Dr. STONE (Dr.STONE)

Um, it came out pretty nicely, didn't it?

In the words of Doctor Xeno.

Well, it's rather...

elegant.

Luna.

Was Doctor Xeno a NASA scientist?

Wait a sec! How did you know that?

When I was a kid,

he helped start me down the path of building rockets.

Their Doctor Xeno was my old science mentor.

THE TWO SCIENTISTS

Hm.

All right.

-Ready? -Hm-mm.

-Whoa! -Whoa!

Next one's getting off the ground!

Oh!

Oh, dang it!

None of this makes any sense to me!

Whoa, I bet you're huntin' down

some sick rocket secrets on that thing!

Huh?

I didn't know you could read English!

That's amazing!

I wish, but not quite.

Still stuck at, "This is a pen."

What's a "Disizapen?"

Naturally, most of these articles

are written in English,

so I have to squeak by with a dictionary.

But poring over articles only gets you so far.

You save loads of time

by sharing info with your colleagues.

That's how science works!

You mean you're sending that message

all over the world?

Yep! Near and far!

I'm basically a science spammer.

Got a question from a kid in elementary school.

"If space is black,

then how come the sky is blue?"

That's adorable!

Be sure to give them a good answer.

And here's one from a Japanese student.

His name is "Senku," huh?

He must have put a lot of effort

into writing that in English.

What's the little tyke wanna know?

I started my rocket research

by modding the hell out of a car turbocharger,

but I'm hitting a stupid number of roadblocks

just deciphering research reports.

The first problem was with the oscillating

component of the firing pressure.

I managed to get the margin of error

on the intermediate frequency

oscillatory combustion down to 7%

by running a computer simulation,

but let's be real, there's no way

in ten billion years I could have crunched numbers

that nasty on the potato I call a PC.

So I set up a VPN on a lab server

at the university my dad taught at...

I'm pretty sure he's confessing

to some serious crimes here.

There's no way a little kid wrote all of that.

This must be some elaborate prank.

I don't care what it is.

We can't get mixed up in it.

Just ignore him.

You really did it, Senku!

You got a reply,

and it's even from a real-life NASA science person, too!

Simmer down, ya big oaf.

I've included the math below for reference,

but long story short,

the nozzle needs to be made of niobium alloy.

Doctor Senku.

I suspect your efforts are being led

wildly astray by faulty data.

You are clearly using subpar equipment.

You should get your hands

on a resistance thermometer

that has a rhodium-platinum alloy heat sensor.

Science is elegant.

Signed, Doctor X.

All done! Time to chow down.

Sure thing.

Oh!

So, you've gotta buy the thermometer

in that picture, right?

Try the hundred-yen store!

Wonder how much the thing costs.

PLATINUM

THERMOMETER SENSOR 500,000 Yen (≈3500 $)

Senku!

I can't believe you came all the way

over to the US to see me!

Yeah, yeah, now skip the waterworks

and give me the goods already.

I need that magic card.

Oh, okay.

The mythical, demon's credit card

is a ridiculously powerful tool.

Any astronaut training in the US

can buy whatever scientific equipment they want,

and it's all on the government's tab!

You're not wrong,

but how do you even know that?

Information like that won't turn up

in a standard Google search!

You're going home already?

What are you, one of those people

who lost on the plane in All-American Ultra Quiz?

Generation-gap alert, old fart.

I don't get that reference.

But when's your next visit?

I guess whenever

I need to renew the credit card.

Don't be cruel to your old man!

PLATINUM-RHODIUM ALLOY RESISTANCE THERMOMETER 500,000 Yen (≈3500 $)

XENON GAS 500,000 Yen (≈4000 $)

PHASE-CONTRAST MICROSCOPE 1,000,000 Yen (≈6800 $)

THERMAL CAMERA 1,500,000 Yen (≈10,000 $)

Whoa! That's some pricey-lookin' tech, dude!

I have no idea what any of it is!

I could've made do without it,

but it's hard to argue with free.

I'll take any advantage I can get, and this is huge.

With my mountain of equipment.

And all the knowledge

I'm gaining in Doctor X's online classes.

I'll research everything.

I'll try everything!

We'll forge our way across two-million years

of human history, but not from the ground up.

We'll be standing on the shoulders of giants!

Hm.

Man, Senku.

I thought the whole idea was to build a rocket ship.

So I don't get why you ask him

so many questions that have nothing to do with that.

If we knew every use case for each kind of science,

that would be way too easy.

It's like asking why I don't just hit the track

and bet on all the winning horses from the start.

There's still so much we don't know yet.

In a lot of ways, science is--

Science is power.

For example, I trust you don't need me

to tell you that your little rocket

and a ballistic missile are fundamentally

one and the same.

With the power of science,

a knowledgeable man could guide

the ignorant masses to truth, and rule over them completely.

That makes science

a rather elegant power, Doctor Senku.

Nah, world-domination crap

doesn't move me one millimeter.

Sounds stupid boring.

I wanna uncover all the world's secrets,

and that includes everything in the cosmos, too.

All of it.

Everything!

Ten billion percent of it all!

Oh, hey, Xeno!

What would you do if you were sent back in time

to the Stone Age?

I'd create scientific weapons from scratch,

and rule as a dictator.

Lame answer.

Who'd want that?

But what if there were rival scientists?

Exactly.

Humanity will always have one trick up its sleeve,

and that's curiosity.

I'm ten billion percent sure a greedy bastard

who literally wants to know everything about

everything would show up.

Basically, someone just like my son.

That wouldn't change anything.

I would have no choice but to annihilate this person.

A true battle for the stone world,

in which only one can reign supreme.

If you can manage that,

it would allow you to keep the temperature

in the chamber under 60 degrees Celsius.

Meaning, theoretically speaking,

that homemade "rocket" of yours could be loaded

with all manner of biological and chemical weapons.

Everything means everything.

I'll even learn the stuff that doesn't appeal to me.

This suggests that sulfonamides would work.