3018: Second Stage

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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

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a SECOND STAGE AMAZON DELIVERY DRIVER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic is about how rockets use multiple stages when lifting off, and in the comic, they installed too few stages. This is unlikely to happen in real life, because a lot of work goes into planning rockets.^{[citation needed]} As the second stage is supposed to be started (according to the first pilot), the second pilot is initially confused and asks if a second stage was needed. The first pilot confirms that there was supposed to be a second stage, and thought that it was the second pilot's responsibility to install and confirm there was a second stage. When both pilots realize there is no second stage, the second pilot, naturally, thinks he can order one on Amazon with same day delivery (though Amazon typically doesn't sell space ship stages - at least not with same day delivery ^{[citation needed]}). He then has difficulty picking an address zip code as they are likely traveling too high above the ground and too fast to be in a single postal area for long enough for the delivery to take place. The joke is likely poking fun at people becoming highly dependent upon Amazon delivery and that they don't need to remember to bring things on trips since they can have almost anything delivered to them while they travel.

This is not the first time Randal discusses the idea of a mid-flight delivery. This What If? explanation attempts to answer if it possible to have pizza delivered to you, by a bird, while flying on a commercial airline.

The comic depicts a manned rocket launch, and the start of its subsequent flight. All current rockets, that are capable of sending manned capsules to orbit, do so by the initial rocket engines and fuel-tank being expended (or nearly so, where there is reusability) and disconnected to allow the smaller next stage to fire and continue the boost towards orbit with altitude-optimal engines and without the mass of the spent fuel tanks. Above this second stage may be one or more other stages, as required for the mission, which generally involves propulsion that is optimal for use in the vacuum of space, having a larger specific impulse but lower overall thrust, allowing for maneuvers to be completed with less fuel. In real life, the crew of a manned rocket are not solely, personally responsible for arranging the installation of critical hardware, and pre-launch checks are done to ensure that all critical systems are not merely present but functional.

Note: the rocket design, though apparently at least one segment short, appears to be substantially taller than the launch tower of the pad, which is a strangely incongruous detail. Unless the real rocket support is an angled back "hard spine" structure that has been rotated out of the way and down into the exhaust-flume/flame-trench quenching system. Since the voices are coming from what appears to be a separate module at the top of the rocket, it may be that the shell of the second stage is present, but not the hardware or fuel.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[A multi-stage rocket, with a capsule on top, is lifting-off the ground from a launchpad, at least two rocket nozzles are visibly producing a flame, and the pad is surrounded with smoke and/or steam from the blast suppression system. A voice comes from the capsule at the top.]

We have liftoff.

[The first stage separates from the rest of the rocket, part way through the roll-program. There are no obvious engines standing out from the 'second stage' (or extended payload trunk) lower shroud.]

Main engine cutoff.

Stage separation confirmed.

We are go for second stage burn.

Second stage?

Yes.

...What?

[The first stage and the rest of the rocket are drifting apart in apparent freefall. No rocket is firing and the background does not seem to indicate that this view is beyond the atmosphere.]

We were supposed to have a second stage?

...Yes!

Did you set up a second stage?

I thought you were handling staging!

Oh no.

[They continue to drift apart slowly.]

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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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)

yes Caliban (talk) 14:44, 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)