📏😚 TL;DR
Let’s reframe the discussion, zoom out from the stress inducing myopia of the last week. My favorite accomplishments of Humanity involve our struggle to understand the Universe. Lets take a few minutes to explore.
🥔💧 Must Read: (~6 hr 22 min)
The Martian by Andy Weir is a glorious survival story. A modern retelling of The Old Man in the Sea. The protagonists monologue is clever and humorous. The science is real. The value humanity bring to the Universe is on display throughout.
Mark Watney’s indominable spirit inspires me to rally against the odds.
🤹♀️❌ Must Try:
The Commutative Property means that X percent of Y is equal to Y percent of X.
For instance, if you want to find 8% of 50, but are struggling. Instead solve the simpler problem and take 50% of 8, which is 4. So, 8% of 50 is also 4.
🔭🔵 Must Watch: (4 min)
“The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.
Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” – Carl Sagan
🌑🎶 Must Listen: (3 min)
Released in 1964 — as the Apollo program was first achieving its stride. Five years later, Buzz Aldrin allegedly put on Sinatra’s Quincy Jones-arranged take on ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ just before stepping out of the lunar module.
Whenever I hear it, I feel a part of history.
🌎🖼 Must See: (1 min)
Pro-Tip: Hold CTRL or Command when you click links to open them in new tabs.
- The space shuttle in low earth orbit
- The surface of the sun
- Jupiter
- Hubble’s long stare into the abyss (Each dot is a galaxy, not a solar system, not a star — a galaxy)
- The moon
- Mars
- The IIS transiting between us and the sun
- Cassini’s last glimpse of home before cratering on Saturn
👩🚀👨🚀 Must Subscribe: (15min)
JP Burke’s incredible labor of love, The Space Above Us. A retelling of the stories behind every NASA mission from Freedom 7 to STS-135.
Through JP’s dedicated research and story telling. I gained a deeper love for NASA. It increased my appreciation for the herculean effort and bravery that drove the early space program.
🤘🐒 Closing Thoughts:
We’re strange monkeys in a weird cosmos. Put two random people together and there’s a good chance they’ll disagree on something. Three people will split into teams. But, if we do agree, we become unstoppable.
The USA invested $152B (in 2019 dollars), which roughly equals 56,300 lifetime earnings. To land a spaceship the size of a Volkswagen Beatle on the closest off-planet rock. The three humans who volunteered to go, knew they were the payload on a repurposed missile. The Moon was 238,900 miles away. The missile-powered-love-bug travelled at an average speed of 3160 mph. When we got there, we spent 21 hours, and 36 minutes taking in the sights and scooping some dirt into our pockets. Then we got back in the ship and flew home.
I’m proud of being a strange monkey. You should be to.
Clark
✅Action Items:
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