Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

The comic presents a detailed chart titled "Methods for Going to Space, with Problems and Solutions," listing various proposed methods of reaching space (rocket, mass driver, skyhook, space elevator, ballistic cannon, space fountain, and high altitude launch). Each method has a real engineering problem listed alongside it, but the "solutions" are increasingly absurd, unhelpful, or simply restate the problem. For example, a rocket's problem is "must lift heavy fuel, making the fuel heavier, making the fuel very heavy" and the solution is "lots of money." For the mass driver, encountering atmospheric drag at high speeds is solved with "new theme park." The final entry, high altitude launch, has the problem "we are not on a gigantic mega-blimp" and the solution is simply "NO. NO."

The Humor

The comic plays on the genuine frustration of space access engineering, where every proposed method of getting to orbit has serious, often seemingly intractable problems. The humor comes from the contrast between the real, well-documented engineering challenges (atmospheric drag, material strength requirements, the tyranny of the rocket equation) and the proposed "solutions" that range from throwing money at the problem to outright despair.

The escalating absurdity of the solutions -- from practical-sounding ("magnets?") to resigned ("embrace risk of awesome death") to nihilistic ("NO. NO.") -- captures the real sentiment in aerospace engineering that getting to space is fundamentally hard and that no elegant solution exists. The chart format parodies the kind of engineering comparison tables found in technical papers, lending an air of false authority to what is essentially a comedy of despair.

References

• Delta-v / Rocket equation: The rocket's problem references the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, where carrying more fuel requires more fuel to carry that fuel.
• Mass driver: An electromagnetic launch system that accelerates payloads along a track.
• Skyhook: A proposed rotating tether in orbit that could grab payloads from lower altitudes.
• Space elevator: A cable anchored to Earth's surface extending to geostationary orbit, requiring materials stronger than any currently available.
• Space fountain: A proposed structure using a stream of magnetically accelerated projectiles to support a tower to space.
• Ballistic cannon: Similar to Jules Verne's concept in From the Earth to the Moon.