It's Okay To Be Smart

  • About
  • Twitter
  • Science Links
  • Random
  • Archive
  • RSS
  • Ask me questions
banner
Up Goer Five
Neil Tyson once lamented that the Saturn V rocket, a vehicle once heralded as the first generation of a coming era of interplanetary rocket travel, was taken for granted by a world looking to the future. And instead of the first of its kind, it was the last.

We haven’t surpassed the Saturn V. The largest, most powerful rocket ever flown by anybody, ever, the thirty-six-story-tall Saturn V was the first and only rocket to launch people from Earth to someplace else in the universe. It enabled every Apollo mission to the Moon from 1969 through 1972, as well as the 1973 launch of Skylab 1, the first U.S. space station.
Inspired in part by the successes of the Saturn V and the momentum of the Apollo program, visionaries of the day foretold a future that never came to be: space habitats, Moon bases, and Mars colonies up and running by the 1990s. But funding for the Saturn V evaporated as the Moon missions wound down. Additional production runs were canceled, the manufacturers’ specialized machine tools were destroyed, and skilled personnel had to find work on other projects. Today U.S. engineers can’t even build a Saturn V clone.

With this epic, holy-crap-rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-but-also-crying comic, xkcd provides us with a simplified set of plans, in easy-to-understand terms, to build the Saturn “Up Goer” Five/V. Think of it as a swift kick in the pants to get our space-exploration efforts back on the right track.
Sure, what was impossible yesterday can be made possible today, through the hard work and application of science. But we must also remember that if we don’t keep stoking the fires of curiosity, what was possible yesterday can be made impossible today.
Otherwise, much like failing to point the end with lots of fire toward the ground, we will find ourselves “having a bad problem and you will not go to space today”.
Zoom Info
Up Goer Five
Neil Tyson once lamented that the Saturn V rocket, a vehicle once heralded as the first generation of a coming era of interplanetary rocket travel, was taken for granted by a world looking to the future. And instead of the first of its kind, it was the last.

We haven’t surpassed the Saturn V. The largest, most powerful rocket ever flown by anybody, ever, the thirty-six-story-tall Saturn V was the first and only rocket to launch people from Earth to someplace else in the universe. It enabled every Apollo mission to the Moon from 1969 through 1972, as well as the 1973 launch of Skylab 1, the first U.S. space station.
Inspired in part by the successes of the Saturn V and the momentum of the Apollo program, visionaries of the day foretold a future that never came to be: space habitats, Moon bases, and Mars colonies up and running by the 1990s. But funding for the Saturn V evaporated as the Moon missions wound down. Additional production runs were canceled, the manufacturers’ specialized machine tools were destroyed, and skilled personnel had to find work on other projects. Today U.S. engineers can’t even build a Saturn V clone.

With this epic, holy-crap-rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-but-also-crying comic, xkcd provides us with a simplified set of plans, in easy-to-understand terms, to build the Saturn “Up Goer” Five/V. Think of it as a swift kick in the pants to get our space-exploration efforts back on the right track.
Sure, what was impossible yesterday can be made possible today, through the hard work and application of science. But we must also remember that if we don’t keep stoking the fires of curiosity, what was possible yesterday can be made impossible today.
Otherwise, much like failing to point the end with lots of fire toward the ground, we will find ourselves “having a bad problem and you will not go to space today”.
Zoom Info
Up Goer Five
Neil Tyson once lamented that the Saturn V rocket, a vehicle once heralded as the first generation of a coming era of interplanetary rocket travel, was taken for granted by a world looking to the future. And instead of the first of its kind, it was the last.

We haven’t surpassed the Saturn V. The largest, most powerful rocket ever flown by anybody, ever, the thirty-six-story-tall Saturn V was the first and only rocket to launch people from Earth to someplace else in the universe. It enabled every Apollo mission to the Moon from 1969 through 1972, as well as the 1973 launch of Skylab 1, the first U.S. space station.
Inspired in part by the successes of the Saturn V and the momentum of the Apollo program, visionaries of the day foretold a future that never came to be: space habitats, Moon bases, and Mars colonies up and running by the 1990s. But funding for the Saturn V evaporated as the Moon missions wound down. Additional production runs were canceled, the manufacturers’ specialized machine tools were destroyed, and skilled personnel had to find work on other projects. Today U.S. engineers can’t even build a Saturn V clone.

