[jgrahamc]

Agreed. Often you have to already know what he's talking about to get meaning from his words.

For example, his description of the Saturn V Rocket (he replaced rocket with 'up goer') has this description of hydrogen: "The kind of air that once burned a big sky bag and people died (And someone said "Oh the [humans]!")

I guess that's amusing if you already know about the Hindenburg, or something.

Also, speaking of the propellant used for the Saturn V's F-1 engine he states: "This is full of that stuff they burned in lights before houses had power". The propellant in the F-1 engine was RP-1 (kerosene). I assume he was talking about 'town gas' for lighting.

[paol]

Kerosene lamps were ubiquitous before electric lighting. Look at the pictures in the wikipedia page[0], you'll recognize them for sure.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene_lamp

[Pitarou]

It seems that, in trying to make a second point, jgrahamc accidentally proved his first.

[jgrahamc]

It wasn't an accident. I was showing that the ambiguity introduced by his language means that it's hard to understand what's really going on.

[Pitarou]

Well that was clever. :-)

[eterm]

To be fair, Up-goer Five is the original for the comic, it was hardly intended at the time that it would take off the way it did. That it generated so much interest led to the book.

[Pitarou]

Are you sure it wasn't a teaser for a work in progress?

[eterm]

It was done in 2012, a teaser 3 years before the book release would be unusual.