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 (8)
I suspect Zane has undisclosed reasons for why he wants to be close to Earth alone with a certain AI who happens to be in on the true scope of the mission...
Hmm, I doubt Zane is too concerned about misinterpretations, if anything, this sends the very clear message that the humans should think twice before they themselves make any rash decisions.
And if they react so poorly... Well, that provides very useful information and is still unlikely to constitute a real threat.
Misinterpret it in the wrong way?! If there's something to misinterpret its the message they sent back.
Her comment here makes me think even more that there's been something lost in translation. If you're worried that arriving in a military ship could give the wrong impression then that wrong impression would generally be that you're coming with aggression in mind. His message gave a very menacing impression so if he was intending to be menacing and in command you'd think he'd mention that as the reason for the military ship.
Hopefully this truly is all misunderstanding and while they have translations, the nuances of the language and cultural norms have been missed.
I realise I'm comparing things from fiction here but in almost all cases they have worked out that a grand quality of humanity is overcoming things.
When the U.S. first went to war in Iraq they noted that Iraq had bunkers about 40' deep with hard concrete roofs and the U.S. had no weapons that could threaten them. So in record time they developed a missile, built around old artillery barrels, that could penetrate up to 100'.
Which is why these feel like famous last words for Zane, or foreshadowing because humanity has been given a week's notice that it might have a hostile alien space ship in orbit (although he didn't mention the moon) and it will be a warship. Any military force with a problem like that is going to go into immediate overdrive for any possible solution to be developed in record time. Thats not to say humanity will be immediately firing, but its good to have a just-in-case up your sleeve and nobody likes feeling helpless.
Not to mention they've been analysing the wrecked shuttle for some time now.
Would the humans even recognise the small cruiser as a military ship?
Even if humanity had surface-to-moon missiles--and since they've done proper research this time, they know we don't--it would take a very special sort of idiot to commit an obviously deliberate act of war against a vastly more advanced force that you aren't even capable of attacking under most circumstances.
What's the *right* way to misinterpret something?
Sometimes you may want sombody to misinterpret you in a specifik way, that would be the "right way"
If they misinterpret in another way, that would be the "wrong way"