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Aerospace Flowchart

|< < Prev #3298 (September 14, 2026)

Title text: Someday, we will find the problem that goes with this solution.

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Explanation

This comic is a flowchart satirically depicting how aerospace engineers solve problems. The first (and only) thing on this flowchart to try is a giant airship. Only after trying that are other solutions considered. The title text is a further reference to this backward method of working, saying that aerospace engineers just want to find a problem for which "giant airships" are the solution. One element of the satire is that "no" is the only available option for whether giant airships solve the engineers' problem, implying that however much the engineers want more airships, they just won't work.

This comic might have been a response to the recent flight test by Sceye, Inc. of a helium-filled airship designed to replace cellular communication towers. The company's aim is that their airships will work for some cellular communications needs. Giant airships have been proposed multiple times, for instance by CargoLifter (burned through $300 million before liquidation) or Flying Wales.

Transcript

[At the top:]

Aerospace engineer problem-solving flowchart

[Below that, in a flowchart box:]

Start

[Arrow pointing downward to a flowchart diamond below that:]

Could we solve this problem by building giant airships again?

[Arrow labeled "No" pointing downward to another flowchart box:]

Try other solutions

[Four arrows point out the box to bottom of the comic]

---

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This Week's Explanation for Improvement

As part of the Explanation Improvement Project, each week the community selects one older, neglected, or otherwise stagnant explanation to expand and polish together. This week's pick is comic 395: Morning; help us by editing its explanation!

To get involved with the project, you can also nominate an explanation that you think should be improved, or vote on current nominations!

Morning

|< < Prev #395 (March 12, 2008) Next > >|

Title text: I'd press on them to try to unstick them, but I can't reach. Can we try cycling day and night really fast?

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Explanation

Welcome to This Week's Explanation for Improvement! Anyone is encouraged to help explain comic 395: Morning; click here to get started! If you are new to wiki editing, you can read our editing FAQ for guidance. Here are some suggestions for improving this explanation:   Explain the references to The Matrix to someone who has never heard of the movie.   Upload a close-up of the three colored pixels? They may be difficult for some viewers to see in the strip.   Explain the "screen resolution of the world" in first panel. Is there truth to this? What resolution do our eyes actually have?   Explain the title text, especially "cycling day and night really fast".   The explanation of LCD screens is too technical.   Mention that OLED screens are much more popular nowadays. Do they also suffer from dead pixels?   Could the dead pixels that Megan sees actually be simple stars visible during the day?

This comic plays on the idea that physical reality might be a simulation running inside a supercomputer. This idea has been explored in popular culture before, as mentioned in the comic itself, but the second panel argues the revelation would still be a deeply existential horror of it were true.

The first panel mentions The Matrix, a 1999 action movie where the main character Neo discovers that the world he thought he knew was actually a simulation being run by an army of robots who keep the human race hypnotized inside the titular simulation. It is perhaps the most famous work of fiction to touch on the theme of reality being a simulation, and an easy cultural touchstone at the time this comic was written.

The reveal of Megan's reality being a simulation comes when she sees "dead pixels" in the sky. In LCD screens, especially TFT LCD, a dead pixel is a pixel that does not work properly, usually set as black or as some other color. Megan realizes that the reality is a computer simulation when she sees dead pixels in the sky, indicating that what she sees is an LCD screen.

In the last panel of the comic, there are two red and one green pixel that look exactly like actual dead pixels.

Regarding the question in the first panel, "What resolution is life?" (by which "life" presumably means the "real world" or lived experience, not living biochemistry), the typical response involves Planck distance and Planck time, the smallest digital units of distance and time that time-space can be broken down into. Humans, of course, cannot perceive on that scale, but it is the fundamental building block of the time-space around us, similar to pixels (picture elements) on a screen or a bit (one-or-zero) of data. Datum. Data. Our experience occurs at a much higher level, so a lower order of resolution.

The title text refers to usual techniques for fixing a dead pixel. One way is to apply pressure and release it, which isn't possible for Megan due to the distance of the sky. Another way is to make the area of the screen that the dead pixel is on change colors really quickly, which could happen if the day-night cycle was fast enough, or if the clouds overhead were sped up.

Transcript

[Megan is standing to one side.]

We've all seen The Matrix

We've all joked about "What resolution is life?"

But it doesn't blunt the shock

Of waking up one morning

[Megan looks up from field and sees several colored pixels in the sky.]

And seeing dead pixels in the sky.

---

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