The guy shot a car into space. A freaking car. With a fake astronaut in the seat and the words “Don’t Panic.”
And people are seeing this as this bizarre conspicuous consumption or a weird Tesla publicity stunt. As a one percenter…
…but the more I think about it, the more I realize something quite simple.
This guy had to launch a test load. He had to put something on that rocket. Given the power of the rocket, whatever they launched as a test load had to be heavy enough to properly test the biggest rocket we’ve launched since the Apollo program.
It had to be well built and solid enough to survive the launch. Now, because of the size of the load, it had to be put into a stable orbit not, as happens with smaller test loads, set to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
So, assuming everything went well, whatever they put on that rocket? It’s going to be in space for a long time. Assuming it’s not hit by a bit of debris, or an asteroid, or whatever, it could be up there for millions of years. It’s in space, so it’s not going to rust or corrode. It will eventually develop pitting from micro meteor strikes, it’s not going to last forever.
So, what does the guy send up.
A freaking car with an astronaut in the seat and the words “Don’t Panic” printed on it.
It’s corny. It’s tacky. But what else is it?
It’s art.
It’s something that’s going to still be recognizable as art in a few thousand years. After we’re all dead. Heck, it may still be recognizable as art after our species is dead – extinct or evolved into something else.
Given the fact that he had to put some kind of object into a stable orbit in the solar system, Musk picked not just art, but ridiculous art. The kind of thing that hangs from diner ceilings, the kind of thing a kid would put together.
He put something out there that screams to the void “This is us. This is humanity. This is how utterly silly we are, how completely frivolous.”
And you know what, if the first..or the only…thing an alien civilization sees of us is Elon Musk’s stupid car, I’m quite happy with that.
They might not be able to decipher the message, but they’ll know somebody was here who, given the power to fly into space used it to play.
I’m quite happy with that.
The only car in the universe with the words DON’T PANIC emblazoned in large, friendly letters on the chassis.
[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A photograph of a manatee in open water, on its side. A human hand is rubbing it’s chest. TEXT: “Progress is progress, even if it is a little progress. As long as you are moving forward, that is what matters. You are doing a great job. I am so proud of you.”]
the universe: okay, you’re a human. I gave you free will and a conscious mind, so you’re free to do whatever you want. So what do you wanna do?
human: GO FAST
the universe: well, you’re a perfect pursuit predator but if that’s the way you want to evolve, go ahead.
human, climbing on a horse: GO FAST
the universe: wait what
human, inventing the carriage, the car and the bullet train: GO FASTER
the universe: I IMPLORE YOU TO STOP
human, trying to figure out lightspeed travel: FAS T ER
human:
THEORETICALLY MAXIMUM FAST
the universe:
How will the people in the ship not get gibbed?
Because the warp drive doesn’t actually accelerate the ship, it just makes the space in front of it smaller and the space behind it larger. Or something.
it works like this
Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space without breaking any physical laws.
A WRINKLE IN TIME IS COMING TRUE
We gonna be surfing gravity waves!!
COWABUNGA SPACE DUDES!
I love how mankind’s solution to ftl is just to bend to rules of reality a little.
Universe: ok human, with the physical laws as they are you can’t go faster than the speed of light.
Humanity: ok, let me just figure out how to manipulate space time so I can go FASTER!
That’s literally how the ship in Futurama works lol the professor says the ship doesn’t move at all, it moves all of space around it. Can’t believe Futurama was right
fun fact: there’s a real life math theorem (futurama theorem) created by one of the writers for the sole purpose of solving a plot in an episode
I met John Perry Barlow in 1999, and I was awestruck: here was the legend whose Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace
had profoundly changed my life, making me realize that the nascent
internet that I’d dropped out of university to devote my life to could
be more than a communications tool: it could be a revolutionary force
for good.
Within minutes of meeting Barlow, he’d put me at my ease, with his
larger-than-life magnanimity, his whisky-gravel voice, his dry wit, and
his endlessly genuine curiosity. When I took at job at EFF a few years
later and Barlow became my kinda-sorta boss, I discovered the immense
joys (and inarguable frustrations) of working with him: Barlow
challenged received wisdom, made you revisit your assumptions and look
at problems sideways and upside-down to get the lay of them. I argued
with Barlow a lot, and lost more than once, and was always better for
it.
In the decades since had the enormous honor and pleasure of becoming
Barlow’s friend: trekking across the Playa with him at Burning Man,
speaking alongside him at conferences on three continents, writing him into a novel, making his Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace the McGuffin of a short story, asking him to write an introduction to one of my books, bringing him to my class for a guest lecture, and, just recently, helping to raise money to defray his medical bills after he became terminally ill.
As EFF’s Cindy Cohn – who introduced me to Barlow – writes, Barlow has
been recently vilified as a naif who failed to foresee the power of the
internet to control and censor, to troll and dox, but nothing could be
farther from the truth. Barlow wrote the Declaration and co-founded the
Electronic Frontier Foundation precisely because he foresaw
those possibilities: he saw that the world would be remade by
general-purpose networks tied to general-purpose computers, and that
unless we committed ourselves to making that network free, and fair, and
open, that it would give the powerful and wicked the power to exert
unprecedented, near-total control over our lives.
Today, Barlow is dead, and his vision is vindicated: the risks Barlow
foresaw (along with other EFF founders like John Gilmore and Mitch
Kapor) are more imminent than ever; the organization that he started and
the movement he kicked off has never been more badly needed.
I find it hard to believe that I’ll never talk to Barlow again, but I’m
sure I’ll never stop having dialogs with him in my mind, as I’ve done so
many times over the years. Barlow has a way of taking up residence in
your thoughts, and I know he’ll never leave mine.
whoever timed the film to the music is fucking brilliant this is gorgeous and oh my god i know they’re made of a lot of fat/blubber but this gave me like seven heart attacks
