244 Quotes by Randall Munroe

X-Plane tells us that flight on Mars is difficult, but not impossible. NASA knows this, and has considered surveying Mars by airplane. The tricky thing is that with so little atmosphere, to get any lift, you have to go fast.

Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they’re frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously.

It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end.

The amount of power in question, 700 watts, is about a horsepower, so if you want to boil tea in two minutes, you’ll need at least one horse to stir it hard enough.

That’s one in 27 quinquatrigintillion.

You don’t use science to show you’re right, you use science to become right.

In fact, humans on Titan could fly by muscle power. A human in a hang glider could comfortably take off and cruise around powered by oversized swim-flipper boots – or even take off by flapping artificial wings. The power requirements are minimal – it would probably take no more effort than walking.

If people had wheels and could fly, how would we differentiate them from airplanes? – Anonymous.

You can work through the physics of interstellar radio attenuation,1 but the problem is captured pretty well by considering the economics of the situation: If your TV signals are getting to another star, you’re wasting money. Powering a transmitter is expensive, and creatures on other stars aren’t buying the products in the TV commercials that pay your power bill. The full picture is more complicated, but the bottom.