"Plan Kappa" - A KSP graphic novel (Jeb is back in Chapter 53! Well, kinda.)

[Dman979]

Just now, Kuzzter said:

An Intrepid class carrier can support twelve Kerbals indefinitely. Take out some of the landers and fuel, and it could support many more. And @Dman979, I think you're only canonically Kerbal in Kerbfleet, if you were going to show up here there'd have to be another crossover which the last time did not improve matters.  

But like I said, I'm artillery in here.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

And also, if by running the Dibs! legal system, I still have Dibs! on Gene's stock. That make me have 4% total stock. 

 

 

Totally gotta patent the Dibs! thing.

[Vanamonde]

A fair number of posts have been removed from this thread. Please have something to say (in words) rather than just cluttering the forum with reaction image jokes, okay, guys? (2.3.c) 

[Parkaboy]

9 hours ago, SinBad said:

I just spent 4 hours reading this entire thread.

Wow Parkaboy, this is EPIC!

I'm really looking forward to seeing where you take the story next.

 

as a side note: in the mars trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson had his characters on phobos (or diemos?) suffering in microgravity. their solution was to build a train track around the moon (tiny little potato moon) and they spent their non-working hours living in a train zooming around the moon in what was effectivly a very large diameter centrefuge. not sure if its possibe to actualy build as functional in ksp, but a bit of cubic octagonal monorail just long enough for a screen shot with a stationary rover hab on it shouldn't be too much hassle.

Hey, thanks a lot! It's always good to addict earn new readers! As for the centrifuge train, I was going to address it eventually - even if I can't think of a way to do it on KSP, the concept would at least get a mention whenever the kerbs on Gilly get around to work on the issue, which will probably only happen on vol. 3. Robinson's Mars trilogy is one of the main inspirations for this comic, along with the 2001: a Space Odissey series and a few other books.

[SinBad]

38 minutes ago, Parkaboy said:

Hey, thanks a lot! It's always good to addict earn new readers!...

no, i think you had it right the first time

 

slight tangent to the topic...

Spoiler

40 minutes ago, Parkaboy said:

Robinson's Mars trilogy is one of the main inspirations for this comic, along with the 2001: a Space Odissey series and a few other books.

 

still one of the best mars colonization stories Ive read. not just the science and the people, but the politics and economics and *spoilers redacted*.

i cant get enough of Clarke (sads, only a very few left to read.) Have you read "A Time Odyssey" as well? co-written with Stephen Baxter, who has the most brilliantly convoluted brain of any writer ive ever read (i highly recommend starting with his Manifold trilogy or the NASA trilogy if you like this kind of story) . he is kind of the co-writer of ill omen though. first clarke, then pratchett. As far as i know he never wrote with Azimov or McCaffrey, but i bet he met them at conventions or something...

 

ill go back to my nerd cage now. it has a comforting tin-foil lining...

 

 

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

On 2/28/2016 at 11:31 AM, Alchemist said:

Experiment successful - perfectly reproduced the planet-destroying spacetime anomaly.

Danny would be proud.

 

 

[Parkaboy]

@SinBad on the tangent:

Spoiler

Clarke was my favourite writer when I was a teenager, but one of the main reasons for that was that he was one of the very few sci-fi writers translated to portuguese and published here in Brazil. The last few years we're having a boom on the sci-fi publishing business, but Stephen Baxter is still unpublished here, even the stuff he wrote with Clarke and Pratchett. Of course by now I'm very well used to reading in english, and we can import books without paying taxes, so it's often cheaper to buy an american book than a brazilian one (not with the current exchange rate, though). I haven't read the Time Odyssey, but I read a few of Baxter's books: three from the Xeelee sequence and one from the Nasa Trilogy. Now that you mentioned, I may get to the other books if I can find some cheap Kindle versions on Amazon...

And back on topic, yeah, I think there's a small Baxter influence on Plan Kappa, which is probably one of the reasons why the story's doomsday scenario is so darn complicated.

