Comic #3973: the-space-fountain
Description
Here's a detailed, disability-friendly description of the comic:
Panel 1: A woman with medium-length brown hair and large round glasses speaks excitedly. The background is purple, and she's discussing a concept called the "space fountain."
Text: "Perhaps the most elegant proposal for non-rocket space launch is the so-called 'space fountain.'"
Panel 2: The woman gestures towards an illustration. The drawing shows a large space station with arrows indicating movement, and it describes a process related to kinetic energy.
Text: "The idea is to use a system of accelerated pellets moving past a large space station, in order to create an enormous two-dimensional sky-boner."
Panel 3: She continues to explain the process. The illustration shows a circular area with dots representing pellets and arrows indicating harvesting energy.
Text: "The station magnetically harvests kinetic energy from the pellets, so as to keep itself aloft in the manner you would expect from the tip of a gigantic space-dong."
Panel 4: This panel contains a more complicated illustration with lines and shapes, likening the pellets to various objects humorously.
Text: "The remaining harvested energy will be used to move the pellets around the station, then rapidly fire them down, where they hurtle into a lower chamber that serves to re-accelerate the pellets and to look like the balls of a titanic cosmo-schlong."
Panel 5: The woman describes the potential performance of the system, with an image that implies high speed.
Text: "Once the pellets are cycling, payloads can be borne up by their kinetic energy, reaching such high speeds that they may be spewed onto the man in the moon or the mons of Venus, as one would expect from a gargantuan astro-dick."
Panel 6: She talks about costing and expects a humorous response from the audience.
Text: "Incidental to the process, we expect this system to cut launch costs by 99%, allowing mankind to fulfill our destiny of blah blah blah et cetera."
Panel 7: A person in the audience raises a question, looking inquisitive.
Text: "Question: How in the world do you expect to receive funding?"
Panel 8: The woman confidently replies to the question, while others in the audience react.
Text: "We believe that Elon Musk will telepathically detect a proposal for a colossal galacto-cannon."
Panel 9: She continues with a confident expression, while someone else in the audience appears relaxed.
Text: "One billion is fine, sir. Yes, we can strap one to Mars."
The comic features a mix of humor and technical ideas, with playful language used to describe the concepts.