THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Comic Discussion => ALICE GROVE => Topic started by: jwhouk on 01 Jul 2016, 08:26
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New Month, New Poll, New Thread.
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I'm calling it: We're about to have Jeph's tribute riff to Kerbal Space Program. All the characters are going to be vaguely Kerbal-like (either insanely brave or insanely cowardly) and most of their stuff shakes itself to bits within minutes of clearing the ground. The leaders are, naturally, spookily similar to Werner von Kerman (arrogant, dismissive of all except his genius) and Gene Kerman (enthusiastic, go-ahead and thinks all astronauts are idiots).
Nothing they do works... Until Adrent touches one pile of wreckage and then you have a fully-functional Mk2 Space Plane with passenger cabin, payload bay, robot arm and the works. Something like this:
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VU-_InTkc54/maxresdefault.jpg)
The villagers name it the Elegant Tail after the great... catboy... himself. Sedna calls it Retribution One and tries to sneak a rack of nuclear ASAT warheads into the payload bay. Alice, being Alice, turns out to be an excellent aerospace pilot. She insists on calling it Freedom One.
Alice demands that Ardent tell her why he disobeyed her instructions not to touch technological stuff without her authorisiation. His response? "Gavia needs to go home to get her nanotech back."
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Is there a kickstarter for your comic idea, BenRG, because I want in. :-D
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Here's my ain't-gonna-happen prediction:
They find a nonfunctional robot at the bottom of the hole. Ardent touches it, reactivating it and upgrading it to Super-Mecha-Pintsize. The giant robot is all "NOW ENDS THE AGE OF MAN."
Then Sedna yells "It already ended, you idiot." Super-Mecha-Pintsize says "It did? Oh well then, never mind. Hey, nice butt!"
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What would happen if Ardent touched one of these:
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51SHgiteZ%2BL._SL1001_.jpg)
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Nothing. Those things are simple counterbalancing levers. During experimentation he touched other things similar and they didn't transform.
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The drinking bird uses a refrigerant inside a set of internal tubes to oscillate back and forth... in some ways it's a miniature heat pump, storing heat and releasing it as kinetic energy as the fluid moves back and forth.
Granted it's crazy inefficient (about 1/2 W of "evaporative heat flux" to give a kinetic output of 1/20000 W), but I think it might be just a bit on the other side of the complexity line.
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There will be Pokin' Sticks
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I wonder if the town is in the pit because of hurricanes?
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Living in a pit during heavy rainfall would be a terrible idea.
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Unless you have a Struthio (Strange Big Dog)-powered pump to drain it out.
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If that pump could keep up with hurricane level rainfall, I'd be quite impressed.
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Judging from the scenes from the last couple of days from their travel heavy rainfall in this area is very rare.
Your point about the vulnerability of this layout of the village does stand. Would a trench or a low barrier/dam around the pit be asking too much? A sandstorm or a blizzard would be as bad as heavy rain. But, the inhabitants know more about the local conditions than we do.
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From what we've seen so far, the post-Blink human population of the Earth is small and well spread out. Additionally, the Pit doesn't seem to be associated with any significant natural resources for which other groups would want to commit resources to attempt to seize. Their only real asset is their access to pre-Blink technology. From what little we've seen, these aren't greatly in demand in the contemporary world to the point where those who are interested in it are seen as weird or even supernatural.
With regard to natural issues, I don't think that rain is much of a problem; the territory looks like arid badlands like Montana or even Nevada. The parapet of the pit would protect the houses (which are built tight up against the walls) from dust-storms and effective drainage is the first thing any mining operation learns.
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... other groups would want to commit resources to attempt to seize.
I *very* much doubt that town layout is intended for defence against human aggression... Don't think defence against dangerous animals would be very good either.
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Has the boring possibility been touched that the hole at the center of the pit could just be a really deep well and this is a simple water hole & trading outpost that has grown around it?
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Plot Twist - They'll pass a faded sign that reads S***Y*AL* :-D
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I tried to figure out what that means and failed.
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I assumed it was "Shit, Y'all!"
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Oh.
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What, does nobody remember the Buffy finale? SUNNYVALE
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Oh shit, they're digging up the Hellmouth.
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What, does nobody remember the Buffy finale? SUNNYVALE
Yes, but when the Hellmouth collapsed it created a bigger hole than that.
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Ok, you guys haven't said much yet but please no more Buffy spoilers.
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I've never seen Buffy, so I'm stickin' with "Shit, Y'all!"
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Ok, you guys haven't said much yet but please no more Buffy spoilers.
It ended 12 years ago. I didn't think a moratorium on spoilers is supposed to last a decade.
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Ok, you guys haven't said much yet but please no more Buffy spoilers.
It ended 12 years ago. I didn't think a moratorium on spoilers is supposed to last a decade.
