Jeanie Bottle 747
Aug01
on August 1, 2023
at 12:00 am
and modified on August 4, 2023. at 3:25 am
Chapter: Story 16: I Dream of Nostalgia
Yeah, this’d be pretty cool for Andy to see.
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Yeah, this’d be pretty cool for Andy to see.
This sight he is seeing several generations worth of accomplishments and hard work. A truly beautiful sight.
Congress should have given NASA the funds to build new ones. Updated ones, with newer tech. Wishfull dreaming.
Congress should give NASA new funds, for sure, but the Shuttle program was needlessly expensive (even accounting for inflation) and a technological dead end.
SpaceX has shown that we don’t need wings or a runway landing, and instead can safely land a craft on its tail using its own rocket thrust without a huge weight penalty in fuel—in fact, the weight of the fuel used for Starship to land on Earth will be less than the weight of wings would be.
Of course, the ability to do that sort of landing is heavily dependent on having advanced computer systems that weren’t yet available back when the space shuttle was being designed. We can easily do lots of things now that were impossible back in the 1960s.
all his life, he dreamed of these moments, and 1 by 1 they’re coming true.
Wait until he finds out that there’s a huge international space station, six times the size of Skylab, that was a joint project between USA, Russia, and Europe.
Yeah. I know that feeling.
The shuttles are beautiful, but they’re only short run delivery trucks. Consider these two facts:
Fifty years after Columbus first landed in the Carribean, over 10,000 Europeans lived in the Americans. How many humans are on the Moon right now? How many permanent bases?
NASA’s original plan for the manned exploration of Mars called for the first manned rocket to leave in 1984. We’re a bit behind schedule on that one, too.
The public used to dream about Star Trek and even the Jetsons as real possibilities to be achieved. “Someday we will conquer the stars”.
Turns out exploring space is FAR more complicated because the enormous distances to cover and how hostile is to life. So people got bored of the apparent lack of progress and most decided we may be stuck in this planet forever.
Actually, the main barrier to exploring space is not the distances, but consistantly getting the money to pay for it, when the make-up of Congress changes every four years or so.
The time it will take a modern rocket to fly to Mars is comparable to the time it would take an 18th century British ship to sail to Hong Kong. The Brits went, and they prospered for it.
https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/blog/first-untethered-spacewalk
in 1984.. and there was a LOT of money about!
nine months is a lot of time at sea! but back then people were stronger, lots of places to visit, with food on trees, and plenty of air, that space does not have…. 🙂 😛
carry on dreaming while the other half of the world is too busy trying to kill each other due to ancient religion…
I won’t pretend that space travel/colonization will solve everything, but “getting the F off the planet” has never seemed more attractive than right now. People went to new lands to escape a myriad of repression, suppression, etc. Now we’ve filled the damned place, and there’s not a lot of places left to go to escape the a-holes.
Colonialism prospered because the places they went to had plentiful resources available to readily exploit
Space has a lot of resources, true, but it would take generations to make a profit off of them
Check out the Pan Am clipper rout across the Pacific. They had to make desert islands habitable.
blame it on the stupid govmnt!!
Blame it on the people who voted for that government. Space travel requires collective action for the common good. Americans stopped believing in either a long time ago. Collective action for the common good is also what makes Heinlein’s notion of space libertarians so nonsensical. Imagine being in an enclosed environment with a bunch of people who are only out for themselves and would cheerfully stab you in the back to get the last cookie at a picnic.
Until the cost of an expedition drops to around one million dollars in today’s money, it will be impossible for ordinary people to strike out on their own (e.g. Heinlein’s Space Family Stone). Thus, space activities will be either a group endeavor, or as an employee of a larger organization.
Wow. You seem to have an extremely distorted view of what libertarianism is about.
No, I’ve had the unfortunate experience of associating with too many libertarians. It’s a political philosophy that mostly appeals to psychopaths, sociopaths, solipsists and narcissists, and the naïve fools they prey upon.
Both Marxist-Leninist Communism and Ann Rand Libertarianism have the same chance of forming a stable society: zero. In D&D terms, Das Kapital views capitalists as chaotic evil and Ann Rand views them as lawful good. Neither view is meaningful when examining reality. In reality, successful societies require logical thinking and honesty, with a sizable portion of common sense.
Those 10,000 Europeans living in the Americans didn’t needed oxygen, water and food for them being transported from Europe. All was available in America.
When Neil and Buzz landed on the moon, congress was already planning to cut the budget. They saw the program as propaganda in the Cold War and figured that a return trip was just wasted money that could be thrown at “poor people” to BUY VOTES through nationalized welfare.
There are no votes on the moon.
So is this Jean and Neil at this point?
Or is this still Andy and Rouyaa. Color has been missing from the last 2 pages. So either this is Jean and Neil going along with this date. Or CD is missing a bit of detail on the last 2 pages.
The last two pages are full color. Are you referring to the thumbnails? Andy and Rouyaa’s thumbnails have always been black & white.
I think they mean the colour in the speech bubbles. Almost all the speech bubbles for the two have had green (for Andy) and pink (for Rouyaa) lining the inside of their speech bubbles since the memories took over.
To be honist, the last couple comics were done when I was tired and had to get other things done. I had forgotten to do the speech bubble colouring. Right now I’m away from home, so I can’t fix it till I get back. And Robert needs a break, so he hasn’t noticed them and when it’s pointed out hasn’t had the energy to go back and fix it.
So they are suppose to be coloured. My bad for forgetting to do it. This comic, most of my time was spent working on the Shuttle background
Maybe if Robert wasn’t “tied up” he could get to that.
The shuttle background is excellent work.
“Space…space…ah, there’s one.”
“That was an interesting ride” Were they poufed onto a Shuttle? or did Andy think poufing was space travel?
There is a simulator ride available that provides shaking to simulate the vibrations of launch, booster separation, etc., though of course it can not simulate the prolonged g-forces or weightlessness.
I was going to include a couple comics of the shuttle ride simulator, but it didn’t contribute to the plot, so I decided to skip that scene.
Maybe just one panel with sign “Shuttle ride simulator” pointing where they came from?
These two are just latent memories, pulled back into existence so they could be interrogated for the location of the McGuffin. They’ll “expire” in a couple of hours. Will they retain any sort of “consciousness” or recollection of their adventures in the Present?
“They” will not. Jeanie and Neil might, though.
Neil/Andy, be very, very carful what you say right now. Do not say “I wish”
There is nothing sadder than a ship forever more berthed upon the hard. Poor Atlantis, to nevermore touch space.
Remember two of them went up and never came back to be forever berthed.,
They did come back. Just not in one piece.
You could say the same thing about Columbus’ ships: two of them never came back, either. Some losses seem to be inevitable.
Not really relevant to my comment, but you do you.
THE DISMANTLED SHIP.
In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,
On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor’d near the shore,
An old, dismasted, gray and batter’d ship, disabled, done,
After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul’d up at last and hawser’d tight,
Lies rusting, mouldering.
-Walt Whitman
You know, this may also the first time Jeanie has seen Atlantis. Jean probably had no interest.