explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1402: Harpoons

2014-08-02T14:49:55Z

D peterson:

I took the sentient space craft joke to be a reference to the movie "Dark Star".{{unsigned ip|199.27.128.123}}

Harpoon is a brand of rum. Did a bottle make it into space? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.196|108.162.219.196]] 12:55, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

: I tried to find who makes it but wasn't able to find a definitive source. I added http://www.harpoon-rum.eu/ for now but it would be nice to have the link to the canonical source. Any pointers? --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 17:24, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

: It's only headcannon. (ref to xkcd #1401) A headcannon which fires a harpoon. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.80|108.162.216.80]] 17:52, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Did this comic upload quite late in the day for anyone else? Is anyone else experiencing or did anyone else experience that "Latest Comic" is still going to 1401 as ix XKCD.com and XKCD.com/# {{unsigned ip|141.101.99.216}}

"This is obviously a joke, as sentient spacecraft cannot be created with current technology." Yeah, will need a citation on that... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.148|108.162.229.148]] 13:23, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Definitely a joke. Appolo 12’s call sign was Yankee Clipper, and a clipper ship would not carry any harpoons.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.129|108.162.216.129]] 14:04, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
: I'd believe someone might have smuggled some Harpoon (or even any brand of) rum up there, then brought it back down with them, ingested or otherwise (thus the drop right after the mission). Alternately, "incident" could be something more along the lines of losing an empty bottle of rum during a spacewalk (farfetched as it may be) and it reentering the atmosphere(?) - probably no more than stories, though - nothing official probably exists about anything like that going up or down in any manner.{{unsigned|Brettpeirce}}

Moby Dick is, let's say, extremely far-fetched. It was not the ship that was hunting the whale and harpooning it by itself. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.143|141.101.104.143]] 17:27, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Could the Apollo 12 bump possibly be a reference to Futurama? "We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon" [[Special:Contributions/199.27.130.246|199.27.130.246]] 15:51, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe it is a reference to a print ad by Bacardi-Martini, mentioned briefly in Buzz Aldrins book Magnificent Desolation. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.82|141.101.104.82]] 22:10, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

While it is more likely that a harpoon (or bottle of harpoon rum) went to space and returned with the Apollo 11 mission, the caption makes it sound like the harpoon was only in space for the duration of the incident. Might it have been created and destroyed there?[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.171|108.162.219.171]] 22:54, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

The graph explicitly asserts the Apollo 12 incident caused a "harpoon" to be in space, but only for a short time. Therefore, the harpoon was destroyed in space or returned to earth. Perhaps harpoon rum ascended with the astronauts; then was consumed on the moon, burned up in earth's atmosphere, or returned with the astronauts. (DP) [[User:D peterson|D peterson]] ([[User talk:D peterson|talk]]) 14:49, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

;Whale killing
Saying "sailors would throw harpoons at a whale until it died" betrays a limited understanding of the process. Harpoons were barbed, and were meant to stick in the whale while it sounded (went deep.) A length of (about half-inch) rope kept the harpoon connected to the whaleboat. After the whale was exhausted (from towing the whaleboat while trying to shake off the harpoon? idk) the whaleboat could approach it, and the boatswain (''not'' the harpooner) would kill it with an unbarbed lance. Holling Clancy Holling's ''Seabird'' shows how it was done, with pictures and all. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.153|173.245.54.153]] 19:00, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

;Svend Foyn
Norwegian whaler Svend Foyn revolutionarized whaling by inventing explosive harpoon to hunt whales. He made whaling much easier and quicker. This method saved Norway from the famine thread in 19th century.{{unsigned|Multimotyl}}

;[Citation needed] joke.
I thought the sentence "of course, Rosetta is not sapient[Citation needed]", was sort of funny. It implied "of course, Rosetta is not sapient[or is it?]", adding a bit of humour and mystery to the explanation. {{unsigned ip|108.162.222.77}}

Talk:1402: Harpoons

2014-08-02T14:45:55Z

D peterson:

I took the sentient space craft joke to be a reference to the movie "Dark Star".{{unsigned ip|199.27.128.123}}

Harpoon is a brand of rum. Did a bottle make it into space? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.196|108.162.219.196]] 12:55, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

: I tried to find who makes it but wasn't able to find a definitive source. I added http://www.harpoon-rum.eu/ for now but it would be nice to have the link to the canonical source. Any pointers? --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 17:24, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

: It's only headcannon. (ref to xkcd #1401) A headcannon which fires a harpoon. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.80|108.162.216.80]] 17:52, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Did this comic upload quite late in the day for anyone else? Is anyone else experiencing or did anyone else experience that "Latest Comic" is still going to 1401 as ix XKCD.com and XKCD.com/# {{unsigned ip|141.101.99.216}}