Once on a mailing list, I saw someone object to spoiling a story written more than fifty years earlier. (One person responded with a post about Rosebud.)
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Rosebud was his dog.
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Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mousetrap) has been running for 64 years, and still requests patrons not to give spoilers outside the theatre.
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Looks like BenRG was right. They're digging up bunkers.
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Strip is up
And we get to meet a new character, Ellie who seems friendly enough, but possibly incontinent.
Apparently they haven't penetrated the bunker yet, but if Ardent can upgrade whatever digging machine they got they might get through in a day instead of a month.
Either that or Alice will just punch a hole into the roof.
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So, the archeophiles are into a set of underground bunkers and are trying to dig up something well protected. Seriously, I think that a pissed-off robotic weapon is more likely than a spaceship at this point (why put a rocket into an extra-tough bunker?) but we'll see.
Meanwhile, it looks like Sedna has her own 'townsfolk' with whom she has regular dealings. Unlike Alice, she doesn't subscribe to the "I am the Witch; don't ask questions, just do exactly as I say" method of getting things done.
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Interesting that Sedna found it necessary to tell Ellie that "the blue one" was from orbit; that could imply that there are other possibilities.
Also it's starting to look as if Jeph is making this a distinctly matriarchal society.
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So, the archeophiles are into a set of underground bunkers and are trying to dig up something well protected. Seriously, I think that a pissed-off robotic weapon is more likely than a spaceship at this point (why put a rocket into an extra-tough bunker?) but we'll see.
Meanwhile, it looks like Sedna has her own 'townsfolk' with whom she has regular dealings. Unlike Alice, she doesn't subscribe to the "I am the Witch; don't ask questions, just do exactly as I say" method of getting things done.
Well it's been established that they have different philosophical outlooks to being immortal so this isn't too surprising. Moreover, Sedna probably gets more by trading her knowledge of the distant past for whatever guns they dig up than with Alice's methods.
And it could be the bunkers are adjacent to silos that contain the rockets.
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You've come to the conclusion of it being a matriarchal society based on.. not even two examples? Alice can be argued that she runs her community. And I'm sure she would argue that she doesn't. But her word is the one that goes there. All we know about Ellie she she knows Sedna. She could just be a ditch digger there, not necessarily the leader. As far as the blue one and the pissed off looking one.. she was just identifying the kids. Maybe there are instances of blue skinned people on Earth. But even if there weren't, why would Ellie assume blue skin means from orbit. Something it seems people don't believe is supposed to happen. If they even know that people live in orbit. Alice and Sedna have more knowledge about such things than most.
As far as rockets in a bunker, that's easy to explain. ICBMs or their equivalent. Surface based technological sites that survived the Blink were probably long ago scavenged for raw materials or fell to the passage of time. An underground bunker there might still be salvageable stuff left. And since a bunker could well mean military, they might be able to find useful information about old tech, even if they don't find any rockets there.
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Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mousetrap) has been running for 64 years, and still requests patrons not to give spoilers outside the theatre.
The key part of the sentence being has been running, in contrast to Buffy, which has been finished for over a decade.
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Yeah, but Netflix exists, meaning old shows constantly have new viewers. So it's finished as in the last episode has aired, but there's always an opportunity for people to watch it for the first time. Why ruin that on purpose? It's one thing to happen to talk about it, but if someone asks that you not, is it that hard to be courteous?
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I really don't think Sedna needed to know that Ellie-May :-D
Bunkers under the camp. Hope there's no Dragons ;)
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Or anyone playing with Portal guns...
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Yeah, but Netflix exists, meaning old shows constantly have new viewers. So it's finished as in the last episode has aired, but there's always an opportunity for people to watch it for the first time. Why ruin that on purpose? It's one thing to happen to talk about it, but if someone asks that you not, is it that hard to be courteous?
You misjudge me. I'm perfectly willing to refrain from spoiling if asked*. Heck, I'm one of the small number of holdouts who waited until Game of Thrones was available on Google play rather than pay extortionate fees to Foxtel, or pirate. I've spent the entire season fervently evading spoilers in social and mainstream media. So believe me when i say sympathise entirely.
In general, though, you can't really expect the world to refrain from dropping references to iconic endings of classic decades old stories just in case, that's all I'm saying.
* Not that it's relevant in the case of Buffy. I've seen in total five minutes of one episode. I didn't care for it enough to bother continuing. And yes I'm aware that's hardly a fair trial, but I've never been motivated to change that.
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You've come to the conclusion of it being a matriarchal society based on.. not even two examples?
Conclusion? Good grief, no. I am merely noting that we have now (I presume) met three of the "supervising class", "immortals" or whatever we should call them, and all three appear to be female. Whether this has any meaning at all is unknown - it is simply an observation.
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The mayor dude in Alice's town was not a woman.
