Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts

[sihnfahl]

Which might be a piece of a solution. Currently there are not that many settlers as deep space or even an asteroid field are not exactly human-friendly environments. Robots on the other hand might be fine out there and with them becoming citizens, some might want to go out to explore the local star system and start building infrastructure around it.

Well, they could work on infrastructure for gathering asteroids for mining, much like the comets that have been collected for water.

Also, this page.

[Gez]

No myopathy necessary

Do not confuse myopia with myopathy!

[Willie the Duck]

Do not confuse myopia with myopathy!

What's amazing is that that was an autocorrupt, and I can't believe that my browser considered myopathy a more prevalent word so as to suggest it.
Will change.

[Kornaki]

It seems pretty short sighted to not think when the inspectors show up they might tell the station to use robots to fix everything faster.

Alternatively, his whole plan is just to force the workers to fix his toilet.

[Fyraltari]

No hot water doesn't seem so bad when the living quarters are stuck at 30°C.

[halfeye]

No hot water doesn't seem so bad when the living quarters are stuck at 30°C.

It doesn't work out, the water from the mains gets there quite quickly and is at mains temperature, if the rest of the station is at 20 degrees it'll be that, it can't be below freezing or the pipes would burst, but it could be anything above zero C.

[Willie the Duck]

It doesn't work out, the water from the mains gets there quite quickly and is at mains temperature, if the rest of the station is at 20 degrees it'll be that, it can't be below freezing or the pipes would burst, but it could be anything above zero C.

I think their point was that cold showers wouldn't be awful if you've been sweating since you got home from work.

[Kantaki]

Coming from Sam that payment plan sounds kinda like some kinda con.

Oh well, biggest downside I see is that it'd force that manager guy to pay any robot workers.
So, not a downside at all.

[Fyraltari]

NFTs are still around in the future? Goddammit!

[Rockphed]

Coming from Sam that payment plan sounds kinda like some kinda con.

Oh well, biggest downside I see is that it'd force that manager guy to pay any robot workers.
So, not a downside at all.

It is my belief that anything involving NFTs is a con.

[Radar]

It is my belief that anything involving NFTs is a con.

The way I see it, it seems to be a system playing at human's desire to own something exclusive. Even before the internet there were collectors, who bought for example art only to simply be the ones that have it. Collecting stamps, action figures or rare comic books is the same thing. NFT is this kind of desire distilled to the purest form - you can claim ownership of something without being able to do anything with that something. Most people will not care about it, but there are individuals for whom this is precisely what they want.

[Willie the Duck]

Pull out the current era of overinflated expectations, scams on people who don't understand the things but think they are the next big thing you have to get on board with, and just in general the people that have made crypto a lifestyle, NFTs are just another collectable. Long before either, there are more people who lost money collecting Beanie Babies or variant comic book covers in the 90s (or speculated in gold futures) than those who kept the alpha black lotuses until they cost a new car's worth or bought Apple stock right before the iPod brought the company back up, etc.. I imagine that in a future with multiple star systems but little interplanetary travel, a lot of collectables would be in NFT form. One thing that is for sure is that the fad would have had to have ended by then, so Florence's card would have to stand on its own merits as collector-desirable, and we haven't seen reason to think so (excepting if the robots do it out of adoration).

One thing I'm hoping this isn't going to turn into is a webcomic author-tract on NFTs.

[GeoffWatson]

The way I see it, it seems to be a system playing at human's desire to own something exclusive. Even before the internet there were collectors, who bought for example art only to simply be the ones that have it. Collecting stamps, action figures or rare comic books is the same thing. NFT is this kind of desire distilled to the purest form - you can claim ownership of something without being able to do anything with that something. Most people will not care about it, but there are individuals for whom this is precisely what they want.

But NFTs are not exclusive.
There's nothing stopping a NFT seller from selling another NFT for the same link.

99% of NFTs are scams.

[Kantaki]

One thing that is for sure is that the fad would have had to have ended by then, so Florence's card would have to stand on its own merits as collector-desirable, and we haven't seen reason to think so (excepting if the robots do it out of adoration)

I dunno, first union membership of an AI?
Sounds unique enough to be worth quite a bit to someone.
Certainly not the silliest thing people spent money on.

[Willie the Duck]

I dunno, first union membership of an AI?
Sounds unique enough to be worth quite a bit to someone.
Certainly not the silliest thing people spent money on.

It is within the boundaries of non-silly conceivable, but I still would want more in-comic-universe worldbuilding establishing that everyone is watching this development with AIs as a moment in history. Also, if so, that other people on Jean aren't also going around being the first to give an AI a non-union paycheck, a receipt for purchasing their own body, a birth certificate, their own monogrammed sweater, and a bunch of other firsts surrounding this moment in time.

I guess this also hinges on how much salary we are talking about.

[TaRix]

I fear for Sam's safety with this idea, yet I cannot turn away.

[Rockphed]

I fear for Sam's safety with this idea, yet I cannot turn away.

Looking away is how he gets close enough for the san damage to be permanent.