With this epic, holy-crap-rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-but-also-crying comic, xkcd provides us with a simplified set of plans, in easy-to-understand terms, to build the Saturn “Up Goer” Five/V. Think of it as a swift kick in the pants to get our space-exploration efforts back on the right track.
Sure, what was impossible yesterday can be made possible today, through the hard work and application of science. But we must also remember that if we don’t keep stoking the fires of curiosity, what was possible yesterday can be made impossible today.
Otherwise, much like failing to point the end with lots of fire toward the ground, we will find ourselves “having a bad problem and you will not go to space today”.
Zoom Info
Up Goer Five
Neil Tyson once lamented that the Saturn V rocket, a vehicle once heralded as the first generation of a coming era of interplanetary rocket travel, was taken for granted by a world looking to the future. And instead of the first of its kind, it was the last.

We haven’t surpassed the Saturn V. The largest, most powerful rocket ever flown by anybody, ever, the thirty-six-story-tall Saturn V was the first and only rocket to launch people from Earth to someplace else in the universe. It enabled every Apollo mission to the Moon from 1969 through 1972, as well as the 1973 launch of Skylab 1, the first U.S. space station.
Inspired in part by the successes of the Saturn V and the momentum of the Apollo program, visionaries of the day foretold a future that never came to be: space habitats, Moon bases, and Mars colonies up and running by the 1990s. But funding for the Saturn V evaporated as the Moon missions wound down. Additional production runs were canceled, the manufacturers’ specialized machine tools were destroyed, and skilled personnel had to find work on other projects. Today U.S. engineers can’t even build a Saturn V clone.

With this epic, holy-crap-rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-but-also-crying comic, xkcd provides us with a simplified set of plans, in easy-to-understand terms, to build the Saturn “Up Goer” Five/V. Think of it as a swift kick in the pants to get our space-exploration efforts back on the right track.
Sure, what was impossible yesterday can be made possible today, through the hard work and application of science. But we must also remember that if we don’t keep stoking the fires of curiosity, what was possible yesterday can be made impossible today.
Otherwise, much like failing to point the end with lots of fire toward the ground, we will find ourselves “having a bad problem and you will not go to space today”.
Zoom Info
Up Goer Five
Neil Tyson once lamented that the Saturn V rocket, a vehicle once heralded as the first generation of a coming era of interplanetary rocket travel, was taken for granted by a world looking to the future. And instead of the first of its kind, it was the last.

We haven’t surpassed the Saturn V. The largest, most powerful rocket ever flown by anybody, ever, the thirty-six-story-tall Saturn V was the first and only rocket to launch people from Earth to someplace else in the universe. It enabled every Apollo mission to the Moon from 1969 through 1972, as well as the 1973 launch of Skylab 1, the first U.S. space station.
Inspired in part by the successes of the Saturn V and the momentum of the Apollo program, visionaries of the day foretold a future that never came to be: space habitats, Moon bases, and Mars colonies up and running by the 1990s. But funding for the Saturn V evaporated as the Moon missions wound down. Additional production runs were canceled, the manufacturers’ specialized machine tools were destroyed, and skilled personnel had to find work on other projects. Today U.S. engineers can’t even build a Saturn V clone.

With this epic, holy-crap-rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-but-also-crying comic, xkcd provides us with a simplified set of plans, in easy-to-understand terms, to build the Saturn “Up Goer” Five/V. Think of it as a swift kick in the pants to get our space-exploration efforts back on the right track.
Sure, what was impossible yesterday can be made possible today, through the hard work and application of science. But we must also remember that if we don’t keep stoking the fires of curiosity, what was possible yesterday can be made impossible today.
Otherwise, much like failing to point the end with lots of fire toward the ground, we will find ourselves “having a bad problem and you will not go to space today”.
Zoom Info

Up Goer Five

Neil Tyson once lamented that the Saturn V rocket, a vehicle once heralded as the first generation of a coming era of interplanetary rocket travel, was taken for granted by a world looking to the future. And instead of the first of its kind, it was the last.

We haven’t surpassed the Saturn V. The largest, most powerful rocket ever flown by anybody, ever, the thirty-six-story-tall Saturn V was the first and only rocket to launch people from Earth to someplace else in the universe. It enabled every Apollo mission to the Moon from 1969 through 1972, as well as the 1973 launch of Skylab 1, the first U.S. space station.

Inspired in part by the successes of the Saturn V and the momentum of the Apollo program, visionaries of the day foretold a future that never came to be: space habitats, Moon bases, and Mars colonies up and running by the 1990s. But funding for the Saturn V evaporated as the Moon missions wound down. Additional production runs were canceled, the manufacturers’ specialized machine tools were destroyed, and skilled personnel had to find work on other projects. Today U.S. engineers can’t even build a Saturn V clone.