Then again, matriarchal classes usually work out pretty soon you have to let the men pretend they're in charge. :P
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You've come to the conclusion of it being a matriarchal society based on.. not even two examples?
Conclusion? Good grief, no. I am merely noting that we have now (I presume) met three of the "supervising class", "immortals" or whatever we should call them, and all three appear to be female. Whether this has any meaning at all is unknown - it is simply an observation.
How do you know Ellie is one of the immortals? Yes she's known Sedna for years, but that doesn't mean centuries. Now I do agree that women are far more empowered and apparently equal than their contemporaries living in the 19th century as we knew it.
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The mayor dude in Alice's town was not a woman.
Then again, matriarchal classes usually work out pretty soon you have to let the men pretend they're in charge. :P
That's right, she just now went to the person who really is in charge, the wife of the guy who is in charge.
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A direct descendant of Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham?
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Not impossible, but Highly improbable considering Hanners aversion to anything related to such activities.
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I'm sure that Dr. E-C is working on technology that would eliminate the need for Hannelore to be directly involved in the production of her own children.
Or, you know, worked on it a long time ago, from the POV of Alice.
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There is that.
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I'm sure that Dr. E-C is working on technology that would eliminate the need for Hannelore to be directly involved in the production of her own children.
Or, you know, worked on it a long time ago, from the POV of Alice.
And look, she picked someone with brown yeys as the doner-father. :laugh:
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Strip is up!
Hope Ellie isn't actually trying to get tissue samples from Gavia. Poor kid has had enough extracted from her body as it is.
Not surprised that the one that wants all the attention is ignored and the one that doesn't gets all the questions. She might come around if this makes Ardent jealous.
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"Please leave me alone"
Translation - the true nature of the Praeses is a big fat surprise that we're not due to know about yet.
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...Not surprised that the one that wants all the attention is ignored ...
Maybe if Ardent wasn't radiating an aura of "I'll say whatever you want to hear if it gets me into your..." it would help. Still, I guess with that name its inevitable.
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He's just overeager and needs slapping down every so often
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...Not surprised that the one that wants all the attention is ignored ...
Maybe if Ardent wasn't radiating an aura of "I'll say whatever you want to hear if it gets me into your..." it would help. Still, I guess with that name its inevitable.
And he might be barking up the wrong tree although we don't know enough about Ellie yet.
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I love it when the best punchline is actually underneath the comic.
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Something tells me that Ellie has a high 'enthusiasm' rating but that 'common sense' isn't such a strong point. I'm not so hot with interactions but even I can read the 'go away and leave me alone' in Gavia's posture. Meanwhile, I suspect that Ardent has found his ideal woman! :lol:
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Ellie, on behalf of everyone in the forums I beg you, take Ardent up on that offer to tell you about the Praeses!
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Have we ever seen Sedna without that crazy gleam in her eyes? I don't know how Jeph does it with the eyes, but she always looks more than a little insane. I worry about her.
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You try living thousands of years and not going a little loopy. Some of us can't get through a normal human life span with out being off kilter.
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...even I can read the 'go away and leave me alone' in Gavia's posture.
Can't help thinking though, if Ellie's rocket hunting provides the best opportunity for Gavia to get back into orbit then our spacegirl would be well advised to be less sulky and unco-operative.
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A privileged teenage girl not being sulky? Might as well ask the sun to rise in the west (assuming it doesn't do that now in AG).
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It was rising in the north for a while but they fixed that. [/obscureminecraftjoke]
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Have we ever seen Sedna without that crazy gleam in her eyes? I don't know how Jeph does it with the eyes, but she always looks more than a little insane. I worry about her.
Her interaction with Alice in her home before bed she doesn't have it, I think she's too busy scowling. But I know what you mean, I think the crazy gleam comes from her eyes being just a little too wide most of the time.
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...even I can read the 'go away and leave me alone' in Gavia's posture.
Can't help thinking though, if Ellie's rocket hunting provides the best opportunity for Gavia to get back into orbit then our spacegirl would be well advised to be less sulky and unco-operative.
True, but she's gone through a pretty traumatic event and now she has a wild eyed over eager archaeophile bombarding her with questions that remind her of what she's lost. Moreover, Ellie may be the best lead too finding a way home, but that does not guarantee any of their efforts will work.. Gavia might be curbing her enthusiasm to avoid even more disappointment.
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He's just overeager and needs slapping down every so often
Careful, he might actually enjoy that...
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Have we ever seen Sedna without that crazy gleam in her eyes? I don't know how Jeph does it with the eyes, but she always looks more than a little insane. I worry about her.
Her interaction with Alice in her home before bed she doesn't have it, I think she's too busy scowling. But I know what you mean, I think the crazy gleam comes from her eyes being just a little too wide most of the time.
Her eyes look a little crossed to me, at least in the current strip. Maybe that gives her a crazy air?
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Strip is up!
