Wednesday, September 06, 2006

This was inspired by the rocketry room...it's nonsense!

There are no philosophical questions allowed in the rocketry room. However I am not in the rocketry room, rather in my study, where for better or worse philosophical questions abound. The problem with philosophical questions is that attempting to answer them generally does little to clarify the subject. In fact in most cases attempting to answer these sticky questions can leave you worse off than you began. However I will attempt to answer one lurking, provocative unanswered question: Where do the lost rockets go?

There are several theories presently accepted as to the location of these lost projectiles. One of the more widely spread theories is that they break through the earth’s gravitational pull and are now hurling around the earth at a precariously low orbit. As one who has made many rockets and thereby lost quite a few, I do not believe that this is the case. I think that the craftsmanship on these rockets, while certainly great in many cases does not lend itself to rockets that are now in space. One must also keep in mind the materials that the average model rocket builder works with, cardboard tubing, balsa wood fins etc.

No, they most certainly return to earth, the question is of course where. I have pondered this question on and off while watching rockets descend to earth clearly on course to land in the middle of route forty four, yet hear no car related noises to indicate that it ever made it there. I had pondered briefly the idea that rockets fall in the category of guitar picks. I’m referring of course to a theoretical principal in physics. All solid objects are not very solid at all, rather are mostly empty space. More over you never actually come in physical contact with anything, ever, your electrons merely repel the electrons of the other objects. One may ask, what then do electrons and guitar picks have to do with the rocket I spent hours working on only to be lost?

The principle is as follows: since all “solid” objects are actually mostly charged empty space theoretically if two objects collide with each other, it is possible that during one of the collisions, all of the electrons and subatomic particles miss each other therefore the objects pass clear through each other. Or more amusingly become stuck in the center of each other. I am suggesting that this is possibly what happens to the rockets that hurtle back towards earth never to be seen again.

One may disregard this theory as bunk due to the amount of theoretical extrapolation and induction it requires. However how else can one explain the mysterious disappearance of so many rockets? Surely no one puts any stock into the “stuck in trees” theory. Though there was recent research conducted that shows that rockets that appear to get stuck in trees are not stuck at all, rather sentries. Sentries for the formerly unknown secret society of slightly maimed rockets. It is my hypothesis that these disgraced rockets band together to support each other while forming their own community. Who better to understand the troubles of being shot through the stratosphere only to be thwarted by your own structure than another rocket that has recently gotten over the same struggle?

These tightly knit bands of wayward psychologically patched rockets wander the countryside trying to revenge those that destroyed their fragile existence. Using the resources they have, spent engines and the ability to grow tiny organisms they have begun to attack the trees. Their first target in the north east of the United States has been the dreaded Hemlock. Yes it is the rockets that have created the white fuzzy parasitic substance that plagues these organisms. This life draining creation that humans have labeled as “Woolly Adelgid” is really a parasite farmed by wayward rockets that live the first part of their lives supported by the sulfurous remains of the rockets’ old engines.

5 comments:

Elizabeth said...

So how long will it take before the wayward rockets turn on their very creators? Do we all have a white, fuzzy plague in our future?

Duff said...

Plagues maybe. That is not my speciality. But note: as a physicist I must protest this notion of "touching." Two objects feeling a field carried force is touching, for no objects can interact except through such forces. Thus the multipole forces that give rise to everday touching was we humans feel it is genuine touching. Any other notion is some Aristotlean fiction no doubt being actively promulgated by the Catholic Church, as that body's one desire is to kill all living things. So we must kill them first!!! AAAHHH hahaha!! But it could also be Herman Siniacho or any number of our classics departments that are behind this undoubted conspiracy. Their probably stealing all our lost rockets too. I know Siniacho, no fendish pleasure would he delight in my. Besides the popes tend to be too old to be able to secret themselves in the bushes to take our wayward rockets.

Anonymous said...

Maybe that's where all my writing utensils go... in other news do you wonder what it would be like to see other light frequencies? I wonder what color they are... and there are so many things in this world that we can't really percieve... what if we could... AMAZING!!!

Anonymous said...

Wow. Gotta say, just reading these last two posts tells me that this is my kind of blog. Care to trade links?

Anonymous said...

Wait a minute - i just realized that that last post sounds like link baiting, which it isn't. I mean it is, but I'm not some random stranger. You posted to MY blog first, and I really like the stuff you write about.

Are you familiar with the Douglas Adams theory on Biro pens? Your rocket theory is vaguely reminiscent. From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time.

One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the biros he'd bought over the past few years.

There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centres of biro loss throughout the galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little theory which quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life.

And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make a fool of themselves in public.

When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.

There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious 60,000 Altairan dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod Beeblebrox's highly profitable second-hand biro business.

Arthur read this, and put the book down.
"

Consider yourself added to my blogroll. Lemme know if I can link to you on my site.