Which means the corruptible human is the weakness.
As with most systems.
Personally, I’m fond of rockoons, flying vehicles that gradually build up speed and transition smoothly from buoyant flight, to aerodynamic flight, to orbit.
Besides a children’s cartoon show/toy line, the name rockoon seems to primarily refer to balloon-sounding rocket combos. But I remember seeing a proposal for a large flying wing dirigible that would start from the stratosphere and use electric propulsion to transition to generating lift and then by degrees achieve orbit. Is that the one you were thinking of?
Yeah, that’s what I was referring to. I thought it was called a rockoon, but maybe I misremembered the name.
Looks like the JP Aerospace Ascender concept.
Anyone for cold toast? New “What-if?”:
Brian
So freezers beat wolves?
Toaster heats freezer, freezer kills wolf, wolf eats toaster.
I note that the toast manages to stay out of this sordid little affair.
Because I put a fried egg with some butter, cheese, and some Cholula on it and ate it.
Then I ate the wolf because I was really hungry that day.
The toast is just a pawn in a game among the powerful. It always loses, no matter which of the other three is victorious.
There’s probably a lesson in there for us.
I hope you at least skewered it with some onions and mushrooms first.
I said I was really hungry, not that I was a barbarian! There are standards after all.
The toast is toast.
That wolf looks way too thick to be gulped down by a stick figure.
Cf. the “Wizard of Id” strip where the Wizard proudly shows off a vitamin pill you only have to take every thirty days - and it’s four feet long:
— How am I supposed to swallow that?
— You’ve got thirty days!
I’m all in favor of Randal’s discernibly cute animals (who’s a cute woofy woofy?), but why aren’t they stick animals? 
“You should probably get back to shore before spring hits.”
Dang, that was a long winter; it lasted two panels!