Thank you Ellie for asking many of the questions a lot of us have been posing.
Even with Ardent's ability to upgrade old technology and Alice and/or Sedna knowing how to pilot a rocket ship there is the matter of fuel unless Ardent can upgrade a refinery.
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Here's my gut feelings on this:
- Yes, Ellie, Alice and Sedna know something you don't; more than you can imagine;
- They have a walking, talking Upgrade generator with an elegant tail; getting infrastructure will merely be a case of pointing out the right scrap and forbidding him from touching it;
- I strongly suspect that Alice and Sedna may have done this before; that's why they know so much.
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Ellie is a very practical person.
And that look that Alice and Sedna exchange in the last panel is clearly an "Oh shit, why didn't we think of that?" look. Yes, they do know way more than Ellie does. But not about rockets. Ellie is the rocket scientist here.
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And that look that Alice and Sedna exchange in the last panel is clearly an "Oh shit, why didn't we think of that?" look.
Or it could be a "how much shall we tell her?" look.
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"Hush Ellie, we just need to get them off earth. If the folk in orbit and the Praeses don't rescue them from there that's not our problem..."
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"...and if it explodes on launch, well, that's another solution."
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Perhaps, but that all seems like a roundabout way of killing them.
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Perhaps, but that all seems like a roundabout way of killing them.
Don't forget the space habitats have a technology, so far unexplained, which managed to put Ardent and Gavia on earth without apparently any vehicle at all, and Gavia expected it also to retrieve them as well, tho' it hasn't. Not unreasonable, I submit, to assume they could be retrieved from a rocket in random orbit.
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Don't forget the space habitats have a technology, so far unexplained, which managed to put Ardent and Gavia on earth without apparently any vehicle at all, and Gavia expected it also to retrieve them as well, tho' it hasn't. Not unreasonable, I submit, to assume they could be retrieved from a rocket in random orbit.
My impression is that the twins were sent down to Earth to do a mission, and if they can't get that mission done, there's no reason for the Praeses to go to any effort to retrieve them.
This would be true even if there were a working rocket system. Since it seems unlikely that transport between orbital habitats uses anything a crude as shuttles, there probably are no docking ports on them that the rocket could interface with. So unless the Praeses have hitherto-unseen warm fuzzies for their two spaceborn tools, there's still no getting back even if you could put the pair into a compatible orbit.
A word about orbit. It's not really that difficult to get up past most of the atmosphere; all you need is a large enough helium balloon. But to get to orbit, you have to go really fast, usually in the same direction as the Earth's spin. That's why they generally use rockets to get up there.
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https://youtu.be/2p_8gx-XHJo
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Don't forget the space habitats have a technology, so far unexplained, which managed to put Ardent and Gavia on earth without apparently any vehicle at all, and Gavia expected it also to retrieve them as well, tho' it hasn't. Not unreasonable, I submit, to assume they could be retrieved from a rocket in random orbit.
My impression is that the twins were sent down to Earth to do a mission, and if they can't get that mission done, there's no reason for the Praeses to go to any effort to retrieve them.
This would be true even if there were a working rocket system. Since it seems unlikely that transport between orbital habitats uses anything a crude as shuttles, there probably are no docking ports on them that the rocket could interface with. So unless the Praeses have hitherto-unseen warm fuzzies for their two spaceborn tools, there's still no getting back even if you could put the pair into a compatible orbit.
A word about orbit. It's not really that difficult to get up past most of the atmosphere; all you need is a large enough helium balloon. But to get to orbit, you have to go really fast, usually in the same direction as the Earth's spin. That's why they generally use rockets to get up there.
If there is a mission then neither of them were ever informed about it so whatever was the Praeses intention by marooning them on Earth it doesn't seem like they care what happens to their people or Earth's. And that is what I think is really motivating Alice, to figure out what the Praeses are plotting and if it's detrimental to her people stop it.
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Alice and Sedna: (simultaneously) "Leave that to us." (Glance to right)
Ardent: (after a moment of confused silence) "What?"
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Given Ellie's truthful comment that finding the remains of a 5000 year old rocket isn't likely to do much to help you get back to orbit, this whole trip (going to see Sedna, weeks of travel to get to the dig site) seems a bit of a wild goose chase. I'm guessing Jeph has something else in mind than a "quest to get back to the orbital habitats" for the long term story arc. We've had story elements - meeting two local immortals, Ardent the Insta-Upgrader, the Nightwalker, not to mention these Praeses everyone's all on about - which provide glimpses of where the story may be going. But for now Ellie and her peeps seem like a dead end. Something better happen to justify all this story time spent going to meet them.
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The next question to ask is probably 'what is actually in that vault they found?' So far they haven't been able to crack it. But they didn't have two super powerful immortals or a guy who can upgrade machinery before.
