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dakota2112
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That is funny. I was watching it on TV at lunch yesterday and both my friend and I were humming the Final Countdown tune! End of an era with the final launch. We need to advance the space program and keep our focus on the big universal picture!

 

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QUOTE (Majestyk @ Jul 9 2011, 06:43 AM)
How can anyone not like this song?

Never liked it. I guess in part because I think the lyrics are awful. It's almost written like an essay, just way too overly descriptive and linear I guess. Just seems like the kind of lyrics a little kid would write about the space shuttle. They sound really corny to me. The music doesnt do much for me either. Not a fan of this one at all.

 

The shuttle on the other hand is awesome, sad to see it die, especially without any replacement. If we want to send men into space now its on russian soyuz rockets where they will be charging us 65 million per man. Ouch. Hell of a lot cheaper than doing it ourselves though. Shame that we have to rely on them though for all future space missions.

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I LOVE LOVE LOVE this song. It was always one of my favorites on Signals, maybe second only to Subdivisions. I get what people say about the lyrics being more prose than poetry, but to me they're accurate and descriptive and set up a narrative structure for the music that builds anticipation and releases it climactically with a section that really soars. I also think the keyboard solo is one of the finest moments of synth work in the Rush catalog.

 

I also grew up in Florida, and saw a number of launches over the years. I was entranced by NASA, manned spaceflight, and the hope of becoming an astronaut.

 

I do surely hope that the US will return to the pursuit of manned spaceflight soon. Though it is expensive, it is one of the noblest pursuits of humankind. If we would only shift away from so much military spending, I think we could afford it.

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QUOTE (trenken @ Jul 9 2011, 03:49 PM)
Shame that we have to rely on them though for all future space missions.

It will not be for all future missions. There will be a hiatus of a few years while NASA get their act together and get Shuttle's successor on the road (or in space, to be more accurate). Unfortunately, it seems that NASA have been dithering around for decades about what exact form the successor to the Shuttle should take, and it is still not clear (to me, at least) what they will settle on.

 

What seems certain, however, is that they have dumped the 're-usable space-plane' concept because (it would seem) the idea was just too hard, too costly, and too risky to pull off. The corollary to this is that, had they not gone for such a flawed design in the first place, the Shuttle would have been a hell of a lot cheaper, a lot more re-usable, and less likely to have been marred by tragedy.

 

Ultimately, though, the real stumbling block is our current propulsion-technologies. To put it bluntly, they suck. If you juxtapose a few Olympic-sized swimming pools of liquid hydrogen with an equivalent amount of liquid oxygen, and then throw a lighted match into the mix, it really can get you into orbit, but it is also likely to blow you apart instead - witness the Challenger accident. What we really need is some kind of radically new approach to propulsion, whereby we high-tail it round the solar system without the use of rockets, and a lot quicker than we do currently. (Roger Shawer's EmDrive is one idea here - assuming that there is substance to that exceedingly controversial concept.)

 

Regarding Countdown: I always felt the same about the lyrics as some others here - they are just a flat, narrative description, and, for me, were always a big disappointment. I have never been that happy with the melody side of the song either, aside from the riff that comes in periodically, which I loved from the off. Essentially, Countdown always struck me as an excellent riff in search of a decent song.

 

Anyhow, whatever the case about the Shuttle and Countdown, I vote we lobby the-powers-that-be to make sure that the first person on Mars is a dyed-in-the-wool Rush nut, who whistles The Spirit of Radio as he/she descends the ladder to step on the Red Planet for the first time. Who's with me? wink.gif

 

[Edited for silly typo]

Edited by Undemanding Contact
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As Seen On RIAB:

 

This past Friday, July 8th the very last space shuttle of NASA's Shuttle Program took off from Cape Canaveral, FL. To mark this historic event, Spinner magazine compiled a list of the top 10 Space Shuttle wake-up songs and Rush's Countdown topped the list at #1:

 

Canada brought more to the Shuttle Program than the Canadarm, and it came in the form of a Rush song. The iconic Canuck prog-rockers' 1982 single 'Countdown' was wholly inspired by Columbia's first trip in 1981, the first of the Shuttle Program. The song even samples audio from this launch and was played to wake up the crew on Columbia's 27th flight in 2002, on the day the shuttle landed back on Earth for the last time. So it's a pretty perfect pick to complete our wake-up song countdown as NASA's space shuttle program enters T-Minus Zero.

 

It's times like this (and others) that we could use a Shuttle smiley. 1022.gif trink38.gif 2.gif

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