Sorry, no bribery boobs today, because Captain Savage already put on a show.
That third panel was supposed to have a stop motion effect of Captain Savage cartwheeling over Ula to get behind her and apply the garrotte, but I messed it up and then just decided to leave it how it is. It's not the best action panel ever, but you can still tell what's going on.
For those of you who are sick and tired of my incessant vote-mongering, you can now rejoice. Voting for the 2018 Drunk Duck Awards will end Saturday, July 28, so if you haven't voted for your favorite comics to be nominated, you're running out of time. Click on the banner below to vote!
And of course, I have to take this opportunity to shill for this comic. Don't feel pressured to vote for this comic at all; vote for your favorites. But just so you know, I'm pushing to get Transneptunian nominated in these five categories especially:
Radiation is bad stuff. Duh. And if you're going to travel in space – or live there – then managing your radiation exposure is a very big deal.
Over the course of a 500 day mission from Earth to Mars and back, NASA estimates that an astronaut would be exposed to a little over 1 Sievert of radiation. By comparison, your typical earthbound human is only exposed to 2.4 millisieverts of background radiation over the course of a year. A full body CT scan is 12 millisieverts. So an astronaut on a round trip to Mars gets the equivalent of 83 CT scans' worth of radiation, and 500 times the average annual dose on Earth. That sounds bad, but it's not nearly enough to cause any acute effects, and only slightly raises their cancer risk. But if we want to go somewhere interesting, like Jupiter's radiation-bathed neighborhood, or live in space for a very long time, then we need to find a better way of dealing with this problem. Just for reference, here's a fun reference chart for all the exciting things radiation exposure can do for you!
*Author's Note: I suspect the units for this chart should be “grays” rather than “sieverts.” Sieverts are typically used to measure accumulated (chronic) radiation exposure over time, whereas grays are used to measure acute exposure from an energetic event, like being in close proximity to an atomic bomb detonation. Also, some of the values here are different from the ones I used. For instance, they're using the United States average radiation exposure amount, which is higher than the global average I'm using.
Even for sci-fi characters and cyborgs, radiation exposure is nothing to fool around with. Radiation will eat away at you at the cellular level, and at high enough levels will even destroy electronics. The more intricate and sophisticated the electronics, the more susceptible they tend to be to ionizing radiation.
So, how do the characters in 'Transneptunian' deal with radiation? Well, they're pretty well shielded inside their colonies by the thick outer shells of rock and water, and they also generate artificial magnetic fields to further deflect harmful rays. So your typical colonist on Neptune or Triton probably encounters less radiation per day than you do. But for space travelers, it's a different story. Cosmic ray shielding adds a lot of extra mass to a ship, as do field generators. Also, the ship's propulsion system and power plant may put out additional radiation. So spacers get a lot more exposure than your average person, and so they tend to rely on genetic engineering to keep them healthy.
And of course, radiation is also used for nefarious purposes. Many of the weapons used in space warfare (particle beams, nukes) produce large amounts of x-rays and gamma radiation as a natural byproduct. Pirates have been known to extort freight vessels by threatening to irradiate their sensitive cargo (usually stored in a less shielded portion of the ship) with an emitter drone unless the freight company wires them an agreed upon ransom fee.
That's all for today! See you around, and don't forget to VOTE!!!
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