by johnnydeep » Mon Mar 18, 2024 6:37 pm
Ann wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2024 6:27 pm
johnnydeep wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2024 3:43 pm
Ann wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2024 5:41 am
Okay, enlighten me, Johnny. When did Carl Sagan mess up the low Earth orbit reentry burn?
Ann
'Tis a pretty funny joke, that I also missed. I had to check the Explain XKCD page:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2906:_Earth. Carl is a passenger in an errant spacecraft and it was Carl who caused the error!
Explanation
At first sight, this appears to be the famous Carl Sagan commentary, upon the Pale Blue Dot image of Earth, a picture taken by the Voyager 1 probe in 1990 (at that time 6 billion kilometers away) but having been transmitted back to Earth to be appreciated as one of the most iconic 'photos of Earth from space', along with Earthrise and The Blue Marble. Sagan's written, and later spoken, words evoke how the lives of all of us are somehow confined to barely more than a single pixel's-worth of existence upon an already zoomed-in view of space.
From the caption, however, it appears that 'Carl' is not looking at an image. Instead it is a spacecraft window. The minute apparent size of the Earth is as a result of the spacecraft being very far from Earth. This is an unintended consequence of an attempt to deorbit from low Earth orbit (i.e. not more than 2000 kilometers from the Earth's surface, from which the Earth should still mostly fill any view that points towards it). Rather than transitioning from LEO into a re-entry trajectory, somehow the vessel and crew have been sent into a much higher-reaching orbit, if not into a solar or extra-solar trajectory. And it is apparently Carl's fault. The speech is thus not an inward view of where we all are, but an outward look at somewhere that all the crew (unwillingly, and against all recent expectations) are not.
The title text continues with the traditional tone of the speech, only to become an implicit attempt to claim that it wasn't quite as drastic an error as it actually seems to have been.
Okay... So... The cartoon suggests that Carl Sagan and colleagues are actually inside a spaceship that has been accidentally transported to Saturn (in an almost "Beam me up, Scotty" or rather "Beam me out, Scotty" fashion), and now, having missed their encounter with the Earth, Carl and his ex-friends are actually looking back at the Earth from the vicinity of Saturn?
Ann
I think all it's implying is that during an attempt to get back to Earth - from some unspecified manned space voyage - that Carl's miscalculation has caused them to instead exit Earth orbit entirely, and they are now far far away and looking back, with Carl trying unsuccessfully to be a Polyanna about it. It could well have taken them some time to get to their current position, rather than in a "transporter"-like fashion, but it doesn't say.
[quote=Ann post_id=337767 time=1710786445 user_id=129702]
[quote=johnnydeep post_id=337765 time=1710776581 user_id=132061]
[quote=Ann post_id=337755 time=1710740504 user_id=129702]
Okay, enlighten me, Johnny. When did Carl Sagan mess up the low Earth orbit reentry burn?
Ann
[/quote]
'Tis a pretty funny joke, that I also missed. I had to check the Explain XKCD page: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2906:_Earth. Carl is a passenger in an errant spacecraft and it was Carl who caused the error!
[quote]
[size=150]Explanation[/size]
At first sight, this appears to be the famous Carl Sagan commentary, upon the Pale Blue Dot image of Earth, a picture taken by the Voyager 1 probe in 1990 (at that time 6 billion kilometers away) but having been transmitted back to Earth to be appreciated as one of the most iconic 'photos of Earth from space', along with Earthrise and The Blue Marble. Sagan's written, and later spoken, words evoke how the lives of all of us are somehow confined to barely more than a single pixel's-worth of existence upon an already zoomed-in view of space.
[color=#0040FF]From the caption, however, it appears that 'Carl' is not looking at an image. Instead it is a spacecraft window. The minute apparent size of the Earth is as a result of the spacecraft being very far from Earth. This is an unintended consequence of an attempt to deorbit from low Earth orbit (i.e. not more than 2000 kilometers from the Earth's surface, from which the Earth should still mostly fill any view that points towards it). Rather than transitioning from LEO into a re-entry trajectory, somehow the vessel and crew have been sent into a much higher-reaching orbit, if not into a solar or extra-solar trajectory. And it is apparently Carl's fault. The speech is thus not an inward view of where we all are, but an outward look at somewhere that all the crew (unwillingly, and against all recent expectations) are not.
[/color]
The title text continues with the traditional tone of the speech, only to become an implicit attempt to claim that it wasn't quite as drastic an error as it actually seems to have been.[/quote]
[/quote]
Okay... So... The cartoon suggests that Carl Sagan and colleagues are actually inside a spaceship that has been accidentally transported to Saturn (in an almost "Beam me up, Scotty" or rather "Beam me out, Scotty" fashion), and now, having missed their encounter with the Earth, Carl and his ex-friends are actually looking back at the Earth from the vicinity of Saturn? :shock:
Ann
[/quote]
I think all it's implying is that during an attempt to get back to Earth - from some unspecified manned space voyage - that Carl's miscalculation has caused them to instead exit Earth orbit entirely, and they are now far far away and looking back, with Carl trying unsuccessfully to be a Polyanna about it. It could well have taken them some time to get to their current position, rather than in a "transporter"-like fashion, but it doesn't say.