Orbiter
by Jeff
Image text: Normally, the Shuttle can't quite safely reach the orbital inclination required to pass over both those points from a Canaveral launch, but this is an alternate history in which either it launches from Vandenburg or everyone hates the Outer Banks.
This comic is about disputed territories, orbiting satellites and latitude and longitude.
There is not enough pixels in the world to go over the Palestinan/Israeli conflict over land in the Middle East. Needless to say as in this comic, both groups lay claim to the same area of land and have been fighting over it for years with no end in sight.
The Texas - Oklahoma disputes pale in comparison, but that is where the joke lies in the comic. Texas and Oklahoma have been disputing their border for years as well before it was finally settled around 10 years ago.
Cueball probably should have just settled for latitude and longitude instead of trying to define where the shuttle was over. How about just "Earth"?
Vandenburg is a reference to the Vandenburg Air Force Base which has space launch capabilities and is in Santa Barbara, California.
I'm not sure why everyone would hate the Outer Banks? The only connection I know of is that you can see the shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida in the Outer Banks as the shuttle moves swiftly up the East Coast and into orbit.
September 1st, 2010
I believe it’s called Vandenberg Air Force Base – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_Air_Force_Base – and not Vandenburg.
September 1st, 2010
I am not sure of how to look this up, but maybe what he’s suggesting is that in order to achieve the correct orbital inclination (when launching from Canaveral) it would endanger the inhabitants of the Outer Banks, so hence the ‘everybody hates the Outer Banks’ statement.
Would be interested if anyone was able to confirm or deny this.
September 1st, 2010
I think he’s suggesting that in order to get the right orbit that you would either have to launch from Vandenburg or from the Outer Banks. The Outer Banks is a nice, touristy area in our reality and would probably not be as nice if used to launch space missions.
Thus, if there were an alternate reality where people hated the Outer Banks they would probably be okay with using it as a Space Shuttle launch pad.
September 1st, 2010
I don’t think the Palestinians necessarily want the same land as the Israelis. I’m pretty sure they’re resigned to the fact that Israel will pwn them while the US is still a superpower.
Rather, I’m pretty sure that the Palestinians would really like a two-state solution, using the pre-1967 borders and sharing the holy city of Jersualem.
So, while Israel wants the Palestinians’ land…the Palestinians would just like to keep the land they have.
September 2nd, 2010
I think you are missing the subtle point of that “the land they have” is under dispute as well… at least it has been since 1967 where they lost the land they had — not that I want to make this into geo-political discussion, and neither does Cueball.
September 5th, 2010
Well, if you would like to get into geopolitics, you might as well look into history.
The Israelites (later to be called jews) populated the west bank area for a millenium or so, up until 1900 years ago (you can look it up, this is a documented history. Also, Jesus was there).
The Israelites were exlied from Israel by the Romans, who later became Byzantines. Up until today the Italians have no claim for the west bank.
During the byzantine empire, the ruling of Israel and Jerusalem was flactuating between the crusaders (no european country has claims for the territory) and the turks, that by the fifteenth century became the dominant rulers as the ottoman empire.
The turks, despite some disagreemants between Turkey and Israel, don’t have any claims for the west bank.
The Ottomans ruled Israel (and, actually, kept it almost a barren wasteland except for jewish settlement in the 4 major jewish cities. Don’t trust me, Mark Twain visited there) until the empire was dissolved after WWI and Britian took over palestine. The queen, though losing more than couple of soldiers during the jewish fight for liberation, don’t have any claims for the west bank.
And now we come to modern history. In 1947, the UN have decided to end the british mandate in palestine and create two states: jewish and arabs. The jews celebrated. The arabs attacked a jew convoy right the next morning.
War took over. Some of the arabs who lived in Palestine (which didn’t called themselves palestinians, just yet) fled from their homes so they could return when the arab states crush the jews and make the whole of Palestine an arab state (UN resolutions? Who gives a fuck). However, the jews won and conquered all the land promised to them by the UN and then some. Gaza strip was conquered by Egypt. The west bank was conquered by Jordan. Neither Egypt nor Jordan has any claims for Gaza or the west bank, respectively.
In 1964 the exiled arabs formed the Palestinian charter. It can be called the first time the Palestinians appeared on the face of the earth, which was about 1900 years after the Romans destroyed the hebrew temple in Jerusalem.
The palestinian charter, BTW, said expresively the the jewish state should stop to exist. Surprisingly, it also says it today, 17 years after the peace talks officially began. I wouldn’t enter into actual politics here, except for the fact it was signed in 1964.
Three years later, 1967, there was another war. Israel took Gaza an Sinai from Egypt (Sinai was returned to Egypt in the 1979 peace treaty. There were not claims for Gaza). Israel took the Golan Heights from Syria (it was occupied for 19 years by Syria, 43 years and counting by Israel, but syria still considers it syrian), and the west bank from Jordan (in the 1995 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, no claims were made for the west bank. Seriously, Jordan never once said they want Jerusalem back).
The palestinians want the pre-1967 areas that were occupied by Jordan. It’s their prerogative to want it. But it is interesting you use the terms “to keep the land they have” or “lost the land they had” since, well, it’s either they had it in 1947 (and was taken by Jordan) or they didn’t have it at all. Nothing was taken directly from them in 1967, no more than New-england was taken from the indians.
September 8th, 2010
The entire World considers the Golan Heights Syrian. It’s been that way since the creation of the modern Syrian state.
I needn’t go into the details of Israeli Occupation in the West Bank for you to understand that it goes against the Palestinian’s right for self-determination. As none of the former Mandate-era territories existed as nation-states prior to the war, your distinction of “having it” or “losing it” seems irrelevant and misguided.
September 12th, 2010
Oddly enough, the Kurds has no right for self-determination in Turkey and Iraq, the Basque have no rights in Spain, no indian had ever have any rights in north america, and when the Irish or Montanegrians declared independant- they actually declared independance and not just “talked about it”. You’d think that 17 years of peace negotiations will be enough to get a solution for the state they sooo dearly wants (considering it took israel 168 days to declare independance, of which 167 were in war).
But then again, you call the Golan Heights by its hebrew name and still consider it Syrian.
September 27th, 2010
Em. No. Not really. The Palestinians want Jerusalem, extensive parts of what’s currently called “Israel,” and also “The Right of Return” which means that the descendants of the Palestinians who fled or were chased away (and yes, a lot of Arabs were chased away by force or threat when Israel was established, they didn’t all leave of their own free will) get to settle in Israel, effectively rendering the Jewish population a minority.
Not going into who is right and who is wrong (at this point in history, it’s so tangled up it doesn’t really matter), but just pointing out that yes, they both want the same territory…
September 2nd, 2010
On the Caption:
For the Shuttle to be in a scenario where it can pass over these two points, it apparently must be in a polar (north/south) orbit.
An important part of choosing your launch site is making sure your desired launch trajectories don’t cross any heavily populated areas. The rationale is that you don’t want burning pieces of rocket falling down on people’s houses if something goes wrong. Given this requirement, the US launch site of choice for polar orbits is Vandenburg Air Force Base.
The reason the Vandenburg option is an alternate history is because there actually were plans to launch shuttles from there before the Challenger accident occurred. After Challenger was lost the polar orbiting missions were scrapped and Cape Canaveral become the sole launch site for the Space Shuttle.
Launch into a polar orbit from the Cape would require sending the spacecraft up the Eastern Seaboard, which violates the whole “no launching over places with lots of people” rule. In alternate history #2 those rules don’t exist, either because nobody cares what happens to the Outer Banks (which would be in the flight path) or nobody likes them and they’re deserted.