mars
Original: mars on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1: A bald presenter stands on a stage in front of a red curtain, addressing an audience.
Presenter: "A Mars mission requires a 7 month trip, followed by a 26 month surface stay before the 7 month trip home. This is not an easy psychological task."
Panel 2: Close-up of the presenter, hand to his chest.
Presenter: "We scanned the globe for people willing to forgo most human contact for years and spend their days fixing tedious hardware problems."
Panel 3: Members of the audience call out guesses.
Audience member: "Experienced astronauts?"
Audience member: "Submariners?"
Audience member: "Zen masters?"
Panel 4: The presenter answers as the audience listens.
Presenter: "Sysadmins."
Panel 5: Close-up of the presenter.
Presenter: "They're already en route and don't even realize they've left the office."
Panel 6: A spacecraft drifts in the blackness of space, with a speech bubble coming from it.
Spacecraft (voice from inside): "Goddamned users. Someone switched off the goddamn gravity."
Votey:
A distraught man with closed, scrunched eyes and a downturned, trembling mouth.
Caption (from off-panel): "Looks like if we spin everything it works ok. Good enough for me."
Presenter: "A Mars mission requires a 7 month trip, followed by a 26 month surface stay before the 7 month trip home. This is not an easy psychological task."
Panel 2: Close-up of the presenter, hand to his chest.
Presenter: "We scanned the globe for people willing to forgo most human contact for years and spend their days fixing tedious hardware problems."
Panel 3: Members of the audience call out guesses.
Audience member: "Experienced astronauts?"
Audience member: "Submariners?"
Audience member: "Zen masters?"
Panel 4: The presenter answers as the audience listens.
Presenter: "Sysadmins."
Panel 5: Close-up of the presenter.
Presenter: "They're already en route and don't even realize they've left the office."
Panel 6: A spacecraft drifts in the blackness of space, with a speech bubble coming from it.
Spacecraft (voice from inside): "Goddamned users. Someone switched off the goddamn gravity."
Votey:
A distraught man with closed, scrunched eyes and a downturned, trembling mouth.
Caption (from off-panel): "Looks like if we spin everything it works ok. Good enough for me."
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic. A bald presenter on a stage tells an audience that a Mars mission means a 7-month trip out, a 26-month surface stay, and a 7-month trip home, which is a hard psychological task, so they scanned the globe for people willing to forgo human contact for years and spend their days fixing tedious hardware problems. Audience members guess: experienced astronauts? submariners? zen masters? The presenter answers: sysadmins. He adds that they are already en route and don't even realize they've left the office. The final panel shows a small spacecraft adrift in space, with a voice from inside grumbling, "Goddamned users. Someone switched off the goddamn gravity." Votey: a close-up of a miserable, scrunch-faced man saying, "Looks like if we spin everything it works ok. Good enough for me."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.