Grrl Power #1367 – Get rich violently scheme
Cora’s plan probably sounds like a bad idea for a number of reasons. Some of those reasons may be laid out in the next few pages.
At the time this page was posted, a Kg of rhodium is worth about $183,260, which honestly is less than I would have guessed. Iridium clocks in at $132K/Kg, and palladium is a bargain at $35K/Kg. I know they’re all useful in electronics, and also that Rhodium was the primary currency in Star Justice, where I guess it was used as star ship drive fuel.
In the Grrl-verse, elements are valued by four factors: how pretty is it, how abundant is in nature, how useful its chemical properties are, and most importantly, how energy intensive it is to mine/refine/extract or artificially fabricate. Generally speaking, the higher the atomic number, the more energy intensive it is. Also isotopes take more energy – generally, the more neutron variance, the more energy intensive it is to create.
Even with alien super science, the laws of physics still exist, and you can’t use your nuclear reactor to create more reactor fuel. Well, you can, but even the best alien super science can’t get you over 100% efficiency, so it’d be dumb to do. That said, it’s also possible to create Dyson arrays around stars and harvest absolutely massive amounts of solar energy, so it’s possible to create darn near anything – if you have access to a Dyson Array slash Matter Replicator – Let’s just call it a Knights of the Old Republic Star Forge. Not everyone does, of course. Have access to something like that, I mean. Not even every race has their own Star Forge, so while the greater galactic community claims to be post scarcity, the reality is that there is scarcity based economics at play. It’s all just at a wildly different scale than what Earth manages.
The vote incentive is finally done!
The update to the TWC image is pretty minor, but the Patreon version has the bonus comic as well as nude versions. I will strive to make the next one more timely.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
That’s very surprising.
I would not have thought rare earths to be of galactic value.
They’re valuable on earth, because they bind to easy in molecules and refining them is a dirty process.
Molecules are pretty rare in space and dumping toxic waste doesn’t really sound like a problem.
This implies some fascinating things about the FTL worlds and space in general.
They’re apperantly limited to large chunck mining.
Deus’s transmuters are even for FTL societies Top level tech(otherwise they could simply make them and as such be more limited to the weight of the atom).
Heavy metals, okay I get that, but rare earth metals(those are rare [b]earth[/b] for a reason) I would not have expected that.
It’s a weird morning when I read that as Canuck mining aka what wolverine has been called occasionally in comics
Smoutwortel sez: “That’s very surprising. I would not have thought rare earths to be of galactic value.”
I wouldn’t have thought of them as having galactic existence.
Maybe we should start calling then “rare exoplanets”…
The word “earth” with a lowercase “e” doesn’t mean the planet, it means stuff found in the ground. Dirt, clay, rocks, sand, ore, etc. are “earth.”
I’m using the terran name, because I’m using a Terran language.
from what I recall, the most complex element formed when a yellow dwarf like our Sun goes Supernova is iron & anything with a higher atomic number needs a MUCH bigger star to go bang, so I’d say the fancier elements are scattered over a greater radius from the point of origin than iron and lower.
Our star isn’t massive enough to produce any element larger than carbon, with a little nitrogen and oxygen. We might get some neon during the most energetic phase of the red-giant time, but nothing heavier. After a few billion years, our sun will stop fusing atoms and just become a very large diamond with a helium and hydrogen atmosphere as it slowly cools over trillions of years.
A star would have to be at least 9 solar masses to start fusing iron and nickel, which is what triggers a supernova. This kind of supernova can generate a huge, rapidly expanding nebula with a variety of heavy elements in it and a neutron star left where the star once stood. If the neutron star is larger than about 5 solar masses, it will achieve gravitational runaway and collapse into a black hole.
When I was in high school in the 1980s, supernovas were thought to be the sole source of elements up to plutonium; plutonium simply doesn’t stick around long enough to be considered naturally occurring. More recently, with the discovery of neutron star collisions, some people recalculated the math and realized supernovas alone would not be energetic enough to produce the heavy elements in the abundances we observe in the universe. When a couple of neutron stars slam into each other, however, you can produce very large atoms; for many elements with atomic numbers of 40, neutron star collisions are seen as a significant contributor to only contributor of these heavy elements, including almost all the gold and all the thorium and uranium. This kind of work has made us understand that we are not only the result of supernova spewing their guts all over the place, but a couple of neutron stars got together to contribute to our existence today.
Oops, elements with atomic numbers larger than 40, …
We already use nuclear reactors to make nuclear fuel.
