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 (15)
What was in that briefing? I know there were some creative liberties, but it's hard to imagine a civilization that produces the level of radio emissions that first drew your attention but hasn't advanced beyond stored muscle power for weapons.
Grammar suggestion:
if they wanted [us dead] they'd have killed us already
or
if they wanted [to] they'd have killed us already
Have to wonder what was going through the pilot's head. Primitives with bows and arrows shouldn't be lighting up their planet the way we do either.
I kind of interpret her thoughts here as realizing that she has to make her own judgements now rather than just going along with the brass.
"But primitives should be shooting bows sand arrows, not interceptor missiles."
They definitely had a far more peaceful ascent to the stars than humanity. Bows and arrows in an age of mass radio traffic? Seems illogical, unless for some reason they completely skipped over the era, or it was so far in the past that they have simply forgotten, lost in the cracks of the taught history.
But having caught up, I'm real impressed by what I've seen, and will be sticking with this. I look forward to more.
Or maybe for Nea the bar that separates primitives from non-primitives is lower than the usual. I'd agree that somebody who can shoot rockets at you cannot be called primitive.
What actually is the Alliance's bright line for primitive vs non-primitive? I mean, we're in the space age. I think the original Prime Directive in Star Trek specified FTL capability, but honestly that always seemed pretty stupid to me. Or maybe not so much stupid as cynical, like they only call you civilized if you can come and threaten them.
Starfaring civilizations that do have such directives or standing guidelines, vary. The Deathworlders had the line at FTL, then shifted to knowledge and understanding of calculus. Others draw the line at advanced communication systems, or seemingly arbitrary points in time.
But drawing the line at vaguely "can strike at us" isn't a bad one either, if you want a measure of if they are roughly on par with your civilization. It could perhaps be argued as practical.
It's actually very blurred and case by case. Laymarans were contacted when they looked like medieval savages for example (But they actually were in indefinite post-apocalypse state, so it's complicated). The cut-off after which no questions asked is the interplanetary andor interstellar manned flight phase.
I wonder if she's actually strong enough to break down the cell door like that. It's probably built to be human-proof, but Raharr soldiers might be fitted with body augmentations to give them greater capabilities. I mean, they all show one cyborg component already.
Well, no, but in one's imagination, you can dream, right? X)
Is the world on its side in the picture? I thought it was supposed to be upside-down. Or is this a memory of hers and she saw it at this angle? I could buy that. :-)
From her perspective, it would look sideways based on our perception of “up” and “down” as the map on the bridge was entirely “upside down.” But, who’s truly right? There isn’t a true up or down in the void.
That's pretty cool actually
Probably a memory. Reentry is a bit simpler along an equatorial trajectory, since that way the planet's rotation is along the same axis as the ship's movement. Meanwhile, all else being equal, the pilot would align the ship so that the planet is below the ship's horizon, for both practical and instinctive reasons. So, someone aboard the ship would most likely remember seeing the planet with either the eastern or western limb at the top.
...Then again, page 52 shows the ship going east to west and so that line of reasoning would have the planet lying on its other side, so take what I say with a grain of salt.