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Maybe The Truth? One of the old AIs who has been waiting patiently for the chance to tell its story? An equivalent of the Prothean Beacon in Mass Effect ready to pass on the warning of what really caused the Blink, why and what the future holds?
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I don't think getting the siblings back is the endgame, especially if Alice goes with them and takes the fight to the Praeses.
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Maybe The Truth? One of the old AIs who has been waiting patiently for the chance to tell its story? An equivalent of the Prothean Beacon in Mass Effect ready to pass on the warning of what really caused the Blink, why and what the future holds?
Or simply a Brass plaque with the words 'We appologise for the inconvenience' engraved on it.
I get the feeling that there is a reason they're there at the dig site that Jeph will slowly reveal to us in the next few strips.
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Here's a crazy theory. They located the underground remains of the infamous Deep Thirteen laboratory where there is a rocketship, but unfortunately once launched it will strand Alice, Gavia, and Ardent in space and subject them to cheesy movies on a weekly basis.
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But how would they eat and breathe and other science facts?
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It's just a comic, you should really just relax.
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But how would they eat and breathe and other science facts?
Science. [gdr]
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They would science the shit out of it.
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...aaaaaand there are the two people who don't get the joke.
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We've got comic sign!
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Perhaps the side look is because Ellie just tipped her hand? How does someone at a late 19th/early 20th century technological level know so much about space flight and manned rockets? Even assuming added knowledge from Sedna, one would think details would be vague or job oriented - finding the tech, not using it.
She starts covering her tracks by stumbling over "crew capsule" but then launches into fuel degradation, control center, gantries, the level of navigation equipment for orbital maneuvering (something a lot of people today don't even comprehend). All pretty detailed for someone who's vehicular knowledge should end at the horse/bird and buggy level.
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Yeah, Ellie may be special in the same way that Sedna and Alice are special. You wonder just how many of Alice's sister super-soldiers are still running around, either trying not to be found or trying to help as best as they can.
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My guess is that Ellie is immortal, like Alice and Sedna, and the reason she knows so much about rocketry is that they've tried -- and failed. But, with a little intervention from a blue boy with a knack for magically fixing machines...
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Don't forget that these people are archaeologists. They specialize in uncovering the past, specifically technology. Who knows how much information they've uncovered over the years. Even if they can't yet make it work, they could know all kinds of academic knowledge about it.
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Saying she knows some things about how rockets work, so therefore she must be an immortal is like saying "Wow, engineering student. You know Ohm's Law. You must be a wizard!" It is literally her job to find out things about rockets and space flight. That's what they are doing here. She doesn't need to be a super human immortal to know about what she's probably been studying for years.
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In our society, yes, you don't have to be a wizard to understand rocketry, but this is a society where the common people are deliberately kept in the dark, and the only people we've seen so far who aren't are the "witches".
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You are assuming that Alice's community is representative of ALL communities in the world. Even in our society the average person doesn't know how rockets work, but we have specialists, it would be the same in a 19th century tech level society. To make it a more accurate comparison, think of what an archaeologist knows about ancient cultures versus what the average uneducated person does.
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After the blink a lot of technology was either lost or ceased to function and presumably text saved on a data device would be included, however, this does not mean that mankind on Earth would be completely thrust back into the stoneage. They would still have knowledge from books to fall back on. Presumably a lot would still be lost in the years that followed, but enough was retained so that 5000 years later a woman living in an era that resembles the 19th century knows more about how rockets work than someone from that actual century.
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Case in point - do you understand how Roman viaducts work?
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The blink was certainly a technological setback, but at worst humanity reverted back to the iron age and at best the middle ages, however, in 5,000 years the world has only reached a pre industrial age level of development. You would think humanity would rebound and be more advanced than the current era we're living in, but they haven't. Alice mentioned that Earth's resources still haven't recovered since the great war so perhaps that is why development has stunted.
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I think you could equally argue that Alice' town, maybe the whole planet is deliberately and by choice maintained at a Green activists dream level of a balanced low energy input low output society. There are, I think, hints of that in Alice's early speeches to Ardent.
There's a lot not made plain about how the society works, but it could be argued that it's liable to take as much intelligence and organisation to maintain a static balanced low input society apparently without significant hunger or disease as it does to maintain our unbalanced expansion.
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The reason why there has been no rebound is a strong cultural aversion to doing so.
I've got the feeling that, post-Blink, those still on Earth were mostly either technophobic or technology-ambivalent. They blamed technology for the war and the losses of The Blink and wanted to use only the bare minimum that they needed. The rest was cast aside. I wouldn't be surprised if, as in A Candicle for Lebowitz, those with technological skills were lynched and scientific and technical libraries were mostly destroyed.
Five thousand years later, technology above early industrial age is considered magic and those who use it witches and wizards.
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Technology aversion lasted 5000 years?
