3146: Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four

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Title text: One perk of being born at 0.88c is that your birthday is over two days long.

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Explanation

This is one of 52 incomplete explanations: Also, explain why Oberth effect is related If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

The comic makes a pun on the Oberth effect, a phenomenon in orbital mechanics where a spacecraft gains more energy from a propulsion burn when it is moving faster, typically deep within a gravitational well. Essentially, the same amount of fuel produces a larger change in kinetic energy if the burn occurs where the spacecraft’s speed is highest.

In the comic, the joke arises from confusing “birth” with “berth”: it suggests that the baby’s birth provides a propulsion boost to the ship, analogous to how the Oberth effect gives extra efficiency to maneuvers near a gravity well. In reality, the effect of a baby being born is negligible; the shift in the ship’s center of mass is far too small to produce any meaningful reaction-based thrust.

The comic references the movie The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025), in which the characters go around a black hole and a baby is born onboard. While the birth occurs during the journey, it does not produce any actual propulsion boost.

Additionally, the title text references time dilation to extend the birthday from one day to over two days as seen from Earth, due to traveling at 88% of the speed of light. So one day is 2.1 days seen from Earth. The day of one's birthday has many perks, such as celebrations.

The Oberth effect is also mentioned as a key to escaping Origin in 2765: Escape Speed.

Transcript

[Ponytail is facing Cueball with one of her hands out, facing up and towards Cueball.]

Ponytail: In the new Fantastic Four movie, their ship doesn't have enough fuel to get home and Sue Storm goes into labor, so they slingshot around a neutron star and fire their engines at periapsis — as Sue has her baby — to get a boost.

Cueball: Ah yes, the Obirth effect.

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Discussion

And everyone wonders why that Franklin Richards kid is a little off... 2601:8C3:8682:1FC0:9DB2:6777:1660:1D9C 20:32, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Could be worse. In Star Trek, the kid would be born 2 centuries in the past. Barmar (talk) 21:06, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Spoilers, Randall, spoilers...I'm sure there are other people who missed the theatrical release and are waiting for it to hit Disney+... 128.4.149.3 21:22, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

It's probably fine, the movie came out... two months ago.

Holy shit it only came out two months ago. Redacted II (talk) 22:04, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

This is how I learnt there was a new Fantastic Four movie 64.114.211.124 23:25, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

I had already heard of the movie, but only after it had been released. Whatever advertising they'd used had bypassed me... I only saw the 'poster' for it when someone who had already watched it included the image in a review. And, by my own (probably wrong) count, this is the fifth live-action FF film, anyway (one of them was made but never released, for... reasons) and I've only actually seen two of the prior ones. (Couldn't say for sure which plot-points belong to which. Was the one where Johnny Storm had a 'pre-powers-kicking-in' skiing accident different from the one with the dimensional travel thing? ...I think so, but then which order were they?).

It seems that cinema releases are these days probably considered loss-leaders (and 'Oscars-qualifying') to justify subsequent online-platforming sales. I was lucky enough to have a fairly local cinema play The Thursday Murder Club, given that I don't have access to Netflix (or Disney+, or Paramount+, or all the rest that might be necessary to view all the various different franchises of possible interest) and am stubbornly unlikely to succumb anytime soon.

As to spoilers, I'll have probably forgotten/disregarded this comic by the time I get to see this one. By which time there'll be an even newer re-re-reboot FF film, anyway (probably photorealistically generated with AI 'actors', and piped straight into subscribers' brains!), if not several more. 82.132.244.45 02:06, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

I think so but couldn't say for sure, I just know the one with the dimensional thing will always to me be "that movie where everyone forgets about Werner von Braun". 128.4.149.3 13:11, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Man, I made a comment because I was mad about a spoiler for the sake of a horribly geeky pun and it set off whatever this is. 128.4.149.3 13:11, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Brings to mind the 1999 IgNobel Prize winner (in Managed Health Care), US Patent #3216423 ("Apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force"), <https://patents.google.com/patent/US3216423A/en> 2601:189:8501:71a0:2ce2:fc8d:e6ee:d0f (talk) 00:21, 25 September 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

That's one crazy patent. Is that a net to catch the baby? Also this: "In the case of a woman who has a fully developed muscular system and has had ample physical exertion all through the pregnancy, as is common with all more primitive peoples, nature provides all the necessary equipment and power to have a normal and quick delivery. This is not the case, however, with more civilized Women who often do not have the opportunity to develop the muscles needed in confinement." Mtcv (talk) 09:33, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

After I read the problem statement, I feared that they would somehow propel the baby out of her extremely fast to get momentum… o.O Fabian42 (talk) 07:32, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Actually, it needs to be slower.

On ejecting the "baby mass" (presumably retrograde), the "mother mass" (and "mothership and the rest of its contents) gain a reactionary forward momentum. As soon as the baby is caught or skids to a halt on the deliver-table/deck (assuming artificial gravity, the capability of which might suggest a reactionless 'gravity drive' solution, anyway!) or hits the stern bulkhead, it applies rearward momentum to the ship.

