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)
He did manage to get the important point right, which is that if a civilization that can cross interstellar space wants to conquer us we probably couldn't stop them anyway.
Is the Military a problem?
Yes.
Does it need to be fixed.
Also yes.
Is Dan on the money here about the Military doing this because they were evil?
Noooooooooooooooooo...
That "while you're being eaten" line does not stop being funny. It's my favorite quote in the comic thus far.
While we're coming up with reasons why rescuing him might be a mistake, let's not forget physical hazards. Not only are otherworldly diseases a possibility, but a space alien could be straight-up toxic for all we know. These guys would be in a right pickle if Raharrs, say, emitted phosgene as a pheromone.
Had the same thought as they're rooting around through the medical cabinets. The info page tells us the reader that they probably share similar base biology, but in world these morons don't know that.
Further, the conspiracy nut is wild enough that I would bet he thinks the marines actually eat crayons.
Reentering objects though that NASA or similar adjency hasn't fessed up or tipped off to owning or having a reentry event, means it's fair game. Could also light up an international incident, but those are survivable, preemptive strikes are not.
Dan does have something adjacent to a point here. If space aliens do come to Earth right now and decide to invade, they pretty much are guaranteed to win if they're willing to accept enough damage to the prize. Just getting here would put them in control of "high ground" that we have no real ability to strike at. The starfaring equivalent of even a rusty old unarmed tramp freighter could bombard the planet with space debris for as long as their fuel holds out with no fear of retaliation, let alone what actual warships could do. Heck, we currently wouldn't be able to stop an incoming asteroid even if it wasn't weaponized.
With our current technology, it's not a guaranteed win, but likely for the aliens. With our current deployed military infrastructure, almost certainly. We don't have anti-orbital weapons technology that's worth a damn. Not without associated high costs that make it infeasible, or the lovely problem of starting an apocalypse.
But, I did encounter an idea last year that challenges the notion a space age navy in geostationary orbit wins any future engagements. Anti-Orbit Laser Submarines. That'll force star faring vessels to move away at least. May not stop asteroid or similar meteor bombardment tactics, but forcing away starships from hanging around in geostationary gives breathing room for launch facilities to prepare missiles to alter the course of the dangerous projectiles enough.
Not that any one nation actually has any of this, infrastructure-wise or other. It'd be cool if we did build this stuff.
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It's over, Anakin.