Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard for June 12, 2022

Man, that sucks.

“Full speed ahead, Ensign. I don’t see anything in front of us!”

“Uh, Captain… The reason you—”

“You heard my order.”

How can you miss seeing a black hole in space?

Well, the thing about a black hole – it’s main distinguishing feature – is it’s black. And the thing about space, the color of space, your basic space color – is it’s black. So how are you supposed to see them?

Even though this idea is ridiculous, if they’re going to do it – the lighthouse needs to be positioned farther away from the black hole.

This reminds me of 1968. Pulsars had just been discovered and the existence of such superbly periodic signals caused more than one suggestion of LGMs (Little Green Men). But one I liked was that the Pulsars were in fact celestial “lighthouses” (operating at radio frequencies) marking hazards in space.

In a sense that is true, as the pulsars exist as the remnants of supernovae.

And now, NASA is looking at using pulsars as navigation aids for spacecraft. They would then not need to rely on signals from earth.

Position just right you could see the back of your head.

Looks like the black hole is advertising for haircuts!

Dr Mel is safe though!

Black holes is just humongous amounts of mass in a teeny tiny span of space.

Actually, Doc, the lighthouse is a great idea. Since even light is pulled into a black hole, the light from the lighthouse shows us the way to the black hole, and what direction to avoid.

Beautifully illustrated.

A lighthouse should work as it would light the event horizon.

If it’s close enough for the light to pulled into the black hole, then wouldn’t the lighthouse itself be pulled in? And if it was that close to the event horizon, wouldn’t time dilation become an issue? The light mechanism in the light house would stop moving from our point of view.

I’m put in mind of Disney’s terrible Black Hole movie from the 1970s, which had two redeeming features – the stunning set design, and the last 30 seconds which nearly redeemed the whole thing retrospectively.

Maybe they should be concerned that there’s a black hole so close by, since they are orbiting Earth.

Needs a Black Hole Bell too.

All the aliens who need a haircut are being killed!

As long as the lighthouse avoids the Event Horizon.

Clever.

How about Blacklight Lighthouse?