With this epic, holy-crap-rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-but-also-crying comic, xkcd provides us with a simplified set of plans, in easy-to-understand terms, to build the Saturn “Up Goer” Five/V. Think of it as a swift kick in the pants to get our space-exploration efforts back on the right track.

Sure, what was impossible yesterday can be made possible today, through the hard work and application of science. But we must also remember that if we don’t keep stoking the fires of curiosity, what was possible yesterday can be made impossible today.

Otherwise, much like failing to point the end with lots of fire toward the ground, we will find ourselves “having a bad problem and you will not go to space today”.

Source: xkcd.com

    • #science
    • #space
    • #saturn v
    • #nasa
    • #education
    • #neil tyson
    • #comics
    • #xkcd
    • #up goer five
  • 6 months ago
  • 445
  • Comments
  • Permalink
Share

Short URL

TwitterFacebookPinterestGoogle+

445 Notes/ Hide

  1. 4sng reblogged this from mylifeisadjective
  2. kuriositywillprobablykillthiskat reblogged this from engineering-laughter
  3. lestrangeideas reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  4. dreamingmappist likes this
  5. adifferentkindofhappy reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  6. ohmeursault likes this
  7. minegen reblogged this from leohno
  8. legotattoos reblogged this from engineering-laughter
  9. the-nomadic-writer likes this
  10. apulverizer reblogged this from engineering-laughter and added:
    I love this.
  11. someonetooktheurliwant likes this
  12. jon-vo likes this
  13. bictori reblogged this from engineering-laughter and added:
    we can’t even build a clone…
  14. legotattoos likes this
  15. ericmano likes this
  16. engineering-laughter reblogged this from anengineersaspect
  17. theperksoflookinglikejimhalpert likes this
  18. halley likes this
  19. pandifreyan reblogged this from irrelevantkhaleesi
  20. irrelevantkhaleesi reblogged this from thestarsbeckon
  21. thestarsbeckon reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  22. fromtheotherhorizon reblogged this from anengineersaspect
  23. anengineersaspect reblogged this from sagansense
  24. sci-bsiokbe reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  25. cafrine reblogged this from scishow
  26. etshewas reblogged this from aculturedcitizen
  27. awesomesaurus reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  28. highfunctioningmelancholy reblogged this from terrifictassia
  29. aimingtofly reblogged this from kiotsukatanna
  30. karmareincarnate reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  31. hoccypocky reblogged this from hopepotamus
  32. haveaterrabletime reblogged this from scishow
  33. snarkofspace reblogged this from ikenbot
  34. raelfeyna reblogged this from scishow
  35. the-bookworm-chronicles reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  36. karethdreams reblogged this from somuchscience
  37. youcannotfoolowls reblogged this from alwaysaknight
  38. cardcaptorraashaunsramblings likes this
  39. alwaysaknight reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  40. alwaysaknight likes this
  41. lostmytardiskey reblogged this from scishow
  42. lostmytardiskey likes this
  43. thisthreatisfuckingreal likes this
  44. process-effect reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  45. in50mniac reblogged this from axonsandsynapses
  46. in50mniac likes this
  47. boywonder99 likes this
  48. terminus-est reblogged this from arcanelegacy
  49. afurerukimochi reblogged this from arcanelegacy
  50. mcfear likes this
  51. Show more notesLoading...

Recent comments

Blog comments powered by Disqus
← Previous • Next →

Portrait/Logo

About

I'm Joe Hanson, Ph.D. biologist and host/writer of PBS Digital Studios' It's Okay To Be Smart. Check out my "Episode Extras" here. There's a lot of amazing science out there. Let's go discover it together.

"Everyone's favorite Feynman of the Tumblr era" - Maria Popova

Joe's science book recommendations, from brains to biology to space to art to physics.

This is an indie blog that takes many hours a week to publish. If you'd like to support It's Okay To Be Smart, please consider even a small donation.

One of Time Magazine's 30 Must-See Tumblrs - 2012

Featured in The Best Science Writing Online - 2012

Elsewhere:
Contact me
Follow me on Twitter
(Email: itsokaytobesmart at gmail)

Let's learn something together. Click the "Share" button to send a post to Twitter, Facebook, or Google+

I'm working to change the way science is communicated and restore it to its rightful place.

Want to see more great science-y stuff? Check out my LINKS page for some of my favorites.

The Curator's Code

Other Places to Find Me

  • @jtotheizzoe on Twitter
  • Facebook Profile
  • itsokaytobesmart on Youtube

Twitter

loading tweets…

  • RSS
  • Random
  • Archive
  • Ask me questions
  • Mobile
Effector Theme by Pixel Union