Strip 208 -- First Seen: 2009-07-01
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

On Their Way....

This is a message for the IGG QV9 backers! For those of you who ordered physical perks, they are on their way via USPS. For those of you who selected one or more of the PDF perks, you should have received an email from DriveThruComics.com. That email contains links to the vouchers you need to download your copy of the PDF you requested.

If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to check your spam folder. If you still can't find the email from DriveThruComics, let us know and we'll get the links you need.

Signing and Shipping

Scott has finished autographing all the books, and we've started shipping them out. Your physical perks should show up in the next week or so (might be a bit longer for international shipments). We expect to send out vouchers (via email) to those who wanted the PDF e-books.

Once again, many thanks to our backers. Stand by for further updates.

The Transcript For This Page

Panel 1
Large panel. We see the exterior of the elevator car after it has emerged from the underside of the moon. It is attached to a black ribbon a half centemeter thick and one meter wide, which extends from the moon all the way (about 40 km) down to the surface of the main asteroid (The Little Prince). We're looking at the elevator from a high angle so we see it against a panoramic vista of TLP's surface, which consists of low, rolling hills, colored various mixes of green and brown (it's grasses and short vegetation but we can't resolve that from this altitude). A few fluffy-white clouds are visible at around the 3-5 km level. Here and there are a few very small lakes. We don't see the bottom terminus of the nanotube ribbon in this shot.
Along the side of the car that attaches to the ribbon, there is a mechanism which changes the car's angle relative to the ribbon, which is necessary because as the car descends it is decelerating against its angular momentum, so the bottom points lines up with the orbital vector just below the station, and gradually swings down to point straight at the ground when nearly at bottom.
The elevator itself is box-like but has rounded walls bowed outward. The ceiling and walls are transparent, with the ribbon and the crawling mechanism running along the left side of the car (the side away from us). So we can see Drenkowski and the brothers in the car. There are waist-high hand-rails in the car, and the brothers are clutching them.
TLP is a near-perfect sphere, like Ceres, but much smaller. Ground detail should be about as you would see on Earth from about 35,000 feet (airline cruising altitude) but the curvature of the “ground” should be very strongly pronounced, more as the Earth might look like from about 10,000 miles up.

No dialog.

Panel 2
Looking through the glass wall inside the car, we can see the brothers grasping the hand-rail in the foreground, looking over their shoulders with some embarrassment at Drenkowski standing behind (between) them. He has one hand on his hand-rail and is looking bemused.
Drenkowski: Nothing to be ashamed of.

Drenkowski: Everybody has a strong reaction their first time.

Panel 3
Exterior view of the car again, we still see the car from above as it continues its decent.

Drenkowski (from inside car): I hate to admit it, but I threw up.