Due to the Oberth Effect, if you start this process (internal 'reaction thrust') at periapsis and manage to complete it (bring the bairn to 'rest', for internal ) at apoapsis then conceivably (...although that point was probably nine months earlier!) you could gain a maximal degree of assymetric momentum transfer in an orbital frame of reference.

But the infant must have been 'free floating' (or on a friction-free surface effectively unaffected by the perpendicularly applied internal gravity field) for the whole duration. Including whatever rotational conditions apply. (If the ship as a whole is sent on a marginally higher orbit by the movement of the baby, than it would previously have been, then the baby must be on a marginally lower orbit up to its subsequent recorrection by the eventual 'ship catch'.)

Though this may be impractical (without a huge ship-space to work within), you can^{[actual citation needed]} seemingly gain lesser effects by stretching the process out from periapsis 'birthing' to some pre-apoapsis 'catching'. The more instantaneous, though, the less effect, effectively to zero. (There's a slight change in the CoG of the mothership+baby system, but some thoughts on this might suggest 'forward birthing', or even 'upward', could redistribute the mass of the baby more out of the gravity-well for a marginal gain that is more than the marginal loss by combined the non-baby mass being sent fractionally deeper. But this very fine balance of effects seems to need more than the simple Newtonian calculations that normally suffice in orbital mechanics.)

Also, if I interpret the scenario correctly, there is no apoapsis (when achieved), as the aim is to attain an escape velocity instead of a sub-escape one (by however marginal a difference). As in on, or over, the "parabolic orbit", towards being a useful hyperbolic one with a finite time to return to Earth, rather than just being an extremely eccentric elliptic one. So (apart from delaying the 'catch' by infinite time/distance) it's probably going to very much earlier than the original limit-of-apoapsis had nothing been done.

But still as delayed as possibly, meaning that a veeerrryyy slow birth (and maybe also a stupendously long berth, as in habitation space!) is probablg what we need to be useful in a such a scenario. Or just somehow apply your internal control of gravity/inertia (as befits most sci-fi vessels, and is likely Reed Richards' department) to do something magical, propulsion-wise, or just whatever abilities Sue ('invisible forcefields', traditionally, not sure if they're in this film) and Johnny (the versions of him that happily 'flame-fly' through space, changing direction at will) could possibly bring to the party (distracted or not by a birth happening at the time). Heck, I bet Ben could just chuck something useless and massive out of the airlock (assuming they don't go full The Martian and throw their own air away) with his super-strength, and gain significant delta-V to make all the difference in any critically knife-edge situation as I'm imagining (not having seen this film, myself). 82.132.246.64 11:30, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

That is...not what the comic is saying though, nor is it what happened in the movie. It's merely connecting an event happening simultaneously with the boost with a pun on the Oberth effect. The writing in the comic could be a bit clearer that it's just two unrelated events happening concurrently. 2001:569:FCEC:7F00:CDA6:30CD:A56D:5BF5

The comic is being deliberately humorous, of course, regardless of what might have happened in the film (like there was never actually an awkward conversation with Treebeard about why the Fellowship were all male).

The phrasing "and fire their engines at periapsis — as Sue has her baby — to get a boost" can be read numerous ways involving both coincidence and concurrence. Including the engines being fired to help the birthing process (c.f. the centripetal birthing device mentioned above)...

It all wouldn't look too out of place as a hook for a What-If question/answer situation, either, so of course various off the wall interpretions are going to be overanalysed for the purposes of humour. (Or overanalyzed for the purposes of humor.) 82.132.244.95 07:11, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Without watching the movie (and reading only a short comics, where no baby was involved) I had the impression that the baby was left around the neutron star, or even more cruel - sent into it. 140.141.134.242 (talk) 15:49, 30 September 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I think this explanation is incorrect. It says "The comic says that there is a boost because of the propulsion produced by the baby," but the comic specifically says "They [...] fire their engines at periapsis". The explanation fixates on this incorrect assessment stating "she does give birth to a baby while on board, but doesn't do that to get a boost" which is true, but the comic never claimed anything to the contrary. The next paragraph continues on this line of thinking talking about how ineffective birth would be at producing propulsion. 136.226.154.60 16:20, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Depends upon how you read it. In one version, they make sure that periapsis happens at the same time as the birth so that the birth can contribute (in handwavy ways) to the boost you'd want to fire at that point. Alternatives include ensuring that the burn at periapsis happens coincident with the birth to boost the birth. I think there could be six or seven different interpretations, although the one concentrated upon is typical fodder for a 'movie physics/pseudoscience/technobabble' answer to a plotwise narrow-escape.

The version where "oh, and something else happens at the same time" is (I presume), the reality of the fictional scenario, just an additional complication (and reason) to the attempt to effect a narrow escape. But the humour comes from the ambiguity and misunderstanding of phrasing. (For one thing, the exact nature of the punctuation may not be clear, in-panel. Unlike a recent comic comma, it isn't clearly voiced exclamation mark!)

Of course, it depends which particular frog of humour you wish to dissect. Some might still not find it funny, and there's now at least one dead frog. But you can also edit the explanation to convey what you think the joke is. 82.132.213.24 20:03, 1 October 2025 (UTC)
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