by Ann » Sun Dec 31, 2017 11:44 pm
heehaw wrote:Chris Peterson wrote:Ann wrote:Anyone who really wants to float free in space must either have a death wish, or have imbibed too much!
Do you really mean that? How is this different from a million other things people do where they are dependent upon their own skill and the quality of their equipment? Mountain climbing, scuba diving, skydiving.
Reminds me that for a few years (a few years ago) at my university we had a Dean who had a horror of black holes. It seemed to come up in every talk she gave.
Well... this is the first time I've mentioned any fear of floating free in space, I think.
I'm not afraid of floating free in space, because I trust the gravity of good ol' Earth not to let go of me!
I think the root of whatever fear I may have of the thought of floating free in space harks back to 1969, when I first saw
2001: A Space Odyssey. One of the astronauts in the ship that is on course for Jupiter falls out, and I realized that he would be falling and falling and falling and falling forever in the black emptiness out there. (Today, of course, I would say that he'd be orbiting the Sun.)
David Bowie's video
Blackstar spoke pretty strongly to me. Bowie sang about his own imminent death, and he portrayed himself as a jewel-encrusted cranium inside a space helmet, and as a skeleton falling into the Sun. Those images resonated with me.
(And now, when I watched that video again, the scene with the skeleton falling into the Sun was gone. Well, it was there before.)
Ann
[quote="heehaw"][quote="Chris Peterson"][quote="Ann"]Anyone who really wants to float free in space must either have a death wish, or have imbibed too much![/quote][/quote]
Do you really mean that? How is this different from a million other things people do where they are dependent upon their own skill and the quality of their equipment? Mountain climbing, scuba diving, skydiving.
[b][size=110][color=#FF00FF]Reminds me that for a few years (a few years ago) at my university we had a Dean who had a horror of black holes. It seemed to come up in every talk she gave.[/color][/size][/b] [/quote]
Well... this is the first time I've mentioned any fear of floating free in space, I think.
I'm not afraid of floating free in space, because I trust the gravity of good ol' Earth not to let go of me!
I think the root of whatever fear I may have of the thought of floating free in space harks back to 1969, when I first saw [i]2001: A Space Odyssey[/i]. One of the astronauts in the ship that is on course for Jupiter falls out, and I realized that he would be falling and falling and falling and falling forever in the black emptiness out there. (Today, of course, I would say that he'd be orbiting the Sun.)
David Bowie's video [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw]Blackstar[/url] spoke pretty strongly to me. Bowie sang about his own imminent death, and he portrayed himself as a jewel-encrusted cranium inside a space helmet, and as a skeleton falling into the Sun. Those images resonated with me.
(And now, when I watched that video again, the scene with the skeleton falling into the Sun was gone. Well, it was there before.)
Ann