P.S. I’m gonna be drawing the new comic live on twitch in about 10 hours from this post (gotta sleep first) if you’re interested!
I know it’s just a webcomic but the KSP player in me hates how the engine bell sticks down past the landing legs
Hey, landing on the bell is better than those flimsy landing legs. Especially if you are tight on science and not unlocked the moving ones!
To be fair it’s also blowing a sandcastle over on the moon. Where there’s no atmosphere…
I think expanding exhaust gasses from the engine plume dissipating against the surface could do that if the castle was close enough. But then again, I’m not a physicist, just a KSP player
Buzz Aldrin saw the flag from Apollo 11 get knocked over by expanding exhaust gasses https://www.nasa.gov/history/alsj/ApolloFlags-Condition.html
The first time somebody builds a sandcastle on the moon out of regolith just for fun will be a historic moment for all of humanity.
drawing live on twitch
As an artist, do you foresee people doing this just to prove they didn’t use an AI?
I can see that happening. It’ll be like watching a blacksmith bang on some hot metal at a renaissance fair.
I’m just wondering who has the time to watch somebody draw a comic online. It must be like watching paint dry
Not true! Paint dries very efficiently and consistently gets the job done, an expert in its field. Meanwhile I get easily distracted and make the process take a whole lot longer than it needs to.
No that’s just something some artists do, it’s not about proving anything.
Not about proving anything yet. Not hard to foresee it’ll have a larger effect as time goes on.
I dunno about that. The only realistic future imo is that people will stop caring and AI will be treated as an artist’s tool.
Not trying to make a moral judgement about it, thats just the only way I can really see it shaking out.
You already know it’s only gonna get more impressive and ubiquitous.
That’s what happened to the first flag up there.
Well if we’re going to nitpick: It probably isn’t possible to build a sand castle on the moon without some special tools. Everyone who’s ever made a sand castle on the beach knows you need some water in the sand to make anything. Otherwise it’s just a pile of sand and won’t hold any shape at all. Now the dust on the moon is a combination of bigger and very small particles, so it kinda acts like flower on a small scale, thus footprints are visible. But I don’t think you could form any large structure, anything above a centimeter or so would collapse into a pile.
With some special tools you could put the moondust in a mold and apply pressure, that way it would maybe hold it’s shape. But it would be a big challenge.
On the other hand, the combination of microgravity, no wind, and more jagged sand particles might lead to better cohesion
It’s hard to say, but I wouldn’t call the moon microgravity, it’s at 1/6th of Earth gravity. The moon particles are more jagged and also often statically charged, which may help or be a hindrance. Plus there’s the whole spacesuit thing, those gloves make it hard to do anything, let alone build a small structure with fine details like a sand castle.