Back to B.C. by Johnny Hart for January 30, 2022

‘Round and ’round and ’round again, ’round and ’round and ’round.

I’m in orbit my whole life but never leave the ground.

This reminds me of the short SF story “The Holes Around Mars” by Jerome Bixby

So they just stood there for an hour and a half?Yeah. Low Earth Orbit is about 90 minutes. Surface orbit would be a little bit less, but still, just about an hour and a half.

Lol

Depend on Grog to test the bounds of a sport.

Does that count as a lost ball? One stroke penalty.

There was a famous Physics lecturer who would begin his lecture on orbital mechanics by opening one of the side doors of the lecture stage and throwing out a tennis ball, as hard as he could. He would then spend the next fifty minutes showing how to derive and calculate the orbital period of an object at sea level, approximately 50 minutes. He ended the lecture by opening the door on the other side of the stage, whereupon the tennis ball would come flying into the room. It was a real crowd pleaser and brought home the point.

That boom in the second panel was probably a sonic boom. Anyone under 60 remember them?

Back in the 60’s Jim Bede built a powered airplane starting with a Schweitzer 2-32 for the purpose of a non-stop (or one stop, maybe) circumnavigation of the world. Called it LOVE, for Low Orbit, Very Efficiently.

can Grog give me a few lessons?

And it is still going!