Strip 476 -- First Seen: 2010-07-05
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

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The Not-Safe-Space 2 Kickstarter Campaign has ended successfully. Thanks to all who pledged!

Now we get to wait 2 weeks while Kickstarter transmits the funds, and Scott can order the books, and send surveys to backers to get current e-mail addresses for the .PDF versions and mailing addresses for the physical books.

All of this should show up in June.

The Transcript For This Page

Panel 1
Establishing shot: Bert and Ernie, wearing space-suits with small jet-packs, are in a crater on the surface of an airless asteroid – the suits should be fairly form fitting like the environment suits used in the hockey game. These jet-packs are designed for short-distance travel in near-weightlessness and should look like a more advanced version of NASA's SAFER system

The asteroid, 243 Ida, is much smaller than Ceres, shaped something like a croissant, roughly 50 km by 24 km by 15 km, although we don't see the whole thing in this shot, but the horizon is very short.

The brothers are setting up mining equipment – presently, assembling a Mass Driver, a contraption shaped something like a rocket engine, with a body about 2 meters in diameter 10 meters long.

Attached to a narrow cylindrical body housing the power supply and held in place by three braces sticking into the sides of the bore hole.
Just above the drill head is the conveyor, a somewhat carousel-like device which receives material dug up by the drill and conveys it to the Mass Driver.

The Conveyor is positioned above the drill head as in the illustration. The Mass Driver is currently laying on its side, several meters away from the Conveyor, as the Brothers finish assembling it.

Ernie: Bert, tell me again …

Ernie: … Why are we out here on this stupid rock?

Panel 2
Medium close-up on Bert, who is struggling to tighten a bolt with a wrench (not easy in micro-gravity).

Bert: Because, Ernie, Reggie is paying us good money to check out this mascon he identified when he recently surveyed this planetoid.

Bert: AKA, 243 Ida – AKA, 'this stupid rock.'

Panel 3
Medium shot of Ernie – he's on one knee, attaching a support leg at one end of the Mass Driver. He is looking off-panel at Bert.
Bert (OP): This is a great gig, Ernie. If it turns out to be anything valuable, our third plus what he's already paying us amounts to quite a pretty penny.