Strip 217 -- First Seen: 2009-07-14
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

Halfway there!

The Kickstarter campaign to print the next volume of Quantum Vibe: Novo Palermo - Part 1 is now halfway to our goal. We need your help getting the rest of the way there. Tell your friends, family members, and your pets to back our campaign.

Every little bit helps! The campaign ends midnight (US central time) November 18. So there's still time to get the word out, or maybe add another item to your current pledge.

Your reward for backing our campaign starts with a personalized signed copy of the perfect bound printed collection of the online strip. You may also choose the ebook edition, a PDF downloadable from DriveThruComics.

And back by popular demand, coasters, magnets and stickers. Click on the art on the left, to go to our campaign page where you can back our campaign.

QV on a short break

QUANTUM VIVE is taking a break for a few weeks, as we prepare for Part 2 of the Novo Palermo story, and also for a Kickstarter campaign for Part 1, which will start in September.

In the meantime, Not-Safe.Space will continue, as a murder mystery begins and the relationship between Eithne and Diana develops in unexpected directions.

Not-Safe.Space is a NSFW strip but more than half the pages are SFW so I've set those to *not* require a Patreon membership. Readers should be able to follow the story without seeing the NSFW pages. If I've done this right.

The Transcript For This Page

Panel 1
Large panel. Cutaway diagram of the entire planetoid. There is a dark neutronium core that goes out to about a tenth of the planetoid's radius. At this scale the micro-black hole is a shining star-point at the very center. Outward from the neutronium are a 2/10 radius-thick molten nickel-iron outer core, another 2/10 radius-thick layer of solid nickel-iron ore, and then other interleaved layers of dense-looking rocks getting lighter up to the surface. There's a thin surface crustal layer and atmosphere beyond.

Tobi (OP): 'Yes, but there's 5 kilometers of transient neutronium, degenerate matter, nickel-iron and silicates between us and there.

Tobi (2): 'One thing that does get through, however, is heat.

Panel 2
Farther away external view of TLP, its entire air-skin with the embedded Damocles Station, and the ice-berg presently in orbit around it

Tobi (OP): Here we are, 2.5 astronautical units from the sun, with 16% of Terra's solar flux, yet we enjoy a shirt sleeve environment.


Panel 3
Three-shot of Bert, Ernie, and Tobi at the table. They are all sipping at their drinks.

Tobi: In fact there's so much heat we had to design thermal radiators to dump the excess into space.

Tobi (2): We wouldn't want to have runaway global warming, now would we?