You know what, I was so busy posting stuff about Baltimore and DC last week, I forgot all about Galaxion’s anniversary! On Sept 5th, Galaxion celebrated four years as a webcomic. Yay! *throws confetti*
EDIT: More good news! It seems I’ve been nominated for a couple of Friends of Lulu awards! From Valerie D’Orazio’s Occasional Superheroine blog post: “The Lulu Awards recognizes the people and projects that helped to open eyes and minds to the amazing comic and cartooning work by and/or about women.” Some of you may remember that many moons ago, back in 1998, I was nominated for the Lulu’s new artist award, the Kim Yale Award for Most Talented Newcomer (which I lost to Carla Speed McNeil, I’m proud to say). And the fun part is, Fusella’s up for an award! She’s been nominated for Best Female Character– she’s a pretty awesome female character, if I do say so myself. 
Also, I’m up for a Lulu of the Year award! You can read more about the 2010 Lulu Awards, and if you wish you can add your vote! Voting is open to the public, so make your voice heard!
Yes… A belated Yay to Galaxion!!
Looks like the Hiawatha’s crew didn’t get a chance to see just how like Earth this planet looks from space.
And it looks like none of these folks are actually from Earth. Or at least not from any part of Earth that has whatever distinctive flora this part of Earth-Prime has (if this place has humans, it pretty well follows that the plant life is bog-standard Earth-issue, too). Plus, at some point, one would expect birds, or some of the other animals which may have been scared off by the loud boom and crash, to become visible again.
Unless, of course, the residents of this Earth did something to their planet which caused the ecosystem to completely collapse, and forced them to go live underground.
While it’s true that animals would come back after awhile, the crash only happened a couple of hours ago. On top of that, most of the crew is very busy with their individual tasks at the moment (i.e. looking for trapped survivors, setting up a base camp, and checking out equipment).
That being said, there is one group of people who could start noticing similarities: the team sent to setup the outer perimeter net. As they head out, they have to be on the lookout for critters and such. Of course most critters would probably stay away from them (assuming they’ve come out of hiding from the crash). And as for fauna…well, I can’t tell the difference between an oak and a pine so there’s no reason to think they could.
I can think of two reasons the perimeter team would bother to say they’re on “Earth”; they figured “why bother; some Earth team forces will show up soon enough” (and they don’t know about the lack of expected communications), or they didn’t have the chance to say anything once they’ve figured it out (or they’re dense enough to think, “wow, life here is very similar to that on Earth”
).
Sorry, that’s supposed to be “I can think of two reasons the perimeter team wouldn’t bother…”
Since, at least in the original, they crashed in parallel-New Zealand, the flora would be a little different from what people from Europe/Asia/North America would be accustomed to. Still suspiciously similar (a fern is still visually a fern wherever it is), but not “hey, that’s an oak tree!”.
If there were any botanists aboard, they could probably point out that it would be extraordinarily improbable for, say, angiosperms to have evolved entirely separately from life on earth, but IP are military not survey, and there may well not be any biology majors here to point out the obvious.
Well, that’s a large leap from “lost in space” to “rock star famous”.
And what self-respecting naval service allows beards and goatees? Oh, wait, that’s a shadow. It’s just a scruffy nurf-herder’s beard.
That last line is awesome. “Always look on the bright side of life …” Seriously, that’s a great way to look at it.
“We will be famous.”
Sounds like famous last words to me….
He’s definitely impressed by the new engines. As far as he knows, they’ve taken them beyond known space. He’s assuming that they haven’t taken them too far beyond known space for other ships with normal engines to catch up to them.
I was going to say that this was a big assumption, but now I don’t think so. Unless the theories around the new engine suggest they could end up anywhere, there’s no reason to believe this new engine is that much above-and-beyond their current tech. Still, he’s got to recognize that they could be there for a long while (probably why he decided to save power).
Did you notice that he said the distance was crossed “in mere minutes“? This implies their normal FTL method is not a Jump drive of some sort (you arrive at your destination instantaneously). That would leave a Hyperspace drive (in which you leave normal space entirely) or a Warp drive (in which you can still interact with normal space…and it with you). I’d kind of like it to be a Warp drive if only because I’ve only seen it two other times: Star Trek and the Tour of the Merrimack book series.
Alas, since this new drive seems to be a form of Jump drive, that would imply (though not require) they currently use a Hyperspace drive (they’re used to going extra-dimensionally…well, to a point
).
Well, hyperspace may not be the same as normal space, but the gravity wells from normal space can still pull a ship out of hyperspace somehow…