Minute Physics teamed up with xkcd to make this great “How To Go To Space” video
There are a lot of people out there who, at some point in their lives, dream of going into space. Unfortunately for them, going to space is a very, very complicated process. Not only in terms of the actual physics of launching a manned craft into space, but also in terms of things like the selection process for who gets to go to space.
Generally speaking, even explaining the process for space travel would take days, and most people probably wouldn’t understand what had been said. Thankfully for the bulk of us, the folks at xkcd and Minute Physics have put together a quick video that explains how one goes to space—and why most people probably won’t—in about two minutes and using only the 1,000 most common words in the English language.
The highlights include such phrases as, “If the fire end points toward space, you are having a bad problem, and will not go to space today” and, “If you want to be like many people who went to space in the past, you should go to school to learn to fly sky boats, and be really good at it.”
As much as it’s just straight-up funny and charming, this video is also pretty impressive in how well it manages to boil down an extremely complex process to a bunch of very simple ideas. Now anyone with even a basic understanding of English can understand that a) going to space is hard work and b) you’re not going to space.