i sure hope they have some really good car insurance.
Posts tagged emu
ask your mother
wait, sedna has a mother?!
that’s right, apparently sedna actually had a mum back in classic sedna. i’d been meaning to reimagine and redesign her a bit before reintroducing her to the comic, but ended up taking so long most new readers probably just assumed sedna’s dad was a single parent by now. well, here she finally is, looking a tiiiny bit different from before. hope you guys enjoy the next batch of mum comics because they were a blast to write.
(also now i’m wondering if sedna having two loving parents automatically disqualifies her from ever getting a disney tv/movie adaptation.)
mistake
probably should’ve given her a teddy bear instead.
emu family
this is my sneaky way of showing the size differences between some famous rockets.
for those who don’t know, the ‘v-2’ rocket (aka a4) on the far left was 14 metres tall and was the first rocket to ever reach space in 1944. it was built by the nazis to bomb london (but luckily they mostly missed).
the ‘saturn v’ on the right was the rocket that brought people to the moon in 1968-72, and is still the largest rocket ever launched as of now (2021/08) at 110 metres tall. however, spacex’s 120m tall ‘starship’ is going to break that record when it launches (hopefully) later this year.
reusability
the hybrid jet/rocket spaceplane concept is being developed the british company ‘reaction engines’, a company who’ve been working on their ‘skylon’ spaceplane project for about the last 30 million years (so naturally i expect them to finish aaany day now).
the reusable two-stage rocket concept was pioneered by the american company ‘spacex’, who currently reuse the 1st stage of their ‘falcon 9’ rocket and are planning on reusing both stages on their upcoming ‘starship’ rocket. pretty much every other private space company is going this route. cuz you know, it actually works.
the ‘catch-the-rocket-in-midair’ concept sounds so insane you’d think i just made it up, but it’s actually the plan of the new zealand-based company ‘rocket lab’, who are eventually going to start catching their ‘electron’ rocket 1st stages with a helicopter. can’t wait to watch it.
of course, i could’ve also mentioned the space shuttle, but calling that “reusable” is about as generous as calling a potato chip a vegetable. “partially-somewhat-refurbishable” would be a more honest description.
the rocket equation
the rocket equation is the reason we don’t live in the star trek universe. because a rocket has to carry all its fuel, it grows exponentially the further you want it to go.
rocket that goes up a few hundred metres? size of a water bottle.
rocket that goes into orbit? size of a dinosaur.
rocket that goes to the moon and back? size of skyscraper.
if we lived on a smaller planet with weaker gravity (like mars), space travel would be relatively easy. if we lived on a larger planet with stronger gravity (like saturn), space travel would be impossible. instead we live on earth, where space travel is only just possible, but incredibly difficult.
rocket fuel
essentially, most rockets use liquid fuel, while most boosters strapped on the side of the rocket use solid fuel (like on the space shuttle). boosters are a cheap way of adding more “boom” to your rocket, but they’re so inefficient you probably don’t want to carry them all the way to space.
there’s also hybrid fuel (solid fuel + liquid oxygen) which i didn’t mention because not a lot of rockets use it, and 4 panels isn’t a lot of real estate. it’s sort of a compromise between the two, and its what virgin galactic use for the spaceshiptwo.
of course “liquid fuel” can mean any one of a whole bunch of very different chemicals (hydrogen, methane, kerosene, etc) but that’s a comic for another day.
rocket science
rocket science is easy. rocket engineering is hard.
sedna & dini’s space agency
yay! rocket comics are back!
so for the next bunch of comics i’m going to attempt to explain rocket science in 4-panel-comic form. which should be a piece of cake, i mean it’s hardly brain surgery, right?
space agency headquarters
(click here for a high resolution version of this illustration)
finally another slice of life illustration! these are way easier than drawing dinosaurs or spaceships.
this one probably doesn’t have as nice colours or composition as some of my other illustrations, but i sure had a blast adding all the little easter eggs around sedna’s room (i wonder if any rocket nerds will notice anything… familiar about some of sedna’s rocket designs). :P