[Nahim]

Uh. I just got the impression that Mortimer Kerman dies and nobody cares.

 

Morty is one of my favorite characters.

Maybe because of the greedy gag humor. Maybe because he was an accountant just like my dad used to be.

 

Rest in Speace Morty.

[The Error]

10 hours ago, Nahim said:

Uh. I just got the impression that Mortimer Kerman dies and nobody cares.

 

Morty is one of my favorite characters.

Maybe because of the greedy gag humor. Maybe because he was an accountant just like my dad used to be.

 

Rest in Speace Morty.

Being fair, he might have just been fired into a random alternate universe or somesuch.

[Parkaboy]

Bad news, everybody! This weekend's chapter has been postponed for reasons of: labirynthitis. Playing KSP right now makes me feel sicker than an epileptic child watching Pokemon. I'll be back to our normal programming when my internal SAS starts working again. Thanks for the patience!

[Chemp]

Had to look it up. That's definitely not something I'd like to have, especially as treatment is limited.

I wish you a speedy recovery and don't worry, we won't run away just because you're on a forced break.

[Geschosskopf]

19 hours ago, Nahim said:

Uh. I just got the impression that Mortimer Kerman dies and nobody cares

When the whole planet and its billions of Kerbals is about to cease to exist, what does 1 life more or less matter?

46 minutes ago, Parkaboy said:

Bad news, everybody! This weekend's chapter has been postponed for reasons of: labirynthitis. 

Damn, that sucks.  Good luck and get well soon.

Edited March 5, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[Musil]

Great chapter,  Parka! That last panel certanly is terrifying...  And great efects!  Did you use plain ol' paint or something moar fancy? 

Mort's death also seems like quite a tragedy to me.  The post apocaliptic world is going to need acountants. 

Hope you recover well!  

Edited March 5, 2016 by Musil

[Alchemist]

Ouch. Did you get the prescription to avoid weightlessness? Get well, we will be waiting.

I don't feel good enough for KSP either - my head just stops working properly when I have increased temperature. Damn flu!

[Parkaboy]

1 hour ago, Alchemist said:

Ouch. Did you get the prescription to avoid weightlessness? Get well, we will be waiting.

Well, fortunately weight isn't something I'm lacking right now.

[SinBad]

Hope you are well again soon, Parkaboy.

Edited March 6, 2016 by SinBad
spelling

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

On 3/5/2016 at 3:06 PM, Geschosskopf said:

When the whole planet and its billions of Kerbals is about to cease to exist, what does 1 life more or less matter?

It's like you haven't seen the movies!

"The good of the one outweighs the good of the many"

[mole55]

Just a quick question; how many kerbals are off-planet right now? As I'm pretty sure that at this point, that's how many kerbals are going to survive the apocalypse. (Maybe plus Jeb too)

[Parkaboy]

3 hours ago, mole55 said:

Just a quick question; how many kerbals are off-planet right now? As I'm pretty sure that at this point, that's how many kerbals are going to survive the apocalypse. (Maybe plus Jeb too)

Let me see if I can recall without having to turn my desktop on:

- 7 on the Hardihood on Moho

- 6 on Feather Base on Gilly

- 1 on Eve

- 7 on the Yonder-8

- 5 on the Stiffy-1

- 5 on the Zonkers (going to Jool)

- 17 on the Longburn (going to Laythe)

So... 46 kerbals? That's enough characters to keep everyone entertained,  hopefully!

[Musil]

9 hours ago, Parkaboy said:

So... 46 kerbals? That's enough characters to keep everyone entertained,  hopefully!

But not enough,  I am afraid to say,  genetic diversity to keep kerbals going on.  Still... Good for them. 

[FyunchClick]

6 hours ago, Musil said:

But not enough,  I am afraid to say,  genetic diversity to keep kerbals going on.  Still... Good for them. 

