xkcd.WTF!?

Explanation ➲

This comic was the Christmas comic of 2021.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope jointly developed by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. It has suffered many, many delays over its development period (as previously referenced in 2014: JWST Delays), but it finally launched on Christmas day, December 25, 2021.

In this comic, the James Webb Space Telescope is finally ready to take off. However, an unfortunate circumstance occurs: Santa Claus himself, presumably on his way to or from delivering presents to children, crosses into the path of the launch rocket. The joke is the implication that, right on the brink of success, this extraordinarily unlucky incident will either destroy the telescope, harm Santa, or cause yet another delay, much to Cueball's horror.

Real launch aborts have occurred with fewer than 2 seconds left in the countdown, causing delays of over a month.

According to the title text, the range safety officer has made the decision to shoot down Santa Claus's sleigh, in order to clear the sky above, protecting the launch window. This seems to demonstrate that they are determined not to let anything delay the launch any further (or that given a choice between destroying the telescope or destroying Santa, the range safety officer chooses the latter). "Range Safety Officer" is the job title of a person in charge of the safety of a launch. Range safety officer and other similar range officers are the subject of 2876: Range Safety. That was the first comic after New Years day in 2024, so seems like Randall contemplated rocket launches around the Holidays... Also earlier in the Christmas comic of 2023 he also killed Santa using Hydrothermal Vents. Before this he has only killed Santa back in 2008 in the 2008 Christmas Special.

Airspace is normally closed to air traffic to avoid collisions between aircraft and rocket launches. While Santa might not know about such restrictions, he already knows about this particular launch because thousands of astronomy geeks have asked for a new space telescope as a Christmas present in their letters to Santa, and the easiest way for Santa to deliver such a present is just keeping a safe distance from the launch pad. Moreover NORAD tracks Santa's flying around the world and would be able to give sufficient warning to both Santa and Ground Control to prevent such a close encounter of a festive kind; as well as to prevent accidental global thermonuclear war by confusing a small herd of flying reindeer with a first-strike attack by a foreign power. Finally, Santa Claus performs deliveries overnight, while the launch is scheduled for morning local time, so the timing of such a collision would not occur.

The JWST has been referenced previously in 1730: Starshade, 2014: JWST Delays, 2447: Hammer Incident and 2550: Webb, is on the list of payloads in 1461: Payloads and its planned use was indirectly referenced in 975: Occulting Telescope. Santa is known to maintain a list of humans responsible for technological incidents and to have suitable punishment for offenders. 12 days after launch it was referenced again in 2564: Sunshield.

Trivia about posting time

The release day of this comic was Christmas Eve the 24th of December. As can be seen from when this page was created 05:02:00, 25 December 2021 (UTC), the comic came out at least 7 hours before launch which was 12:20:00, 25 December 2021 (UTC). Since Boston (Randall's home town) is 5 hours after UTC then the comic must have released close to midnight on the 24th for Randall, and clearly before midnight for the rest of the time zones in the US.

Web comics are usually drawn some time in advance. When this comic was drawn and scheduled for publication, it is possible NASA had not yet announced that the launch of JWST was slipping from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day.

The launch was probably three days after Randall opened the last number in his Webb advent calendar. (Thus this is the second Christmas comic this year referring to the telescope).