Just a few days back I was watching the tape of Seinfeld and I came across this wonderful school of thought. Jerry starts off the show by saying how putting a man on the moon is probably the greatest mistake we ever made. Why is that, you ask? Well, according to him it has become the standard for us to compare everything with. When someone can’t do something, then we automatically say that, “We can put a man on moon but can’t do this simple thing!” That was a really nice observation indeed. I have heard Geoffrey Boycott mention a million times on air, “We can put a man on moon but can’t find a way to keep a ball white throughout a match”. Man on moon has always been a hot topic. Whether it is for the physicists or the conspiracy theory buffs, it is something that is always in the air. Edward Tufte is a guy who summed up the field of information design in one amazing book, ‘The Visual Display of Quantitative Information’. He’s also a sculptor, and it was last year that he conceived a behemoth scrap steel piece, called Rocket Science. It is an approximate replica of the rockets sent to space in times before the design changed completely.
Rocket Science is a 32 feet (10 meters) high and 72 feet (22 meters) long, and is constructed from 48,000 pounds (22,000 kilograms) of rusting scrap steel. So, at least he made an interesting use of old scrap metal. It is designed as a vehicle in which the RS symmetry about a central axis is combined with the crew headquarters in a capsule at the top. The maker obviously believes that this is likely the best design for space vehicles. Obviously he speaks more as a designer than a student of Physics. I do believe that the modern design is far better and we will move forward in the coming decades with designs that will be far more effective. Yet, the entire structure is really cool and worth taking a little look at.