Assuming Kerbals share the way our genetics work. Since we (mercifully) haven't observed them reproduce in the wild in spite of rule 34 - and even if we had it's meaningless as it's been strongly suggested that Kerbal reproduction varies from one universe to the next - we can't know how Kerbals reproduce in the Kappa-verse. Granted, Kappa Kerbals seem to be more like us than Kerbfleet Kerbals from what we can glean from "the talk", but that's still not saying much. Who knows, parthenogenesis may be a viable colonization strategy for Kappa Kerbals even if it's not for humans, and maybe all they need is for one to survive to keep going.

Thinking on it, all the time/unverse traversing additions to the Plan Kappa roster may mean that there's now a whole bunch of different reproduction methods available in this universe, and even if native Kappa Kerbals wouldn't be able to survive as a species due to a shallow gene pool, maybe one of the rescues is able to start a viable new population by herself, or maybe they're able to cobble something together in a lab from sufficiently compatible cross-universe genotypes. Best not to worry about it too much I guess.

[Mister Dilsby]

1 hour ago, FyunchClick said:

Granted, Kappa Kerbals seem to be more like us than Kerbfleet Kerbals from what we can glean from "the talk",

Poor Kenlie.  

[Musil]

4 hours ago, FyunchClick said:

Assuming Kerbals share the way our genetics work. Since we (mercifully) haven't observed them reproduce in the wild in spite of rule 34 - and even if we had it's meaningless as it's been strongly suggested that Kerbal reproduction varies from one universe to the next - we can't know how Kerbals reproduce in the Kappa-verse. Granted, Kappa Kerbals seem to be more like us than Kerbfleet Kerbals from what we can glean from "the talk", but that's still not saying much. Who knows, parthenogenesis may be a viable colonization strategy for Kappa Kerbals even if it's not for humans, and maybe all they need is for one to survive to keep going.

Thinking on it, all the time/unverse traversing additions to the Plan Kappa roster may mean that there's now a whole bunch of different reproduction methods available in this universe, and even if native Kappa Kerbals wouldn't be able to survive as a species due to a shallow gene pool, maybe one of the rescues is able to start a viable new population by herself, or maybe they're able to cobble something together in a lab from sufficiently compatible cross-universe genotypes. Best not to worry about it too much I guess.

 

Good points, but I would argue that mode of birth is quite inconsequential. Of course, it is my learned opinion that kerbals lay eggs, so it would not be entirely unlikely for them to be able to reproduce asexualy, or even to change sex according to ambiental factors. However, we can be absolutely sure that their main mode of reproduction is bi-sexual in nature, as indeed that would be the preferred way of any (if-any) intelligent species (cf. Stanislaw Lem's wonderful novel Fiasco for details on this reasoning), nihil obstat to however frequent cases of parthenogenesis. In fact, it has been observed in populations of fish which can choose to either reproduce asexualy or bisexualy, that those populations where asexual reproduction prevails are more susceptible to parasites and desease. In other words, if kerbals are doomed to reproduce asexualy from now on, you can bet they wont last more than two or three generations due to lack of gene re-combining. 

Now, the addition of inter-dimentional kerbals does ad something new to the equation. Time-traveling kerbals, not so much, I think, but from the moment we can introduce an entirely unconected gene pool to the kappa-verse, the chances are much better for our 46 kerbals to reproduce sexualy without the complications of a small genetic diversity. It is, after all, a well known fact than the entire population of our world, outside of Africa, in fact descends from a rather small group of individuals who left the continent (making any non-african individuals more related to each other than two african neighbors), so it is possible to re-grow a population from a small group if the gene pool is varied enough within that group. 

[Mister Dilsby]

This reminds me, I need to make a General Order 34 for Kerbfleet...will have to be very careful on the wording, so as to violate neither Forum guidelines nor my own established canon  

[Parkaboy]

1 hour ago, Kuzzter said:

This reminds me, I need to make a General Order 34 for Kerbfleet...will have to be very careful on the wording, so as to violate neither Forum guidelines nor my own established canon  

Yeah, I'm still wondering about the best way to adress issues of reproduction (which are central in a story about a species that's struggling to survive) while remaining inside the guidelines. Most sf stories are pretty open on the subject.