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 (22)
The ship looks a lot narrower here than it was earlier.
Different angle, perhaps?
The body was always that narrow relative to it length, and if anything the wings look a bit wider to me.
So, Russians getting alien tech...
... that's going to be ugly for the planet.
You would prefer chinese or north coreans?
To be honest I'd really only trust the UK or the USA with it. Russia maybe if Putin wasn't there acting like Stalin 2.0. Certainly not the ChiComs or Germany, though.
Germany these days? You could trust them. The US and UK? Not with the current administrations.
Lets be honest, it's 50/50 with anyone on this planet.
I’ll take those odds
The author carefully avoided setting the Earth scenes in any specific country. Probably to prevent real-world politics from intruding on the comic in this very way.
He has said that the crash site is within a couple thousand kilometers of Volgograd, Russia, but that could put it anywhere from Poland to Uzbekistan, even if you limit yourself to countries that actually exist, which Darth Biomech has not.
That would be... if it wasn't for the fact that he clearly showed S-400s in the scene that kickstarted this thing.
That still doesn't necessarily mean Russia. Several different countries have bought or expressed interest in buying S-400s.
S-400s are almost Russian exclusive because of a little CIA operation back in the '90s allowing the US to grab top of the line T-80s and T-72s with all the bells and whistles.
The uniforms and missiles and whatnot are just the author's aesthetic choice. The comic portrays a deliberately nonspecific country. There's no sense in pointing a finger and saying "a-ha! this tech is from country X therefore that's where the events take place!"
I see no "russians", only humans.
Then you shouldn't have used S-400s for the ABM battery, used Russian uniforms, and Russian vehicles then.
Those trucks? I know those are Urals.
Okay, I'll be a little blunter: This is not a story about RL politics, and the author has done a fairly good job of keeping geopolitical grudges hedged out of it. Please stop smuggling them in.
Sometimes a truck model is just a truck model, that the artist knows how to draw well.
...Or a design that he particularly likes because of the futuristic look.
I use whatever refs I like or find authentic for the region the story takes place in.This is a not a story about "dem filthy commies" getting alien tech and nuking the rest of the planet. Neither the story or it's author support xenophobia or racism, so adjust your expectations accordingly, please.
The thing is, I'm not going rabid 'dem filthy commies', in this case I'm going 'oh great Putin and his associates got their hands on alien tech, given their actions as of late...'...
On the subject of vague nationality and mindless xenophobia... on page 24 Dan brought up Roswell as proof that "the government" can't be trusted. That's something a UFOlogist anywhere might believe in, but they would be blaming the American government. Might be wise to edit that reference... or just add New World Order to Dan's list of conspiracy theories. :)
Oh, it's almost definitely already there.