by Jesse Galef
Those of you who also follow my posts at FriendlyAtheist know I’m a huge fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think he’s an excellent science communicator and role model. He’s so enthusiastic about science and he makes others interested through his exuberance.
Back story (taken from the youtube info):
TIME recently went to interview Neil deGrasse Tyson and we noticed a huge crate had been delivered to his office. He was then kind enough to open it on-camera. The back story of this gift is that Neil was adamant that ABC News include the Saturn V Rocket on its list of The 7 Wonders of America. The folks at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama were so grateful, they sent Neil a replica.
I’ve watched this several times and I still find myself compelled to smile each time. Learning things is fun, but Tyson manages to have fun while inspiring a sense of awe and wonder.
[Holding his new model of the Saturn V] This and only this is the only piece of hardware to ever take humans to another world. The space shuttle… is cool, but it goes into Earth orbit -- you’re still attached to the earth. This thing gets you off of Earth into space… to another world.
…
I submit to you that this is the crowning achievement of human ingenuity and the fulfillment of dreams in the history of what it is to be human.
Wonderful.
Gumboz1953: I very cynically believed this story, until I clicked through from Google Reader and saw the Onion... 
Potco: The only reason I realized that it was a joke is because the name was of the past pope. 
LRA: Oops– It’s on Ross, not Greenville, but here’s a map of Fellowship Dallas:... 
Sunny Day: Served. 
Yoav: In a way it didn’t. One group stuck to the isolation imposed by following mosaic law and became what we... 
Jerdog: That’s good satire for ya. 
Elemenope: That sounds pretty tame for him. 
9 Comments
“It’s not heavy, it’s my rocket.”
… was that a reference to the song, or am I just overanalyzing?
Anyhow, this guy is absolutely hilarious in his enthusiasm; I can’t blame whoever it is who keeps bursting into giggles in the background.
So charming. A kid on Christmas and the world’s coolest science teacher, at the same time.
I grew up watching “Nova” on PBS, and when Neil deGrasse Tyson entered the picture, an excellent show got even more awesome.
Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings. (Stenger)
Neil seems like a really great guy, a genuinely good person.
Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to me to be the second coming of Carl Sagan. Both of them are able to articulate science in easy to digest wording. And they do it all with a child-like wonder that captivates the audience. They make accepting the unknown comfortable. I for one would love to see an updated “Cosmos” with Neil deGrasse Tyson as the host.
I agree with E – he is bringing a Saganesque accessibility and wonder to the average person in promoting science. Talk about crushing…I cannot get enough. At the Center for Inquiry meeting posted on Dawkin’s site, he so concisely and wittily upended the Creationists’ strategy of, “if you cannot give an answer to any question I pose, science fails” by hilariously stating that you can’t discredit science by posing ridiculous, unanswerable questions, like his example of “What is the square root of a pork chop?” He is a true gem.
I hate to be a wet blanket, but the moon is not “another world” according to NdGT’s definition. It’s still in earth orbit.
Oh, well. That doesn’t diminish my/our awe of the Saturn V missions, nor of NdGT’s wonderful scientific proselytizing.
When I was a teenager I new the engineer who built the test stand for the Saturn V. Can you imagine, not the stand that it’s launched from, but the stand that holds that baby down while they test fire it to measure the thrust!