MLT Club Member Jürgen
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
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Remarkably in recent years it has become very quiet around NASA. For cost reasons, many projects have been put on ice. As far as I understand it, the goal of the Lucy mission is to study eight planetoids at close range between 2025 and 2033.
Stanislaw Lem, a Polish physicist and science fiction author, lets his protagonist in his novel “Solaris” come to the realization that we humans follow only one goal in all our attempts to explore space: We are in search of ourselves. Who are we, where do we come from and where will we go? The attempt to explore the planets, the desire to understand the universe: is it really only about the question “why”? What do you think about it?
Stephen Hawking describes in his book “A Brief History of Time” how he approached the Big Bang with his calculations up to a few milliseconds (or maybe even less) and how he tried to develop a formula (World formula) to be able to go back to the second zero. He held the opinion that if we can go all the way back to the Big Bang, everything will be easy. The calculations, the answers and our understanding of the Cosmos. He called this „origin and destiny of the universe“. Is also the program Lucy in the end only a trace search? What do we hope to find out there? Minerals or knowledge and insights into our own being? That the probe and the project were named after Lucy is surely no coincidence.
SETI is another exciting project of NASA, what has actually become of it? If we do find „E.T“. (the Extra-Terrestrial), will he (or it, or them) have answers for us and will we like them?
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Hi Jung, thank you for the interesting topic. This only appears as a marginal note in our media landscape. Nice, then The Beatles are now also storming the Top Ten in the cosmos: First placement for the song “Across The Universe” and later they will probably get their own star in the Walk of Milkyway- Fame.
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Funny Jung, I had already picked out the same video and could not decide between “Like a Hurricane” and “A Heart of gold”. Actually I only know the two albums “Decade” and “Rust never sleeps” by Neil Young. I have a special relationship to the album „Decade“. My older sister and her circle of friends had the cool music. That included Neil Young and The Knack. I heard the album “Decade” for the first time when I was maybe 14 years old. A nice cup of tea, in a rocking chair and the eyes closed. And since then, this album has not let me go. A lot of nice and sentimental memories, just like the music of the Beatles. This has become a part of me. I can’t explain it: I love music, but there are just some bands that are not only music for me but a part of my identity. “Expecting to fly“, “Sugar Mountain“, “Old Man“, “A man needs a maid“. Just wonderful. With the album “Rust never sleeps”, which I bought later, I can not do so much. That Neil Young is a Canadian, I have not known for many years, as well as Glastiger (keyword for Jackie) and many others. I only recently came across Rush. You’re right, I don’t usually look at the identity of a singer or band either. I have to like the music, not the origin. I don’t really hear it out either. There are big audible differences between British accent and US English, of course, but North America is a whole continent and I often can’t tell from the language which corner someone comes from. A few years ago I sat in a mini-van for two hours and behind me on the backseat an American and an Australian were arguing the whole time about who had the biggest national parks, the most beautiful lakes and the most amazing landscapes. I sometimes had trouble hearing who was who, although I’m sure everyone spoke with their own special accent (and of course their voices were also very individual). I also don’t remember who won. After two hours of driving on a completely uncomfortable seat, I didn’t care either.
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Thanks David, very funny. Did the man sniff the exhaust pipe beforehand or why do you do something like that? If it were me, I would have tried a church organ. That gives such a real full sound.
Or the guy should connect his melodica to the following machines (I am picturing this right now…OMG). Then he can additionally play fipple pipe and French horn at the same time. 🙂
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Axel Rose and Gun N’ Roses. Also great musicians and virtuosos, even if they have a rather special way. One of their truly biggest hits: Sweet Child O’ Mine. And one of their greatest secrets. What nobody knows: it’s just a cover song. Rose’s lawyers kept the original under lock and key for a long time, but now it was leaked. And here’s the original: Guitar? Not a single. Good mood and fun? Lots of it. (By the way, the man eating the bread and drinking the beer in the background is the producer and manager of the band).
And another wonderful guitar story (this time without a guitar, but with a happy ending).
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Thanks Tom, I feel the same way as you: I really like the song Space Oddity in combination with the video. I also thought about buying the complete David Bowie album, but I don’t like the rest of the songs on the album as much.
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Hi David, thanks for the detailed answer. You did it just right: You took us on a small, interesting journey out into the vastness of our solar system and then led us back to earth via a loop at the right moment, to MLT and to the music. Lucy couldn’t have done it better. Thanks. 🙂
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Hi David, thanks for the description of the trajectory. If I understand correctly: Lucy, once accelerated, follows its trajectory, then is deflected by the gravitational pull of Jupiter or one of its trabants/ satellites, and so follows an elliptical curve until it re-enters the gravitational zone of another celestial body (e.g. Earth), to be deflected again, and so on (a bit like the bumper in a pinball machine, only smoother and with a gentle curve)? What will eventually happen to the spacecraft? Will it leave our solar system and disappear into the vastness of space, or will it be completely attracted by the gravity of a celestial body and end its existence there with a Small Bang? Does Lucy actually have its own propulsion system (for example control nozzles) or does it only receive a one-time energy pulse at launch?
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When I first heard about the series, I had similar fears as you, David: the idiosyncrasies of some nerds are made fun of. But the characters are so endearing and the idiosyncrasies are portrayed really sensitively. And the longer you watch the series, the more you realize that sometimes a little Sheldon, Howard, Leonard or Raj himself lives inside you. But only sometimes. 🙂 I watched the series together with my girlfriend and she didn’t really understand the many little allusions to Star Wars, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings (too many stars and too many rings), but just like Penny she knew that these things are somehow quite funny and important to me (and somehow I was then her little nerd). By the way, I find the ranking of the scientists to be smiling: At the top theoretical physicists, then applied physics and well, there are also engineers.
(just missed the topic again. sorry Jung (but it is about music) 🙂
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For me one of the most beautiful songs by Neil Young
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Even if now the suspicion arises that I live on the back side of the moon: who is BTO? I have never heard “Takin’ Care Of Business”. Is that the Bachman who lost his guitar?
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Sorry Jung, the TV series seems to be very funny, but nobody knows it in this country. There used to be a similar series produced in the Netherlands. It was called “Flodder”. Same principle: a simple family moves into a stuffy suburban settlement. Now I know where the idea came from. It’s always such a thing with the broadcasting of TV series in our country: the public broadcasters try to make series themselves. With moderate success, mostly for the older audience, and the other stations mostly buy old US series. Since the whole thing is then still syncronized in German, it is usually also complex and costly. For this reason, I have switched to pay TV for some time (amazon, netflix and Co.). The Big Bang Theory, for example, I loved. It was very popular here, but I hear it didn’t do so well in the US.
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Hi David,
thanks, I will do that. With your help, I’m slowly becoming an expert on the American television (series) world. Let’s see where this leads.
