XKCD Webcomic

[joncz]

http://xkcd.com/1074/

[jabe]

and don't forget the "mouse over" on the comic on the webpage
jb

[sdsds]

Up Goer Five
http://xkcd.com/1133/

[Garrett]

Up Goer Five
http://xkcd.com/1133/

Brilliant! Saw it this morning when it came up on my Google Reader. Quite funny too.

[Robert Thompson]

Up Goer Five
http://xkcd.com/1133/

Thinkpol make up doubleplus good. S*F ~ const.

[peter-b]

Up Goer Five
http://xkcd.com/1133/

Thinkpol make up doubleplus good. S*F ~ const.

Mmm. I suspect you may have missed the point. It's not written in Newspeak; it's explicitly written using the only the most common 1,000 words in the English language. Almost the opposite of Newspeak, in fact.

[Rocket Science]

Finally, the lost blueprints of Apollo … Everything we need to build a new one… 

[iamlucky13]

So...

"Rapid, Unscheduled Disassembly" = "Parts fall off your space car in the wrong order."

Unfortunately, I'm afraid the basic idea behind the joke is flawed. I'm pretty sure I know quite a few people with a vocabulary smaller than ten hundred words.

Finally, the lost blueprints of Apollo … Everything we need to build a new one… 

 

Definitely using this comic to respond next time somebody starts a rant about the blueprints.

I wonder if he'll offer this one as a poster on his store.

[LegendCJS]

He is taking the liberty to add the suffix -ing to many of the words in the 1000 most common list.  "Burning", "Landing", and I did not find "breath" or "breathing" in one list of 1000 (I did find "breath" in another 1000 word list). The word "computer" wasn't in either list I checked.

Side question: can humanity colonize space if the word "computer" isn't even in the the top 1000 most used words?

XKCD rocks!

[Comga]

And one of my XKCD favorites: Places to go in space.
http://xkcd.com/482/
Look!  The Moon is only two inches above the International Space Station.   
Mars is only two inches above that.  Should be a piece of cake, no?  Let's use the new Up-Goer Six with two tubes of solid burning stuff!

[kevin-rf]

And one of my XKCD favorites: Places to go in space.
http://xkcd.com/482/
Look!  The Moon is only two inches above the International Space Station.   
Mars is only two inches above that.  Should be a piece of cake, no?  Let's use the new Up-Goer Six with two tubes of solid burning stuff!

Okay, the cat really messes with my head, but I never trusted that guy with the hat

[elmarko]

I'm definitely getting a whiff of Kerbal Space Program from it. Apparently he plays it a lot.

"This end should point towards the ground if you want to go to space"

[sdsds]

"Realistic Criteria"
http://xkcd.com/1232/

[Falcon H]

I'm definitely getting a whiff of Kerbal Space Program from it. Apparently he plays it a lot.

"This end should point towards the ground if you want to go to space"

Have you ever read kerbal comics? http://www.kerbalcomics.com/

[elmarko]

No, but I will now

KSP is getting so good now. If anybody here hasn't played it yet you really should.

[ClaytonBirchenough]

Up Goer Five
http://xkcd.com/1133/

Haha I like that one:).

[sdsds]

Social Media
http://xkcd.com/1239/

[sdsds]

Snare
http://xkcd.com/1243/

[RotoSequence]

Six Words
https://www.xkcd.com/1244/

[Nilof]

Six Words
https://www.xkcd.com/1244/

Kind of funny considering that half the JPL is playing KSP.

[mox386]

http://xkcd.com/681/


This one is still my all time favorite

[RanulfC]

http://xkcd.com/681/


This one is still my all time favorite

Remember this for reference! Gravity Wells will be a plot point in "Pacific Rim-II"!

(Naaa, I don't know anything, but it makes a good PSB-reason for the "rift" being at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean )

Randy

[Chris Bergin]

Social Media
http://xkcd.com/1239/

That's so true.

Seems they are obsessed with Google Hangouts now.

[Tuts36]

Maybe I'll get frowned at for bringing back an oldie, but...

http://xkcd.com/1461/

[ugordan]

Maybe I'll get frowned at for bringing back an oldie, but...

http://xkcd.com/1461/

A nice touch were custom units of measurement for Atlas-Centaur and Pegasus LVs.

[jongoff]

Maybe I'll get frowned at for bringing back an oldie, but...

http://xkcd.com/1461/

A nice touch were custom units of measurement for Atlas-Centaur and Pegasus LVs.

Thanks for mentioning that--I missed it when I saw that this morning.

~Jon

[Chris Bergin]

Random fact about me.....I love horses. Have since I was a kid.

I also love rockets.

Thus this all pleases me!

[the_other_Doug]

I also liked the rating for a Thor launcher (the precursor of the Delta family) -- one horse and three dogs!  (And the slightly less powerful Unha, at one horse and two dogs...)

Also, I happened at one time to own a 1981 Oldsmobile...