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No, it became normalised into the culture to the point where no-one even questions it anymore when the elders tell the horror stories about what the 'tech-magic' did in the past and how the know-it-alls had to be exiled into space to stop them from causing trouble with it.
Of course, coverage isn't 100% - Ellie's archeophiles are proof of that but they are probably still considered eccentrics at best or heretics at worst.
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Technology aversion lasted 5000 years?
Easy. See Butlerian Jihad for another fictional take on the concept.
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The reason why there has been no rebound is a strong cultural aversion to doing so.
I've got the feeling that, post-Blink, those still on Earth were mostly either technophobic or technology-ambivalent. They blamed technology for the war and the losses of The Blink and wanted to use only the bare minimum that they needed. The rest was cast aside. I wouldn't be surprised if, as in A Candicle for Lebowitz, those with technological skills were lynched and scientific and technical libraries were mostly destroyed.
Five thousand years later, technology above early industrial age is considered magic and those who use it witches and wizards.
Maybe for a few centuries, but it doesn't take long for people to forget when all they have is ancient books to reference or worse oral tradition. I think JimC is right about some other force being at work. Perhaps some secretive organization that maintains this level of development and thwarts any attempts to improve it. Perhaps they were the ones that stole Gavia's nanotechnology. As such Earth might be similar to the Star Trek episode "The Return of the Archons," but without cloaked lawgivers and purge festivals. Regardless it's not the people who maintain this, but so called guardians. Alice and Sedna don't appear to be a part of it, but they may be sympathetic since they actually can remember how terrible things were before the blink.
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I think JimC is right about some other force being at work. Perhaps some secretive organization that maintains this level of development and thwarts any attempts to improve it.
I wasn't thinking external forces at all...
We mustn't forget that for most of human history people have tended to live in much the same way as their grandfathers did, and been reasonably content to do so. If you posit a society in which there are social pressures not to expand population or use extra resources, and life isn't too bad, then I don't see why that shouldn't be static for a prolonged period. Plenty of examples in history or even geography where societies have been essential static and stable until external factors change them...
We can speculate that the people have plenty of stories from history of the terrible things that happen if society or individuals get too greedy and try to expand and develop. If you wanted to think pejoratively then its a kind of crab bucket, but if in fact life is good in the crab bucket, no-one starves, no-one gets killed in wars, all the rest, it could have a definite appeal.
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I think JimC is right about some other force being at work. Perhaps some secretive organization that maintains this level of development and thwarts any attempts to improve it.
I wasn't thinking external forces at all...
We mustn't forget that for most of human history people have tended to live in much the same way as their grandfathers did, and been reasonably content to do so. If you posit a society in which there are social pressures not to expand population or use extra resources, and life isn't too bad, then I don't see why that shouldn't be static for a prolonged period. Plenty of examples in history or even geography where societies have been essential static and stable until external factors change them...
We can speculate that the people have plenty of stories from history of the terrible things that happen if society or individuals get too greedy and try to expand and develop. If you wanted to think pejoratively then its a kind of crab bucket, but if in fact life is good in the crab bucket, no-one starves, no-one gets killed in wars, all the rest, it could have a definite appeal.
True, but not all civilizations choose to live that way and it's usually the ones that seek advancement and improvement that tend to conquer those that prefer to live simplistically.
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Also true. But Alice's village has something that the pacifist pastoralists of history didn't, and that's Alice to defend them. I expect any low-tech army (and by low-tech I mean pre-20th century tech) that went up against Alice would quickly find itself decimated. Even a higher-tech army would find itself in a crisis of leadership as everyone above the rank of lieutenant suddenly found themselves dead at the hands of an unstoppable super-soldier assassin. This puts a severe brake on any wannabe conqueror.
And yes, I think Alice really is that good.
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No culture has been static for 1000 years. Neandertals maybe, but never Homo sapiens sapiens.
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Maybe for a few centuries, but it doesn't take long for people to forget when all they have is ancient books to reference or worse oral tradition. I think JimC is right about some other force being at work. Perhaps some secretive organization that maintains this level of development and thwarts any attempts to improve it. Perhaps they were the ones that stole Gavia's nanotechnology
I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. I also think that many of those like Alice are the ones that provide enforcement, even if they're not involved with the cabal and unaware of what its actual aims are. 5000 years is a *lot* of institutional memory, and given Alice's flashbacks (likely quite common), she'd be very easy to push into doing so even without any serious effort at manipulation.
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No culture has been static for 1000 years. Neandertals maybe, but never Homo sapiens sapiens.
Not even in, say, the Amazon basin or other places where people live with a Stone age culture?
