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Launchpad
It does come at the cost of some launchpad expansions and increased fuel requirements, but that all comes out of the facility's budget.
Title text: It does come at the cost of some launchpad expansions and increased fuel requirements, but that all comes out of the facility's budget.

    Explanation

    This comic is about launching a spacecraft into space, seen as a problem of separating the spacecraft from the Earth. Traditionally this is done by accelerating the spacecraft away from the Earth using a rocket, but in this comic it's done by accelerating the Earth away from the spacecraft. Instead of the rocket engines being part of the rocket, the engines are mounted upside-down on the launch platform, and by extension, on the planet Earth itself, apparently to accelerate the Earth away from the spacecraft. While in theory this is possible, it ignores literally massive practical problems. Three main issues come from the same underlying fact: The Earth has a lot more mass than a typical spacecraft.[citation needed] This means that the engines would need to produce gigantic amounts of force, even by rocketry standards, to accelerate the Earth away from the spacecraft. Additionally, the structural integrity of the object experiencing the force (both the rocket engine and the ground) would be concerning, given the amount of force needed. In addition, the rocket would be unlikely to actually lift off the Earth if the planet were somehow moved, as the Earth's gravity would keep it in place; the Earth would need to be accelerated at more than one g (one gravity) to separate it from the spacecraft, causing widespread destruction to everything on the planet. And in addition to that, the rocket itself would still need some form of propulsion for maneuvering in space, thwarting the purpose of having the engines not attached to the spacecraft.

    The title text further ridicules the situation. Costs in an organization are sometimes split between project budgets, one for each project, and a facility budget, which might be shared by all the projects. In a space launch organization, each launch might have its own budget, with a separate budget for the launch facility that's shared by the projects. In this comic, Cueball is saying in effect that one shouldn't worry about the project's budget paying for moving the Earth, since the cost will come out of the facility budget. This assumes, amusingly, that the facility's budget will somehow cover the cost of physically moving the Earth. Of course, not only would it be unlikely anyone would have the budget to deal with this elaborate scheme, but it is also unlikely there would be enough resources, full stop, to generate the power needed to move the Earth. Possibly the facility is linked in with Beret Guy, which would make the venture more probable given his history of making bizarre things work.

    Transcript

    [Two giant twin engines are sitting on the ground pointing upwards, with a pod in between them. A Megan and a Ponytail are to the left of the first one, with a Cueball carrying something to the right of the thruster. Another Cueball is pointing to the pod from the right, talking to another Ponytail, and there is another Megan on the right side of the right thruster.]
    Second Cueball: To reduce the spacecraft´s weight, we´re mounting the engines on the launchpad and having them push the Earth away from the spacecraft.

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    This Week's Explanation for Improvement

    As part of the Explanation Improvement Project, each week the community selects one older, neglected, or otherwise stagnant explanation to expand and polish together. This week's pick is 380: Emoticon; please help us improve it! To get involved with the project, you can also nominate an explanation or vote on current nominations!

    Emoticon
    U+FDD0 is actually Unicode for the eye of the basilisk, though for safety reasons no font actually renders it.
    Title text: U+FDD0 is actually Unicode for the eye of the basilisk, though for safety reasons no font actually renders it.

      Explanation

      Welcome to This Week's Explanation for Improvement! Anyone is encouraged to help explain comic 380: Emoticon; click here to get started! If you are new to wiki editing, you can read our editing FAQ for guidance. Here are some suggestions for improving this explanation:

        Explain what a basilisk is for people who don't know.
        Improve the existing trivia section, such as by adding that Cueball is not called Rob in this comic.
        Explain the reference in the username and link similar comics that feature chat clients.
        Give an historical background about old chatrooms and requests for A/S/L, which are now uncommon.

      A basilisk is a legendary creature reputed to have the power to kill any living creature by turning it into stone with a single glance.

      In this comic, Cueball, who goes by "NICKM" (possibly a reference to Harry Potter (see below)), chats online with a user named "BSLSK05" via instant messaging. He quickly learns, much to his dismay, that he is chatting with an actual basilisk, who kills him by sending him a smiley emoticon. This is humorous, as this parallels the power of the basilisk. Apparently, Cueball is merely killed rather than being turned to stone.

      The username "BSLSK05" is, of course, the word "basilisk" sans vowels and with appended numbers. Usually, appended numbers in a username denote the last two digits of the year for when the user was born. Years can hint to be at least in the 20th century, but in the case of the basilisk, it could be a lot earlier.

      This comic is possibly a reference to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in which a basilisk is let loose in the school. The character in the comic, "NickM", is a reference to Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, also known as Nearly Headless Nick, a ghost who is petrified and turned immobile by the basilisk in the book. He is not "killed", since he has already died once.

      Cueball's question, "A/S/L?", is Internet slang for requesting one's age, sex, and location to another user. This was commonly used when first meeting someone online and useful for getting some basic characteristics of the user they were chatting with, especially to check for compatibility in dating-based settings. The term has fallen out of style since the comic, with the introduction of sites such as Tinder and Omegle that showed this information up-front, either via profiles or directly showing somebody's face. This allowed for, among other things, the ability to know the requested information before chatting, making this question almost entirely useless.

      Some more modern chat-only platforms, such as Emerald Chat, have birthed new introductory questions such as 'M or F' to ask a person's gender.

      The type of chat system pictured may likely be Internet Relay Chat (IRC), the earliest popular system used for instant messaging, as most IRC clients share the use of formatting usernames them with surrounding angle brackets and prefixing event messages with "-!-".

      The title text implies that the emoticon is actually the Unicode code point U+FDD0, titled the "eye of the basilisk". In reality, this is just a non-character, which is permanently reserved. This code point is located in the "Arabic Presentation Forms-A" block.

      The comic, though, claims that actually it is real, and it was covered up for safety reasons, as presumably viewing the character would instantly kill you. Why anyone would invent such a character and give it such power is unknown, but given what a certain hat-wearing sadistic is capable of, it would be believable in the xkcd world.

      Transcript

      [Cueball sits at computer, typing. The computer screen reads as follows:]
      ~!~ Opening Chat with BSLSK05
      <NICKM> Hi!
      <NICKM> A/S/L?
      [The next panel is unframed, with two smaller frames within it.]
      <BSLSK05> :)
      [Cueball looks stunned, flies backward.]
      [The two smaller frames focus in on BSLSK05's emoticon, implying rotation to show a smile and two open eyes.]
      [Cueball at computer slouches in chair, dead, crossbones above his head.]
      [At the remote computer, a basilisk is looking at its screen, pleased with its endeavours.]

      Trivia

      The unicode character used as the eye of the basilisk, U+FDD0 did in fact kill at least one chat client, Konversation (and presumably any other Qt-based chat clients using QTextDocument). This was because U+FDD0 is one of the 32 non-characters located in the block “Arabic Presentation Forms-A” used "to make additional codes available to programmers to use for internal processing purposes". According to the Unicode FAQ they are reserved for internal (private) use.

      However, QT's UTF-8 encoder let it through anyway. But QT's qtextdocument uses U+FDD0 as text frame delimiter so when it is appended to a QTextDocument, counters run wrong and eventually it crashes.

      D-bus closes the connection and crashes the client when it encounters illegal UTF-8, and KDE's notification system works through d-bus.

      The problem was fixed after the xkcd "report" and Konversation now handles unicode normally.


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