Comments on: Jerry Oltion, Solar System Tour

By: Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:19:26 +0000

By silly I mean, that you should not interpret “until we have FTL” to mean that you can’t write stories about after we have solved the FTL problem.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:51:08 +0000

Hurmph. This silly boy happened to do his time monitoring reactor kinetics…I can violate the laws of physics as I please.

By: Eric James Stone

Eric James Stone — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:14:42 +0000

> I wonder what the new mnemonic will be now that Pluto has been demoted.

I’ve seen “…served us nachos.”

By: Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:43:07 +0000

Silly boy.

By: Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:16:59 +0000

I wonder what the new mnemonic will be now that Pluto has been demoted.

By: Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:16:20 +0000

It’s interesting that the last of the planets are named after kings, but the first ones are more descriptive. I wonder why that is.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:15:29 +0000

Until we have FTL most stories about humans in space will happen in our own solar system. Even when we send people out, itâ€™s probably a good idea to understand the local real estate.

Don’t let “real science” spoil science-fiction. Ever.

By: -e-

-e- — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:03:29 +0000

In NYC circa 1974 it was “my very eager mother just served us nine pickles” … we NYer’s & our kosher dills will take over the universe!

By: Kelvin Kao

Kelvin Kao — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:57:01 +0000

Fascinating stuff!

I was taught the nine planets when I was attending elementary school in Taiwan. We didn’t have mnemonics. We just recite the planets in order fast to remember the order. The planet names roughly translate to water star, gold star, earth ball, fire star, wood star, soil star, sky king star, sea king star, and hell king star.

When I read “Venus: Gravity – .9 g”, I thought, ooooh, so everything falls upwards? That would be interesting. But then of course, I know that’s just a dash.

Mars has 24.6 hour days? That actually might work out even better for humans! I’ve read about an experiment about our natural biological clocks. Researchers put volunteers in a place without clocks, windows, or anything that would suggest what time it is. The subjects are to do whatever they want (eat, sleep, etc.) whenever they felt like it. Eventually they settled on a schedule of going sleep and waking up. The length of the days settled on around 25 hours. So in that sense, Mars is actually great for humans. Of course, I’m not factoring in the temperature and oxygen stuff…

I’m a little bummed that we don’t get to see the solar eclipse coming up. (People in Europe, China, etc. would be able to see it.)

By: Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:58:14 +0000

I’d never had a mnemonic for the planets, I just had to learn them.

By: Eric James Stone

Eric James Stone — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:35:12 +0000

As a child, I learned it as “My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pumpkins.” I believe learned it from some children’s book about an old lady who goes into space.