"This is obviously a joke, as sentient spacecraft cannot be created with current technology." Yeah, will need a citation on that... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.148|108.162.229.148]] 13:23, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Definitely a joke. Appolo 12’s call sign was Yankee Clipper, and a clipper ship would not carry any harpoons.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.129|108.162.216.129]] 14:04, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
: I'd believe someone might have smuggled some Harpoon (or even any brand of) rum up there, then brought it back down with them, ingested or otherwise (thus the drop right after the mission). Alternately, "incident" could be something more along the lines of losing an empty bottle of rum during a spacewalk (farfetched as it may be) and it reentering the atmosphere(?) - probably no more than stories, though - nothing official probably exists about anything like that going up or down in any manner.{{unsigned|Brettpeirce}}

Moby Dick is, let's say, extremely far-fetched. It was not the ship that was hunting the whale and harpooning it by itself. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.143|141.101.104.143]] 17:27, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Could the Apollo 12 bump possibly be a reference to Futurama? "We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon" [[Special:Contributions/199.27.130.246|199.27.130.246]] 15:51, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe it is a reference to a print ad by Bacardi-Martini, mentioned briefly in Buzz Aldrins book Magnificent Desolation. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.82|141.101.104.82]] 22:10, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

While it is more likely that a harpoon (or bottle of harpoon rum) went to space and returned with the Apollo 11 mission, the caption makes it sound like the harpoon was only in space for the duration of the incident. Might it have been created and destroyed there?[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.171|108.162.219.171]] 22:54, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

The graph explicitly asserts the Apollo 12 incident caused a "harpoon" to be in space, but only for a short time. Therefore, the harpoon was destroyed in space or returned to earth. Perhaps harpoon rum ascended with the astronauts; then was consumed on the moon, burned up in earth's atmosphere, or returned with the astronauts. (DP)

;Whale killing
Saying "sailors would throw harpoons at a whale until it died" betrays a limited understanding of the process. Harpoons were barbed, and were meant to stick in the whale while it sounded (went deep.) A length of (about half-inch) rope kept the harpoon connected to the whaleboat. After the whale was exhausted (from towing the whaleboat while trying to shake off the harpoon? idk) the whaleboat could approach it, and the boatswain (''not'' the harpooner) would kill it with an unbarbed lance. Holling Clancy Holling's ''Seabird'' shows how it was done, with pictures and all. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.153|173.245.54.153]] 19:00, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

;Svend Foyn
Norwegian whaler Svend Foyn revolutionarized whaling by inventing explosive harpoon to hunt whales. He made whaling much easier and quicker. This method saved Norway from the famine thread in 19th century.{{unsigned|Multimotyl}}

;[Citation needed] joke.
I thought the sentence "of course, Rosetta is not sapient[Citation needed]", was sort of funny. It implied "of course, Rosetta is not sapient[or is it?]", adding a bit of humour and mystery to the explanation.

1375: Astronaut Vandalism

2014-05-30T05:35:45Z

D peterson:

{{comic
| number = 1375
| date = May 30, 2014
| title = Astronaut Vandalism
| image = astronaut_vandalism.png
| titletext = That night, retired USAF pilots covertly replaced the '62' with '50'.
}}

==Explanation==
Signs like this normally show the distance to places on earth's surface. This sign also has an arrow pointing away from earth and towards "space", with a distance of 62 miles (100 km), due to "astronaut vandalism". The title text states that the distance to "space" was changed later from 62 miles (100 km) to 50 miles (80 km) by retired Air Force pilots. This indicates that the pilots wanted to reduce the altitude considered to be "space", so that their own high altitude flights could be considered space flights.

There may be an Elvis aspect to this comic. The mileages are approximately consistent with the sign's being in Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of Elvis Presley. Tupelo is about 100 miles from Graceland (Elvis' home) in Memphis, Tennessee. Tupelo is also a bit over a hundred miles from the International Rock-A-Billy Hall of Fame in Jackson, Tennessee. The mileages given by Google maps, however, don't exactly match the mileages on the sign in the comic. Instead of 98 & 115 (in the comic), Google maps gives 101 & 104.

The {{W|U.S. Air Force}} will award {{W|astronaut wings}} to rated officers who fly higher than 62 miles as {{W|World Air Sports Federation}} (FAI) in the mid 1950s designated the 100-kilometer {{W|Karman Line}} (62 miles) as the official boundary between the {{W|Earth's atmosphere}} and {{W|outer space}}. In the 1960s, however, after the FAI defined space at 100 km, it was enough to fly above 50 miles to earn the wings and seven pilots earned them like this. This explain why it was retired pilots who changed the sign - so their wings would still be valid.

Useful summary: [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2004/09/where_does_space_begin.html Slate: Where does space begin?]

This comic was published on the same day that the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_(spacecraft) Dragon spaceship] was unveiled.

==Transcript==
:[A signpost with three arrows.]
:[Arrow pointing up:]
:Space 62
:[Arrow pointing right:]
:Jackson 115
:[Arrow pointing left:]
:Memphis 98

{{comic discussion}}