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| Range Safety |
 Title text: The Range Mischief Officer has modified the trajectory to add a single random spin somewhere in the flight, but won't tell us where. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a RANGE EXPLOSION OFFICER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
A Range Safety Officer is responsible for ensuring the safety of the flight of a missile or launch vehicle – such as the rocket in the comic. This involves tasks like creating a launch corridor clear of any aircraft or ships, as well as ensuring that atmospheric conditions are favorable for a launch.
In this comic, the RSO has noticed reports of thunderstorms downrange, and has ordered a hold as conditions are no longer favorable.
Randall continues on by imagining the opposite position, a "Range Danger Officer," responsible for ensuring that the flight of the vehicle is dangerous. Flying into the biggest thunderstorm may qualify as dangerous - in 1987 an ATLAS rocket launched into thunderstorm conditions by NASA was destroyed by lightning strikes that caused electrical malfunction.
Finally, someone on the staff justifiably wonders what reason there is for that position to exist.
The title text imagines a Range Mischief Officer, responsible for mischief – generally defined as minor/playful annoyance. Introducing a random unknown spin may qualify, since the spin shouldn't affect the flight too much, but would make all the flight engineers nervous about the flight as they seek to understand why telemetry is inverted (or why it is not!), as they work out the cause and whether it is symptomatic of bigger underlying issues or just a technical change of reference to an otherwise correct flight trajectory. Whether the spin is purely axial or end-over-end would probably matter greatly!
The Range Danger Officer and Range Mischief Officer both sound like suitable positions for Black Hat, xkcd's resident classhole.
This is the second holiday season comic in 3 years to depict rocket safety officers. A Range Safety Officer was also mentioned in the title text of 2559: December 25th Launch, where the RSO shoots down Santa so he cannot interfere with the rocket launch.
Transcript
- [A rocket is on a launchpad with a tower next to it as seen from far away. There are two birds flying to the right of them. To the left of the launchpad there is a very small building. Much farther to the right there are two smaller buildings, and a voice is emanating from the largest and right most building which also has two antennas on top. The scene is shown in black silhouette on a white background.]
- Voice: There are reports of thunderstorms in the downrange area.
- [Same scene, except the two birds are now flying on the left side of the rocket.]
- Voice: The Range Safety Officer has ordered a launch hold.
- [Almost same scene, but panned to the right so the smallest building to the left is not shown and a third building to the right of the other two buildings can be seen. The birds are now flying with one on either side of the rocket. Two voices are now emanating from the middle building.]
- Voice: But the Range Danger Officer wants to launch the rocket toward the biggest thunderstorm.
- Voice 2: Okay, why do we even have that position?
Trivia
- The standard size image was uploaded with a resolution/size larger than the supposed 2x version.
- This may have been an error.
- The tower next to the rocket was also missing from panel 2.
- See the original version here
- Both these errors were later corrected.
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