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Dear Moon

dearmoon.earth

111–120 of 246 posts

Re: Dear Moon

#111
post #17

I was pretty skeptical when I heard that private citizens booked a flight on Falcon Heavy. When those plans got shelved and these popped up, I had a similar level of skepticism. I expected it to be some random celebrity that wanted to go on a fancy tour. This is anything but that. I feel more than humbled to be wrong. Bringing a ton of artists on a once in a lifetime trip for inspiration purposes is selfless, compass…

> on a once in a lifetime trip

AFAIR, Burt Rutan said he wasn't that keen to watch Apollo-11 landing because he assumed it's soon going to be routine.

So far it wasn't. But why do you think it will not become more routine - perhaps a lot more routine - this time? Surely one can't count on that - but we do can dream and we do can bring some of our dreams to reality, even though we aren't always good with predicting when it'll happen.

Re: Dear Moon

#113
post #56
post #5

Wouldn't it be easier to train astronauts to be artists than to train artists to be astronauts?

For those missing the reference: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ben_Affleck Ben Affleck, talking to Michael Bay about the movie Armageddon, in which oil drillers are sent to an asteroid to drill a hole in it, drop a nuclear bomb into the hole, and then detonate that bomb: >I asked Michael (Bay) why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers. He told…

Actually for Apollo 17 it was found to be easier to train a geologist to be an astronaut than the other way around.

Re: Dear Moon

#115
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you even train artistic talent? Doesn't it require a natural gift that you're born with? Not to belittle astronauts, but space travel training is more teachable than true art.

I believe you have to have good taste and take it from there. [1] [1] Ira Glass quote: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you…

Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap.

Ironically, or fittingly, I've been reading a comprehensive collection of his short stories, because it was impressed on me early in my life that he was a great author, and I have recently been horrified at how terrible many of his more obscure ones are.

The interesting thing is that the quality does not simply improve with time and experience. There are extreme outliers.

Re: Dear Moon

#116
post #63
post #43

It's worth keeping in mind "Elon Time". 2023 is a "no earlier than" date. It's if everything goes to plan, no new problems arise. I'd love to see it happen on schedule but I have doubts.

Does it matter if it's 2026? Or even 2030?

or 2050 or 2099 or 2250, what's time anyway?

Re: Dear Moon

#118
post #45

I hope the musician they choose isn't a pop artist like Justin Bieber or Cardi B. that would just be such a waste lol.

Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me

I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed

Re: Dear Moon

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chris Hadfield recorded a cover of Bowie's Space Oddity on the ISS [1], including playing the guitar in space. It gives me chills every time I listen to it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo

Originally they only had permission to have the video on YouTube for a year. When word got out that it would have to be taken down once the license expired they managed to get the license extended. There wasn’t a big “shit show” just Chris’s son saying on Twitter (iirc) that this was the case and they (him and his dad, iirc the son did the editing on the video) were just thankful that so many people enjoyed it during…

Bowie is a genius,the song is amazing and still the number one version for me too, but in terms of art, context matters a lot, and you can't get more context than space oddity being played in space.

Other song played by Chris and the barenaked ladies that I personally enjoy a lot is I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing)[0], space related songs being played in space make them much more special to me.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvAnfi8WpVE

Re: Dear Moon

#120
post #87

Honestly, this is beautiful. Let's fucking do it. No seriously...let's do it. We're humans - this is the kind of funny, beautiful, impossible stuff we can uniquely do. Capital allocation? Bleh, don't be so boring and uninspired!

How much of your capital do you plan to allocate? And do you plan to allocate any of mine (i.e., the taxpayer)?

Sure, that's how taxes work. We collect it from everyone and then decide collectively how to spend it. We don't only bill people for the things they personally use. One of the things we use money for is arts. The National Endowment for the Arts gets about $150 million per year, or roughly .004% of your taxes. I don't know how much these tickets to the moon cost, but let's say $100 million. That would roughly double the NEA's spending for a year, which I think works out to about 40 cents per taxpayer (someone can check me on that, maybe I'm way off). It probably does a better job of getting kids excited about science and art than most other ways we'd spend that 40 cents.

So yeah, I'm comfortable choosing that about 40 cents of your share of government's funding goes to this project.

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