[p51]

[Nilof]

New XKCD what-if on swimming pools on the moon:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/124/

He notes that sending a decent-sized swimming pool's worth of water(135 Horses) is practical with not too many Falcon heavy launches. He does not mention oxygen ISRU though, which would make this even easier to the extent that it'd be possible to deliver the hydrogen with just one mission. I get 12.5 tonnes of Hydrogen for a 10m x 5m x 2m pool which would fit in a BA 330.

Huh. If Bigelow gets his lunar hotel running he'll need to include a swimming pool. It could lead to a significant increase in demand. I think the number of people who would be interested to pay for moon gravity swimming is probably larger than the number of people who'd want to pay to have their footprints on the moon.

[the_other_Doug]

New XKCD what-if on swimming pools on the moon:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/124/

He notes that sending a decent-sized swimming pool's worth of water(135 Horses) is practical with not too many Falcon heavy launches. He does not mention oxygen ISRU though, which would make this even easier to the extent that it'd be possible to deliver the hydrogen with just one mission. I get 12.5 tonnes of Hydrogen for a 10m x 5m x 2m pool which would fit in a BA 330.

Huh. If Bigelow gets his lunar hotel running he'll need to include a swimming pool. It could lead to a significant increase in demand. I think the number of people who would be interested to pay for moon gravity swimming is probably larger than the number of people who'd want to pay to have their footprints on the moon.

Forget swimming -- I'd rather fill a dome or sealed lava tube with air, strap on wings, and fly in lunar gravity.  You'd need a pretty high air pressure to make it work, but that would be cheaper than bringing, or making, water just to swim in, I'd think...

[nadreck]

And I always wanted to hollow out an ice asteroid, spin it for artificial gravity and figure skate hard enough and fast enough that I could perturb the effect of the artificial gravity.

[pagheca]

New XKCD what-if on swimming pools on the moon:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/124/

He notes that sending a decent-sized swimming pool's worth of water(135 Horses) is practical with not too many Falcon heavy launches. He does not mention oxygen ISRU though, which would make this even easier to the extent that it'd be possible to deliver the hydrogen with just one mission. I get 12.5 tonnes of Hydrogen for a 10m x 5m x 2m pool which would fit in a BA 330.

Huh. If Bigelow gets his lunar hotel running he'll need to include a swimming pool. It could lead to a significant increase in demand. I think the number of people who would be interested to pay for moon gravity swimming is probably larger than the number of people who'd want to pay to have their footprints on the moon.

Amazing... It would deserve a "Why would you go to the Moon?" thread on its own.

[Nilof]

New XKCD what-if on swimming pools on the moon:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/124/

He notes that sending a decent-sized swimming pool's worth of water(135 Horses) is practical with not too many Falcon heavy launches. He does not mention oxygen ISRU though, which would make this even easier to the extent that it'd be possible to deliver the hydrogen with just one mission. I get 12.5 tonnes of Hydrogen for a 10m x 5m x 2m pool which would fit in a BA 330.

Huh. If Bigelow gets his lunar hotel running he'll need to include a swimming pool. It could lead to a significant increase in demand. I think the number of people who would be interested to pay for moon gravity swimming is probably larger than the number of people who'd want to pay to have their footprints on the moon.

Forget swimming -- I'd rather fill a dome or sealed lava tube with air, strap on wings, and fly in lunar gravity.  You'd need a pretty high air pressure to make it work, but that would be cheaper than bringing, or making, water just to swim in, I'd think...

Domes/huge pressurized enclosures are a bit more far term. But indeed, they offer some really interesting possibillities.

The increased payload of multicopters is one interesting consequence. could easily lift a person on the Moon (and could almost do the same on Mars). So would we see people using multicopters as the lunar equivalent of scooters? Maybe.

[Nilof]

New comic:

[Ben the Space Brit]

That new comic makes me think of the wham revelation in The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy that Earth was an engineered object. After all, if you're going to build the perfect planet for your experiment, why not also build the entire perfect solar system? Magrathea is doing a special on extreme-eccentricity KBOs this week!

[Hotblack Desiato]

That new comic makes me think of the wham revelation in The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy that Earth was an engineered object. After all, if you're going to build the perfect planet for your experiment, why not also build the entire perfect solar system? Magrathea is doing a special on extreme-eccentricity KBOs this week!

sounds like a good place for a concert. ;-)

(but I'm unavailable due to being dead in the restaurant at end of the universe, due to tax reasons).

[kch]

That new comic makes me think of the wham revelation in The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy that Earth was an engineered object. After all, if you're going to build the perfect planet for your experiment, why not also build the entire perfect solar system? Magrathea is doing a special on extreme-eccentricity KBOs this week!

sounds like a good place for a concert. ;-)

(but I'm unavailable due to being dead in the restaurant at end of the universe, due to tax reasons).

No worries -- Vader's guarding you well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Prowse#Other_roles

[wxmeddler]

[sghill]

For anyone watching the EM Drive thread in the Advanced Concepts general area, today's XKCD is an absolute scream!!!  http://www.xkcd.com/1486/

I wonder if he's a lurker on NSF...

[Eer]

Could go in the New Horizon's Update thread I suppose ...

http://xkcd.com/1532/

[Tuts36]

New one today, I'm sure NASA press coordinator appreciates it~

http://xkcd.com/1583/