I’m enjoying the read. Keep up the good work.

Emily rocks!

Although I did put a lot of thought into whether or not he should wear loafers over his hooves, before deciding against. :)

JKCarroll, Good question. And I’m sure there is an equally excellent answer…. I just have to come up with it. :)

How about “I forgot”?

Well, it’s always worked for me. Just ask any of my ex-wives…

I would like to know how long the whole story is going to take, and how thoroughly scripted it is at this stage, but I fully realise that you’re probably deliberately not revealing those details. :-)

I assume Krep is the voice of reason in this strip. Everyone’s done what felt they had to to defeat the Bollycks, and he points out how stupid each and every one of them has been.

As for NASA, the quote at the end of the article is crucial: “I don’t think that statement said we’re getting out of the human spaceflight business.” For a future in space, we need experience of spaceflight, and we need knowledge of the planets (for resources if nothing else; after all, O’Neill-style space stations may be the way forward). We don’t need to do both in the same place, and the new plan lets us do the one close to home and the other robotically.

Space… is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is! I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space! Listen…

–Douglas Adams

@Marianna: If they were traveling at light speed, and if they were going to the closest star to Earth, it would take them some 5 years to get there (Proxima Centauri is 4.2 lighyears away, but it’s going to take you a few days to accelerate up to light speed, and a few more to accelerate down from it, and a few more to find the right celestial body orbiting the star, get in orbit around that, and finally land, which doubtless adds up to at least a couple more months to the 4.2 years)
They’ve also been boarded twice, which in physics means that our body in motion suddenly increased its mass by whatever the other ship “wheighed”, and they’re picking up space rocks via the trawler, which means further increases in mass. This means they cannot maintain a constant speed (unless they simultaneously were to get rid of that much mass). Thus, they frequently slow down, and have to accelerate again back up to (as I’ve supposed here) lightspeed; and that’s supposing they’re traveling in a straight line all the time.
So, patience! Wherever they’re going (and it most likely isn’t Proxima Centauri), it’s going to take them a lo-o-o-ong time to get there. And after that, they have to go back to Earth; otherwise Nogg wouldn’t be telling the story!

As for Kat’s comment, Nogg reminds me a bit of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Except that he may not carry a big stick, but when the situation calls for it, he certainly knows how to use one.

And here probably comes Chris to bash me with his “big stick”, for thinking he didn’t think of faster-than-light travel

Craig42: Apocalyptic, yet there’s validity. I’m just not sure if throwing people in space is currently the best way to work on the problem. But I could very well be wrong. :)

Kat: Diplomat and killer-with-spear! By gum, he has spirit!