3018: Second Stage
| Second Stage |
 Title text: Hmm, they won't do in-flight delivery, so let's order a new first and second stage to our emergency landing site and then try to touch down on top of them to save time. |
Explanation
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Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
- We have liftoff.
- Main engine cutoff.
- Stage separation confirmed.
- We are go for second stage burn.
- Second stage?
- Yes.
- ...What?
- We were supposed to have a second stage?
- ...Yes!
- Did you set up a second stage?
- I thought you were handling staging!
- Oh no.
- Okay, don't panic.
- Lemme see if we can order a stage online for same-day delivery.
- Sigh.
- Hey, what zip code should I put? Ours keeps changing.
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refresh comments!Discussion
Reminds me of enough KSP incidents where I was editing my stack badly enough so as to forget to have engines (and/or fuel and/or control) at a given (usually mid-stage) scheduled jetison/discarding point. Especially with complicated asparagus clusters with cross-linked fuel feeds. - Also, the current trend for "two stage to orbit" (Booster+Starship, etc) perhaps makes us forget that three or four stages (maybe or maybe not including the boosting/manoevering payload 'bus' atop the main stack) has been a fairly normal setup for all but the lightest loftable loads. 172.70.163.145 14:16, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Do we need the Category:Rockets? ConscriptGlossary (talk) 14:27, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
This comic contains dialogue but no visible human characters. What is the first comic to do that? ConscriptGlossary (talk) 14:30, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- Sounds like a new category. -- Dtgriscom (talk) 15:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- there might be comics with dialogue & only non-human characters? --Winter1760 162.158.62.198 18:00, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- I know there's one where an AI becomes sentient and launches a bunch of nukes into the sun to get rid of them. They're not visible because shot is a view of earth from space. 172.69.22.180 05:41, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
Since when are the astonauts responsible for designing the rockets or ordering the parts? Barmar (talk) 16:50, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- In the U.S., astronauts (and test pilots) were expected to participate in engineering reviews, but I'm not sure how common that is anymore. At some point probably around the Space Shuttle era, the systems' complexity put astronaut involvement past the point of diminishing returns. 172.71.150.246 18:49, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- If Ed Mitchell hadn't been trained to reprogram the Apollo 14 guidance computer, their landing would have been aborted erroneously due to a mechanical switch fault. It couldn't have been done from the ground, unlike the Space Shuttle computer (which was a huge Ada program for which there was no developer console on board anyway.) But none of the astronauts were directly involved with the AGC design and original programming. On the other hand, I think some of the Mercury and Gemini program astronaut signatures are on some of their mechanical and systems design plans. 162.158.42.37 19:11, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- If it was Ada (and I can quite imagine it was, from era and utility), then I'd have given my sympathies. Yes, it's a structured modular language with built-in collaborative cross-testing facilities, but I could never really get on with its structure and requirements (better than COBOL, or course). Or maybe I just thought more in the manner of Lisp or Forth, myself, but eventually they let us loose on C and I've never looked back as the many C-like dialects arose afterwards. 172.71.122.184 19:46, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- If Ed Mitchell hadn't been trained to reprogram the Apollo 14 guidance computer, their landing would have been aborted erroneously due to a mechanical switch fault. It couldn't have been done from the ground, unlike the Space Shuttle computer (which was a huge Ada program for which there was no developer console on board anyway.) But none of the astronauts were directly involved with the AGC design and original programming. On the other hand, I think some of the Mercury and Gemini program astronaut signatures are on some of their mechanical and systems design plans. 162.158.42.37 19:11, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
