A Spec in Time Series

It has been an exciting space week. It was great to see the Chandrayaan-3 made a successful landing in the southern region of the moon. The first photos are now on the web, and great to see. The Russians were not so successful. I hear and have read a lot of ha ha’s about that on the web. I agree that we have a lot of anti-Russian sentiment in the USA right now but peeps – The Chandrayaan-2 blew up the last time India tried. The area of the lunar south pole is far more treacherous than the sea of tranquility.

If you think about how many failures there have been in space flight these two are indeed massive achievements. In reality, the Russians did get theirs on the moon as well. In their statement. Roscosmos, (Russia’s state space corporation), that their 800kg lander had “ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon”. It did technically ‘land’ on, perhaps even ‘in’ the moon. My personal favorite was a SpaceX quote: Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Nothing comes easy, work and failure are how we move forward. I have failed many times, with many more to go. I have no doubt you can say the same. It’s ‘rocket science’ so give those failures a break. We are getting there. All of us humans, together. New Space Stations are being built, Voyager is still out there, and rovers from Earth are now on two different celestial bodies. Webb and other telescopes scan the far reaches of space – I will write about Vera Rubin when that observatory gets its first light. Soon I hope, they are saying next year. Construction is behind schedule just like a kitchen renovation.

So many reasons to keep your eyes on the skies. Reasons to move forward and see what we as humans can do, and that means more failures to come and more landings to stick. This takes time, this takes patience, and money.

Now think about this: The Chandrayaan-3 cost less to make than the movie Oppenheimer. This one ship that made it to the moon and successfully landed cost approx. 74 million USD. The movie Oppenheimer on the other hand cost approx. 100 million USD. What is wrong here? Seriously? Why are we supporting entertainment over scientific research? Money. It is more important to give a few people all of our money than to find out what our universe is. Yes, just is. What is it like? What does it have to offer us? What do we have to offer it?

Bedtime stories.

Now for your own research assignment.

Many people have asked for the book in a (see me cringing) audio format. Well, it seems from the light research a friend and I did into that. It will take in the neighborhood of 5k (not a spacecraft or a Hollywood blockbuster). This would get a real, live, person/studio, etc. to record it – mind you, SAG is still on strike. LOL, I say that as if I could afford Sam Elliott. Anywho, let’s just say that is out of the budget range of a Happy Meal. Doing it with an AI is just as nutty from a company (2k ish) So I went to the wise and great oracle.

Google said that there are a few ways that you can actually listen to the book on Kindle. Who knew – obviously, not me. TTS Text to Speech which means you can listen to my book(s) this way! I’m slow to learn.

iPhone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Toi0cKlCao It’s supposed to be great. I have not drunk the iKool-Aid, so I don’t know. I saw a video where you could change the voice and the speed.

Android: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44K5ok8TV7wI have to say so far, I have not found a decent reader/voice on Android. The ones I tried seem all too fast and robotic.

Alexa: Yes, she was able to read me my Kindle books. The inflections are not fantastic but, much better than the Android accessibility voice. Now I can even torture myself before I fall asleep but listening to my own writing.

If you check any of these things out, please let me know. Then we can tell those people who want to enjoy the world ending as they sit in traffic, sleepwalk, or clean their kitchen. Maybe I should think about doing that.