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I don't think we can talk to much in generalities here. The sample size is just to low. So far we've seen Alice's village, who she kept control over. And the Archeaophiles. Or at least one of them. The rest of what we know of the world pretty much comes from Alice, so we are only seeing things through her viewpoint. There are other villages out there, but we don't know how often they interact with each other or what they are like. It is known that Alice keeps tight control of technology in her village though. She won't even let them mess with something as relatively simple as an electric well pump. If something goes wrong with it, they come to her to fix it. Though they are smart enough to figure it out. Basically, it looks like she has made sure her village is dependent on her, and has shown she's willing to use threats to enforce her will. So I'm not sure we can take her village as a sample of what the rest of the world is like.
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No culture has been static for 1000 years. Neandertals maybe, but never Homo sapiens sapiens.
Not even in, say, the Amazon basin or other places where people live with a Stone age culture?
I do not know how much is known about them. But in those places where we have found artifacts spread over long periods, there is always development.
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Also true. But Alice's village has something that the pacifist pastoralists of history didn't, and that's Alice to defend them. I expect any low-tech army (and by low-tech I mean pre-20th century tech) that went up against Alice would quickly find itself decimated. Even a higher-tech army would find itself in a crisis of leadership as everyone above the rank of lieutenant suddenly found themselves dead at the hands of an unstoppable super-soldier assassin. This puts a severe brake on any wannabe conqueror.
And yes, I think Alice really is that good.
So do I, but unless there are others like Alice throughout the world some settlements would evolve into city-states and begin to expand. Foolish conquerors might try to invade Alice's village while the wise would just be content to conquer everything around it and leave it alone. There's still a lot we don't know and while it's possible for there to be more immortals than Alice as we can see with Sedna they have philosophical differences and it might be quite possible that a few immortals could take it upon themselves to be more proactive in aiding humanity recover from the blink. Moreover, they would be evenly matched.
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Technological and cultural advancement usually evolve to fill a need, be it more resources, more safety, whatever. I think if you research those cultures that still most operate on stone age technical and cultural levels you'll find that they primarily exist in areas where food is plentiful and safety is not a major concern. They continued the same basic lifestyle because it functions adequately and no major shifts have been necessary to sustain the society. If the post-Blink world supplies everything the people need in terms of food, safety, and health/longevity, then it's entirely reasonable that no major technological advances have thus far been made.
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If the post-Blink world supplies everything the people need in terms of food, safety, and health/longevity, then it's entirely reasonable that no major technological advances have thus far been made.
Add to that the higher tech just doesn't work, apparently.
Now, electricity must work on some level, or there'd be no point to the windmill we met Alice on. No sign of internal or external combustion engines, though. Nor any sign of a communications net; not even telegraphs. I haven't even seen signs of moveable type. All those are things any civilization would immediately adopt, once invented.
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Telegraphs, even "line of sight" things like the Clacks in Discworld require a group powerful and wealthy enough to not only create them, but keep others from breaking them down. The dig site certainly has the technological means to create such things, and may even be able to communicate point to point with certain other groups, but almost certainly has no means to project the power needed for any communications network beyond what
sneakernet chocobos struthis are capable of doing.
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500 years of technological stasis, aided by guardians with magic powers, I could buy.
5000, no way. 5000 years ago, Proto-Indo-European tribes, in groups about as large as Alice's village, were inventing the wheel. Within a few centuries, the chariot had spread across Europe, and tribes who had them were victorious, starting a few millennia of territorial war and expansion partly driven by increasingly clever technology. China was inventing silk. Greece was developing bronze.
Within 2500 years we had the Roman Empire, the Zhou dynasty, the development of writing and accounting. Things just accelerated after that. I don't think it's because of need -- it is just with that much time, things keep on changing.
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Actually the wheel probably came into existence more like 12000 years ago if not earlier in a simplified form. Egypt was in its early stages of discovery about 7000 years ago. It isn't until the last 150 years that progress has been at ridiculous speed.
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Add to that, that up until the 1800s, most people worldwide (yes, even in Europe) were still living in 'primitive' isolated communities, speaking local dialects, interacting little with the outside world. Change is inescapable, but the basic tools remain functionally the same. Technological change came from outside, via trade routes and societal superstructures (which don't seem to exist in AG). The people of the village probably wouldn't have built the water pump or the wind turbine without Alice.
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Strip is up!
And for anyone who thinks Alice just threatens people to get what she wants here's proof that she can strike a good bargain.
We don't know just yet what the plan is, but more than likely Ardent will upgrade whatever rocket they find and Alice will pilot it.
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Frankly, if someone like Alice promised me gold, I'd scratch it when I got it. I'm not saying that she'll cheat Ellie; she'll just give her a list of storage dumps where there is less likely to be easy-to-use and military-applicable stuff. She'll protect Ellie and her people; it's her nature. She'll protect them from themselves if she has to.
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This does seem to put the kibosh on the idea that Ellie's another immortal.