[Radar]

I fear for Sam's safety with this idea, yet I cannot turn away.

Sam's safety? I'd rather think of all the other people on the station. In a different setting such sanity destroying incident would induce a temper tantrum spiral over the whole station.

[Kantaki]

New comic

I don't think I like Tess' idea of "fixing" things.
On the plus side it can only get worse.

[Manga Shoggoth]

So we do have literal steam cens(o/e)rs. Nicely played.

[Willie the Duck]

So we do have literal steam cens(o/e)rs. Nicely played.

Also, checking out the background shot, picnic/conference tables, beach chairs, an elevated (I assume) hot tub (looks to be a full flight of stairs up), and blimps (what kind of ceiling height are we talking about?). This is some swanky digs for a space station where (I assume) space is at a premium and everything has to be shipped in from somewhere else.

[Fyraltari]

Also, checking out the background shot, picnic/conference tables, beach chairs, an elevated (I assume) hot tub (looks to be a full flight of stairs up), and blimps (what kind of ceiling height are we talking about?). This is some swanky digs for a space station where (I assume) space is at a premium and everything has to be shipped in from somewhere else.

I think the blimps aren't vehicles, probably some sort of drones (toys maybe?) But yeah, this looks like a ten-twelve-meter high ceiling, which is incredibly wateful on a space station. Or maybe it's the perspective being wonky.

[Willie the Duck]

I think the blimps aren't vehicles, probably some sort of drones (toys maybe?) But yeah, this looks like a ten-twelve-meter high ceiling, which is incredibly wateful on a space station. Or maybe it's the perspective being wonky.

Oh, yes. I didn't mean vehicular blimps. I think they are beach-ball to vaguely larger sized (hard to tell, as two of them are the same size, despite one looking to be significantly farther away from the frame of reference).

Freefall, for all it's relative realism, definitely does hew towards the 'convenient to film' hallways of a Star Trek show or 'they keep talking about every cubic meter being precious and things are hard to get, but they mostly show this by a side character getting booted to a smaller (single person) apartment or it being tough to get fresh eggs' setup that Babylon 5 had. Realistic space adventures would be cramped and boring. I understand why the realism line was cut where it was.

Even then, this kind telegraphs that this place is a decided luxury. Perhaps part of the initial station design, being deemed necessary to keep an isolated population in good spirits/morale/mental health.

[Gez]

Even then, this kind telegraphs that this place is a decided luxury. Perhaps part of the initial station design, being deemed necessary to keep an isolated population in good spirits/morale/mental health.

Alternatively, this was storage space for reaction mass or something like that, that the end of the moon transfer operation has made unnecessary, so it has been reclaimed as a spa.

[theangelJean]

Oh, yes. I didn't mean vehicular blimps. I think they are beach-ball to vaguely larger sized (hard to tell, as two of them are the same size, despite one looking to be significantly farther away from the frame of reference).

I wonder if they're actually at the same distance from the viewer, but at different heights. You can see the shadow of one nearby, but not the other.

[Kantaki]

New comic

And it got worse...

Eh, "normal" is just another word for boring anyway.

[Willie the Duck]

Alternatively, this was storage space for reaction mass or something like that, that the end of the moon transfer operation has made unnecessary, so it has been reclaimed as a spa.

A reasonable guess. My only issues with that are that 1) they bothered to put it into the rotating habitation section, and 2) I would expect them to put support pillars and the like in the middle of such a room (aside from just a lot of space, this spot takes a lot of structural enhancement around it to let it be this big and open).

New comic
And it got worse...

That's a strange way to spell 'better.'

[Radar]

A reasonable guess. My only issues with that are that 1) they bothered to put it into the rotating habitation section, and 2) I would expect them to put support pillars and the like in the middle of such a room (aside from just a lot of space, this spot takes a lot of structural enhancement around it to let it be this big and open).

It did not have to be for reaction mass - it could have been any other storage. There is also a possibility that this was meant to be recreation area from the very beginning. We are talking about a really big space station designed for semi-permanent stay of the crew. If you consider that humanity is at a point, where they can easily extract resources from asteroids and such, so making the station big enough to have room for non-essentials is not as big of a cost as it would be for us right now.

[Willie the Duck]

It did not have to be for reaction mass - it could have been any other storage. There is also a possibility that this was meant to be recreation area from the very beginning. We are talking about a really big space station designed for semi-permanent stay of the crew. If you consider that humanity is at a point, where they can easily extract resources from asteroids and such, so making the station big enough to have room for non-essentials is not as big of a cost as it would be for us right now.

Well, yes, that was sort of my point above. I guess I framed it as realism, and I realism kinda is an open question for societies which can move moons. My overall point is that Stanley puts effort into focusing on realism as we know if for things like radiation exposure in space, muscle degradation/bone decalcification in microgravity, etc., but then shifts to rule-of-cool OR I guess 'they are so advanced this is the new realistic.' Either way I think we're on the same basic page.

[Kantaki]

"You never want to stuff rotten apples into your brain"

Err, that's generally a good idea, yes.