to defy Haji again. Or maybe another bottle that we haven’t seen yet. (We do know they come in at least two different designs. Araceli’s is a different shape.)
Based on most works on genies, Genie Totems would come in various aesthetics of styles like ordinary objects. If all bottles, oil lamps or any other enclosing objects that housed genies looked the same, people would likely be identifying them all over the place too easily.
That can drive a scary sensation down anyone’s spine if they should go clean up any old object while being none the wiser and gets djinnifed for it.
Ack! I’d better stop washing the dishes! I could wind up inside one! 😉
Anyone else love that fanart?
Yes. Fanart wins two internets.
I most certainly do!
For me the fan art had an eeck factor. I think Jean would not of put herself into that situation, and if Neal tried anything he’d end up TG’d and back at the strip club or worse. In fact Neal would be very uncomfortable with the thought, especially Jean.
One of them could be asleep and having a weird dream, which one is having the dream can’t tell.