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Frankly, if someone like Alice promised me gold, I'd scratch it when I got it. I'm not saying that she'll cheat Ellie; she'll just give her a list of storage dumps where there is less likely to be easy-to-use and military-applicable stuff. She'll protect Ellie and her people; it's her nature. She'll protect them from themselves if she has to.
Keep in mind only Ardent has the ability to upgrade whatever he has into a state of the art weapon of mass destruction. Once he and everyone else leave it doesn't matter if Ellie and her crew find a stealth bomber. They wouldn't have the fuel to get it to fly as well as replacement parts for everything else that decayed after 5000 years.
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I'm not thinking of a stealth bomber; Sedna has shown it is possible to get even complex weapons back to working condition using just locally-available materials. I'd really prefer them not to find a bunker filled with mortar launchers or towed light artillery pieces. This is especially the case in that Ellie has confirmed that they sell on these toys, likely caring little about what they were meant to do and for what purpose the buyers want them.
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So it appears the plan is to find a old rocket and get Ardent to "upgrade" it to working order. This, along with Chekhov's Beacon that Alice left back at the town gives me pause: what if the Praeses planned this all along? Ardent upgrades the rocket, and instead of becoming a nice space shuttle to get the kids back into orbit, it becomes an ICBM that attacks Alice's town in revenge for the new crater on the moon...
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Yea, this seems like a really bad idea, Alice. Granting 19th century humans access to post-singularity military tech is a disaster waiting to happen. Not if, when.
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I'm not thinking of a stealth bomber; Sedna has shown it is possible to get even complex weapons back to working condition using just locally-available materials. I'd really prefer them not to find a bunker filled with mortar launchers or towed light artillery pieces. This is especially the case in that Ellie has confirmed that they sell on these toys, likely caring little about what they were meant to do and for what purpose the buyers want them.
Sedna has the knowledge to restore the weapons they find to working order. No one else does. It wouldn't be any different than finding a box of muskets. Unless someone knew how to make gunpowder and musket balls it's just a metal tube with a wooden handle.
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Frankly, if someone like Alice promised me gold, I'd scratch it when I got it. I'm not saying that she'll cheat Ellie; she'll just give her a list of storage dumps where there is less likely to be easy-to-use and military-applicable stuff. She'll protect Ellie and her people; it's her nature. She'll protect them from themselves if she has to.
Yeah, I can see her doing that. Though the others have mad the point that it seems only Sedna has a working knowlege of how to get modern weapons working again. I'd suspect what Alice wrecked was only a small percentage of what they've actually dug up with Sedna taking a sampling for her own purposes while the rest have been broken down and recycled for their metallic content and a small sampling going to whatever sort of Museum or display they may be running.
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An equivalent of the Promethean Bacon
mine headcannon is mine
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We don't know just yet what the plan is, but more than likely Ardent will upgrade whatever rocket they find and Alice will pilot it.
That's the plan, of course. But it's got nearly as many holes in it as Ellie's version.
* How do they know that, even upgraded well enough to get into orbit, it's accurate enough to find and safely dock with an earth-orbit habitat? (heck, he might have upgraded the thing into an interplanetary or interstellar craft, which automatically blows right by the low earth orbit)
* How do they know it will have a way to return to Earth?
* How will Alice (or any of them) know which habitat to look for? There are hundreds. They might be marked with big letters, I suppose.
(http://www.littlestuffedbull.com/images/2015/kirbymonsters/09-creaturex-strangeworlds3/dd3.jpg)
* If Alice assumes the Praesides on Ardent's habitat are hostile, why would they allow her to dock? Or if so, to leave?
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That's the plan, of course. But it's got nearly as many holes in it as Ellie's version.
* How do they know that, even upgraded well enough to get into orbit, it's accurate enough to find and safely dock with an earth-orbit habitat? (heck, he might have upgraded the thing into an interplanetary or interstellar craft, which automatically blows right by the low earth orbit)
* How do they know it will have a way to return to Earth?
* How will Alice (or any of them) know which habitat to look for? There are hundreds. They might be marked with big letters, I suppose.
* If Alice assumes the Praesides on Ardent's habitat are hostile, why would they allow her to dock? Or if so, to leave?
Not as bad as that I don't think... We know there is both human operated teleportation* ( http://www.alicegrove.com/post/107925637899/exposition-finally ) and direct teleportation by the Praeses ( http://www.alicegrove.com/post/109265187514/hello-is-it-me-youre-looking-for ) and we know that both, quite probably with the same technology base, are capable of delivering ardent and Gavia safely from orbit to earth, and both had an expectation of being able to return the same way. So it seems pretty certain that there's inter habitat transportation.
From Alice' point of view she only has to get the kids into orbit and they are Someone Else's Problem. Its perfectly reasonable to assume the Praeses will recover them from their before life support gives out. And even if Alice does have to go up there the tech that sent the kids down can presumably send her down.
* if not teleportation something functionally identical