Strip 619 -- First Seen: 2011-01-20
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

What Comes Next

The war is over, but This Means War has a ways to go. Novo Paolo/Bubbleopolis is still in a nebula/stellar nursery, no one knows what happened to the planet Sharen (center of the Intergalactic Council), and the status of the now-surrendered Invaders is yet to be resolved. What will they do when they learn their homeworld is basically destroyed? Will Alyss and Li be re-united? How about Diana (the real one) and Otto?

These questions will be resolved in the next few weeks, before This Means War part 3 wraps in late May.

After that, I plan to go BACK in time about 400 years, to when Alyss and Li left their home in the Sol System to colonize a new world on the far side of the galaxy. As one might expect, hijinks ensue. New subtitle yet to be determined, start date sometime in around the start of July. Stay tuned!

A Little House Cleaning

I can't tell you how much I appreciate everyone who backed our Kickstarter project. One small matter remains: a couple of you have yet to provide your shipping address for your rewards. As soon as possible, please either fill out the Kickstarter survey request found on the Kickstarter site, or simply send us an email Orders address and we will ship your reward soon after. If you're wondering why you haven't received a notice about this via email, please check your spam folder.

The Transcript For This Page

Panel 1
Exterior shot of Gassend Station, in a higher, geosynchronous orbit above Mars (now imagine that basketball is twice as far away as before). We can see its elevator ribbon extending towards Mars but due to perspective it seems to disappear long before reaching the surface. On the Martian surface we can see Valles Marineris lined up with the station. The Station itself is a series of round-edged disks stacked on one other, some of them rotating. The central disk does not rotate, but has a series of docking bays arrayed around its edge. The widest disc of the station is 300 meters in diameter, and the whole structure is 100 meters thick. In the middle of the end facing away from Mars is an array of dish-shaped antennae. The end facing Mars has the port through which the space-elevator travels. In this frame we can just see an elevator a couple hundred meters below the station, a tiny blob at this distance.
Caption: The Gassend Elevator was a non-equatorial space elevator with its ground tethered approximately 9 degrees south of the equator, on the rim of Ius Chasma in Valles Marineris.
Caption: While the 9-degree offset reduces the Gassend Elevator's maximum load, it is necessary.

Panel 2
Closer shot of an Elevator traveling along the ribbon. In the background, we can see Phobos, rapidly passing by at a distance of about 150 kilometers. (Its Skyhook ribbon is too small to be seen here.) The elevator car is roughly 8 meters wide, 5 meters tall (a double-decker), and 3 meters thick. It has large windows through which we can see the silhouettes of passengers.
Caption: If it were within two degrees of the equator it would be swept away by Phobos, which orbits at a lower-than-synchronous altitude, one degree off Mars' equator.
Caption: So there are no collisions, but terrifyingly beautiful 'near misses' when elevator crawlers time their ascents and descents to be near Phobos' orbit when it passes.
Voice from inside elevator: Woooooo
Panel 3
Exterior shot of the Stickney Crater on Phobos, with the Delta-Free easing herself into the giant crater (which is almost 10 km from rim to rim and almost 4 km deep. We can see the Stickney Spaceport terminal on the crater rim, and several narrow ridges – actually the tops of underground tubes – leading from various points in the crater to the terminal. We might also see a few tiny blobs at the ends of those tubes which would be docked spacecraft. The Spaceport itself is an extensive structure, perhaps a kilometer across its longest dimension, festooned with domes and wings extending in various directions.
Caption: As tempting as the Gassend Elevator's 'near miss' experience would have been, Reggie and Babbette opted for the Barsoom Skyhook. It gave them an opportunity to play tourist on Phobos.