Depleted uranium recycling is a thing and it works.
The neutrons released in a nuclear reaction tend to turn less radioactive uranium in more radio-active uranium.
This can be used for further reactions when seperated from the less radioactive uranium.
You have to make sure you have the right isotope to start, or else you don’t get the glowy kind, you get the splodey kind.
It also helps when your nuclear reactor has a non-explody design and procedures. With modern designs, a nuclear power reactor can not produce a nuclear explosion. The explosions at Fucashima were the result of insufficient cooling, producing excess hydrogen, which then reacted chemically, blowing the roof off the reactor.
I don’t know the details, but plutonium IS a by-product of controlled nuclear fission & is itself useful as reactor fuel (I recall reading from multiple sources that one way of disposing of decommissioned nuclear weapons is to recycle the fissile material, including plutonium, as reactor fuel)
Usefull (chemical) properties, pretty, high atomic number, weird isotopes, hard to make.
What would the USA think of exporting its high yield nuclear waste to the Galaxy(depleted uranium, polonium, plutonium etc.).
Take plutonium:
Usefull (chemical) properties: it’s an inherent battery, it is super reactive in all kinds of intersting ways/
Hard to make: uranium is actually pretty rare(it’s just really popular)
High atomic number: is 140U enough for you.
It’s considered waste: hard to use for nuclear energy.
Pretty: it glows
Plutonium’s atomic number is 94. I thought for a moment you might be thinking of the atomic weight, but that’s actually really low; Pu isotopes are from 226 through 247, and Pu-240 (assuming a typo) doesn’t meet your description.
Well, just as long as it’s not some of that Illudium Pu-36 Space Modulator…
“Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth shattering kaboom!”
Earth’s nuclear waste is *tiny*. Reactors usually have a “spent rod” pool where the rods live after use. No spent rod pool has filled up since we started using them. Nor has any other radioactive waste facility.
The other waste is stuff like pacemaker batteries after you die. It’s a bit larger, but again not huge amounts of stuff.
If we did want to ship it off, Cora’s ship could probably hold all of Earth’s waste in its holds. So one trip. Then what?
The “nuclear waste” problem is another non-problem, exaggerated by activists.
Nice mood transition of Max in the last three panels.
Reminds me of a scene from, “Kentucky Fried Movie”.
Regarding the page title: most ‘get rich’ schemes involve violence in some way, not all of it physical
BTW, why is Cora introduced as “Dabbler’s alien friend”? She is human, isn’t she?
Hyu-mon, but not from Dirt, so, technically, an alien
It leads me to wonder, if off worlders have been snatching humans ever since there have been humans (maybe there is even an off world population of Neandertals), how long until genetic drift and maybe a few gene mods along the way would render the two populations unable to interbreed?
Also, there’s this guy who drew a couple of tons of gold from the earth’s crust for his private use. Couldn’t they ask him to get them a few kilograms of rare earth minerals?
I had the same idea. I remember that guy too.
I really want to see Cora try human delicacies like Chocolate, Coffee, or KFC. Imagine her dismissing it initially only to try it and realize how amazing it is.
Costly but feasible privatizing the Jules Verne restaurant (Le Jules Verne) onsecond floor of the Eiffel Tower in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France.
It’s a costly restaurant on an iconic landmark.
And with a palace hotel ( le mandarin oriental ) near the louvre and a 1 week tour of Paris you could with a 100 person group make a profit as intergalactic travel agency for ritch …
And for payement an old and basic FTL propulsor could be used.
Love how there’s no better way to get on maxs good side than to give her a chance to fight all out lol. She’s a warrior through and through
Love how there’s no better way to get on maxs good side than to give her a chance to fight all out lol. She’s a warrior through and through
A “ringer” is someone who loses on purpose. That’s the non-starter part.
No, a ringer is someone who is unfairly qualified for something. Like a corporate softball team hiring a pro softball player as a “consultant” so they can crush those jerks at Dunder Mifflin.
You’re thinking of a desperate fighter that gets paid to throw a fight AKA “Take a dive.”
Cora is asking her to take a HUGE risk, broadcasted fights would leave her at risk of coming under attack. The shadier places, if someone spotted her, they’d see $$ and she’d have to fight her way out. I’m sure Max could, but there’s a lot of tech out there that might control or at least confine her. I doubt Max’s choker would survive in a fight. Maybe one of those “hard light” generators?
Two notes: the metals mentioned are not “rare earths.” Second: metals above iron (in the periodic table) should not exist in a “big bang” universe.