2087: Rocket Launch

2018-12-20T04:37:31Z

Thaven1: Clarified wording, "thinner air" is easier for me to understand than "less air", same goes for "volume of air" vs. "more air".

{{comic
| number = 2087
| date = December 19, 2018
| title = Rocket Launch
| image = rocket_launch.png
| titletext = NASA tries to coordinate launch timing with the Care Bears' cloud castle, but unfortunately sometimes collisions with stray Care Bears are unavoidable, so they just try to make the fairings sturdy and hope for a glancing impact.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a CARE BEAR STARE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic was posted on a week with a notably high number of {{w|rocket launch}}es. Originally, there were to be four {{w|Orbital spaceflight|orbital rocket}} launches from the United States on December 19, 2018 (the publish date for the comic), which would have tied with the prior record for number of orbital rocket launches in one day. While these launches were ultimately delayed, breaking the event, the comic was doubtless under production by then.

Only some of the steps listed are actually typical.

* Liftoff: the traditional start of a launch, when the rocket leaves the ground. The engines will typically have been ignited a short time before, but need to throttle up to produce enough thrust to overcome the rocket's weight. "Liftoff" refers to the moment this happens, making the rocket lift off the ground.
* {{w|Max q|Max-Q}}: Peak aerodynamic stress. A rocket accelerates from the moment it leaves the ground. The faster a rocket goes, the bigger volume of air it pushes through per second - but the higher a rocket goes, the thinner the air. (Before liftoff, the rocket is not moving, and thus is not pushing through air. Once in orbit, there is essentially no air to push through, so the rocket is not pushing through air. Between those two times, the rocket is pushing through some amount of air, the exact amount increasing before Max Q and decreasing after Max Q.) "Max Q" is the moment where these two factors produce a maximum, and is the point where the rocket's structure must withstand the most air pushing back against it.
* Booster separation: rockets are designed in {{w|Multistage rocket|stages}}, so they do not have to carry the empty fuel tanks all the way to orbit. (Carrying any mass to orbit is expensive, so the more that can be dropped off earlier, the better.) 3 stages is typical. "Booster separation" marks the point where the first of these stages (the "{{w|Booster (rocketry)|booster}}"), its fuel expended, is typically ejected.
* Max-CB: Highest chance of collision with {{w|Care Bears}}. This is entirely fictitious. Care Bears are fictitious characters, which have a toy line, television series, and movies. The existence of a basketball sneaker named the "Nike Air Force Max CB" may or may not be relevant.
* Main stage separation: see "booster separation" above. This marks the point where the second stage (the "main stage") is ejected.
* {{w|GPS}} silenced so it will stop saying "Make a U-turn". Again, this is fictional. While some rockets do make use of signals from the Global Positioning System ("GPS"), no rockets are known to use the navigational devices that incorporate GPS readers and street maps, providing directions - often with optional text-to-speech - along the Earth's surface. Some such devices are notorious for getting confused in extreme situations (such as the high Mach numbers that rockets achieve); constantly uttering "make a U-turn" would be one such confusion, and any device in such a confused state might well be silenced for being more annoying than helpful. Navigation of this nature is neither necessary nor useful on a rocket, which will have its entire route from ground to orbit computed before launch, and piloting typically left entirely to computers given the precise timing required.
* Reunification (of boosters): another fictional step. Discarded stages fall back into the Earth's atmosphere, either hitting the ground (or, more often, water) or burning up from the friction of falling at extreme speed. The booster and main stage would not be on a course to come anywhere near each other, and would not have enough fuel to change their course (running out of fuel being why they were discarded in the first place). Even if they did, landing for reuse (as {{w|SpaceX reusable launch system development program|SpaceX has attempted}}, sometimes successfully) would be far more likely than a mid-air reunion.
* Pilot panics, copilot takes command after struggle: another fictional step. Astronauts are not the sort of people who panic easily, nor struggle with their crewmates. More importantly, in any modern rocket the "pilot" is not a human being, but a computer incapable of panic (as in the human emotion). It is possible that part of the flight computer could fail, causing redundant failsafes to take over, but the process could not correctly be described as a "struggle", and in any case this sort of failure is uncommon enough that it is not part of a "typical" rocket launch.
* Pursuit phase: fictional. This assumes the (nonexistent) reunified booster would have enough fuel to pursue the top stage of the rocket, and a reason to do so. See "Reunification".
* Inter-stage {{w|dogfight}}: fictional. See "Pursuit phase". This at least provides a potential motive. A dogfight is an aerial battle between fighter aircraft, conducted at close range. This step claims that the rocket booster and the top stage of the rocket engage in a battle.
* Winner proceeds to space: fictional. As noted above, in a real rocket launch there is no dogfight for there to be a "winner" of. A kind reading would note that the top stage "wins" by default, and it is certainly the case that in a real (orbital) rocket launch, the top stage typically does proceed to space.

The title text refers once again to the Care Bears franchise. The Care Bears live in a castle made of clouds, so the comic claims that NASA aims to avoid launching into their castle, but sometimes cannot avoid hitting "stray" Care Bears.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}

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2087: Rocket Launch