These trivia bits are generated randomly.
Raharrs are warm-blooded creatures and are accustomed to temperature range a bit warmer than Earth's.
"Dawn" class mothership and "Lake" class tankers are the only spacecraft in the Exploration fleet that can create artificial gravity while not under acceleration.
If a space ship accelerates at the same rate as it would in a free-fall under Earth's gravity (Otherwise known as "1G acceleration"), it can reach Jupiter from Earth in just under 6 days. It would need to flip in the middle of the travel, to start decelerating and enter the planet's orbit.
Insectoids in a lot of ways are the weird ones among the Alliance members. Besides having a completely unpronounceable name of the species, they have dextero amino acid biochemistry, which makes their food and biosphere to be inedible by the rest of the Alliance, and vice versa.
The names of every species of the Alliance (besides Insectoids) are words taken directly from their respective native languages that they use to refer to themselves. They all have same translation:
"a human".
Azinarsi relationship to death is different from the rest of the civilizations of the Alliance: they do not care about it. Death would mean loss of information and experience gathered by that instance of a person's mind, though, and these two things are about the only valuables for an Uploaded mind, so Azinarsi try to avoid it when possible.
A lot of backgrounds and other elements in the comic are actually 3d models. It helps reduce the time each page takes to make.
Raharrs descended from the evolutionary branch that can be described as "apelike cats" by their evolutionary niche. Although initially carnivorous and solitary, they were forced to become omnivorous and form persistent packs during the latest of the rare ice ages of their homeworld, approximately 30 million years ago.
It takes more than a year to cross the Alliance space even with the fastest FTL drive.
Prior to becoming a webcomic, Leaving The Cradle was initially developed as a modification for Source engine, back in 2007. It was vastly different back then, much closer to the usual space opera look and feel, and the plot had nothing in common with the webcomic version, sharing only exactly two characters and nothing else.
Many homeworlds of the respective species are still divided into countries, but freshly established colonies on other planets are almost always monolithic and basically independent, since they sprawled from a single initial outpost, and time lag involved due to interstellar distances making remote management of the colony from a homeworld to be ineffective and frustrating at best.
There's no way to communicate faster than light. If you want to send your message to another solar system, your best bet is to use a courier spaceship. It can take even a month for it to finally reach the destination, but it still beats sending it as a transmission and expecting it to arrive decades or thousands of years later.
So far there hasn't been a single instance of a massive interstellar war. Due to the vastness of space, there's no territorial or economic gain from it. The presence of armed spaceships is still warranted for keeping space travel safe and for peacekeeping or policing missions since unexpected events or rogue states can still happen and might require force as a solution.
The Alliance space stretches for an impressive 16 thousand light years along the longest axis, and contains approximately twelve billion star systems. Despite that, 99.99% of those star systems weren't explored even by an automatic mapping drone yet, and the borders of the Alliance space are defined mostly by the reach of spaceships from the nearest colony or space station.
Comments (19)
On one hand, even purely hypothetical preparation can be a lot better than nothing. On the other hand, never trust the competence of anyone who claims that their approach to a problem nobody has ever solved before is guaranteed to work.
"So clearly I've just been doing everything wrong and we're not actually communicating at all."
To be fair, sending the major a linguist to help would probably be useful to him. Help, not take over.
Yeah. like in "The Arrival" when the Military Mind can't understand why that's important until it's explained how communication happens.
"Initating" extraterrestrial contact... Dude... Its been initiated.
The Major's opinion is starting to show through there. He's had enough "experts" coming through and telling him how to properly do things while his simple and logical approaches have been getting things far further.
I really love Darth's take on the military response and decisions here.
God remember that biologist who wanted to fucking vivisect her, and the Major's response was "That's immoral".
Let's see how (im)moral that failsafe "procedure" turns out to be ...
just food for thought on experts. The first airplane was built by two bicycle mechanics, The first electrical system was built by a man with a 6th grade education , and the theory of relativity was written by a patent clerk. But the Titanic , the Hindenburg and the space shuttle Challenger were built by the top engineers of the day.
Well, that's simple to explain: The Titanic, Hindenburg, and Challenger were not the first of their kind and those "top engineers" were what the amateurs originally inventing the concepts had turned into in the meantime.
BTW, Einstein was actually searching for a math and physics teaching post (after obtaining a suitable degree in 1900) when he was offered the job at the patent office, and the Challenger wasn't doomed by its designers but by the decision to proceed with its launch in spite of record-low temperatures.
"the Challenger wasn't doomed by its designers"
Yeah, it pretty much was. It was a crash design, done as quickly as possible for several reasons - it had several known and significant weaknesses, including the issue that destroyed Challenger.
But the larger point is that "experts" are far too often well-credentialled... and nothing more. We have had soo many painful examples of that to bother listing in the last few years.
Yanno, eventually Gharr will end up in this facility one way or another. He'll probably figure out that they're working from a script, and ask to see it. Inb4 it makes him laugh out loud and/or facepalm.
Meanwhile, have fun trying out this procedure on Nea, who doesn't have much patience for eggheads even when they're her own comrades.
"And who is underwriting this guarantee of yours? What do I get if your procedure isn't successful?"
"The blame, obviously"
Ah yes, the theory guarantees success, in theory. After all, according to the theory, the theory is correct.
But even if these guys were more correct than Lysenko in their theory-making, their whole deal is about "initiating contact" and contact has already been initiated before they came here, so... go back to the drawing board and start theorizing about how to handle negotiations with an alien prisoner after you've shot down her ship. See if it deviates from the parameters you had set at first in your thought experiments.
But it's just to get the alien's attention, so they can get to the important part of the interrogation: Where is your home planet? Where is the rest of your force? What are your intentions here? They're working for the Government from a much higher level. Responsible for the safety of innocent people. They have their orders, and MUST find the answers.
Geesh-- watch some movies, already!
This babylon 5 quote applies, yes?
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Londo had so many good quotes.
Honestly, as good as the rest of the show was, the relationship between Londo and G'Kar was probably my favorite part.
-Setting themselves up for this comedy; when they discover how much they don't know.