gruntothesmitey

Great comic, loved it for a while now.

I often find myself running out of creative ideas. Like I have a reservoir of creativity which gets drained if I do too many "creative" things for too long. Do this sort of thing happen to you guys? If so, how do you overcome it?

I think the lack of any real magnetic field is the barrier to entry. Only the southern hemisphere has any sort of field, and it's very weak, like 1/3,000th as strong as ours.

Anyone on Mars for too long will get cooked.

Hi, impressive resume! What were your inspirations behind the various Star Wars designs? Did Lucas already have an idea in mind for each, did he just say something like "Go talk to McQuarrie and ask to see his paintings", or did he let you come up with whatever you wanted to come up with?

Also a guy with "Poor Impulse Control" and a bad-ass bike.

What do you guys think of the Neumann Drive? Have you had a chance to check it out?

One thing that struck me weird about the movie was that they buried the RTG (a source of alpha radiation) but didn't seem to care much about solar radiation. How would you protect people from radiation not only on the way there, but also while on the surface? The only magnetic field to speak of is in the south, which isn't exactly the smoothest place on the planet.

Any thought given to growing food on Mars?

Does the recent briny water discovery change your plans in any way?

Lastly, What did you think of The Martian?

Thanks for doing an AMA! I really hope we can re-examine our budget priorities and get someone on Mars sooner rather than later. Heck, I'd settle for the moon...