Early episode! We record the podcast this week from a very special location: inside a life-size replica of the NASA Lunar Excursion Module from Tom Sach’s “Space Program: Europa” exhibit. Adam geeks out about this ship, the other pieces of the exhibit, and the recent mission he participated in at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
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Adam and Norm assemble a beautifully machined replica prop k…
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One of the ways Adam has been getting through lockdown has b…
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Adam unboxes and performs a quick test of this novel new hel…
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When Adam visited Weta Workshop early last year, he stopped …
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Adam reveals his surprise Christmas present for his wife--a …
So I fly in from Dallas last weekend to see (among other things) the Tom Sachs exhibit. After checking into my hotel at 3rd and Mission, I’m not on the street for more than 2 minutes when I am at the corner of 3rd and Mission and a guy with a short blond beard, donning a yellow jacket, red cap, and sunglasses riding a OneWheel turns the corner in front of me on his way to the Sachs exhibit. All I can muster is a relatively pathetic “cool!” to him as he rides by me.
I am really not good at this “bother the celeb” thing. Anyhow, Adam, What I really wanted to say was “Hey Adam, I’m a fledgling maker (woodwork-based), I loved Mythbusters; I love Tested, and thanks for clueing me in to the Tom Sachs and Kubrick exhibits. Keep up the good work!”
Or you can just go with the whole “Cool!” Thing. #facepalm
Scott
Audio levels way low on this episode, FYI.
plywood and gaffa ‘comparable to the space missions’ c’mon Adam I know he’s a good friend, and the work is kinda interesting.
but really???
Do you want to buy a bridge? It’s plywood and gaffa but it’s totally the same as london bridge.
Can’t say I’m a big fan of the filter they have been using lately.
i dunno, comparable means there are substantial parallels, right? from their description, they definitely exist, very much in the way a scale model is comparable to whatever it’s based on. tom sachs & his team seem to have made a fairly good scale model of a process, or an undertaking, which seems to have been the point. (my understanding is that it’s specifically about the combination of the trivial – that everyone can intuitively grasp, such as the everyday materials and the simplified tasks – with the seriousness they employ when replicating a mission at scale.)
also, it’s not like they didn’t mention the amount of downscaling and humour involved much more than the comparability.
re the idea of how serious child’s play is, there is of course that nietzsche quote: ‘man’s maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child while at play.’
My first saturn 5 was build the day after I watch the Apollo 11 landing. I used all the yarn spools I could find and clued paper around them to create the three stages with rocket motors connecting them. My first serious trouble with my grandmother that I recall as vividly as the moon landing as I was 9.
Is that a Tiley paper straw hat Adam is wearing?
Europa has water plumes – NASA press conference today. Nice coincidence
Cool. Had same experience last year. But got to meet Adam at TESTED show last year. Hope he reads this 🙂
Thank you, all. By introducing me to Tom Sachs I realized that things I think are cool (spaceships, NASA, etc.) can be art also.
I think I always wanted to be a “space artist”. I grew up loving the conceptual art that NASA/etc. would trot out from time to time. I became a little disappointed, as I grew older, to see that the conceptual artists were now “rendering” their concepts with 3D modeling packages.
Tom Sachs seems to be saying you can still do it “old school”. Cool.
I’ve already started to make some space/nerd/engineer art. I’ve even set up an Etsy store recently with my first poster. More to come I hope.
Again, thanks.
The communication delay between Earth and Jupiter is, roughly, between 34 minutes and 52 minutes, depending on where the the orbits of the two planet are the time in relation to each other. I assume the sun would be in the way at 52 minutes though, and also possibly causing radio interference.
Of course the mission objective would be to plan the landing at the most opportune moment, so 34 minutes (often rounded to 33 minutes) is probably the most probable, i.e. roughly the same amount of time it takes to get through the trailers before a blockbuster film starts.
I usually forget what we’re watching by the time the pre credits roll. I hope the astronauts are less scatterbrained
“Measurements of Loaf Reasonableness” my PHD Thesis
After I watched the video of Adam visiting his workshop I have been checking out his work all over the internet. Absolutely gorgeous and inspired. I wish I could make it out to that exhibit.
P.S. I would like to point out that the crew of Apollo 13 spent four days crammed into an LM and while the movie and the “From the Earth to the Moon” series made it seem miserable I am quite certain the reality was MUCH worse.
“make a reasonable loaf” — I like how it’s confirmed it meets expectations 😀
Yes! Feeling far more pleased than a grown man should that my 30 minute guesstimate was about right.
Great to see the podcast visiting locations. Tested has certainly piqued my interest in Tom’s work and, if I’m honest, art in general.
I see what Tom was getting at when he noted how each mission, it’s components & procedures is an emphatic stamp of modern America wherever it lands. Just like every real probe is an incongruous lump of humanity wherever it lands.
Yes, it may seem spacious, but the walls were only 0.012 inch thick, and I believe that Buzz Aldrin once said that you could easily put your fist through the wall. When you have your space suit on, and start moving around, readying tools, boxes of rocks, etc, it probably seem every small to the astronauts, not wanting to accidentally puncture their life system!
Sales Opportunity: Sign or T-Shirt: “NO SWEATY NERDS ALLOWED!”
re: crews on space flight getting a bit ‘testy–‘ IIRC from David Gerrold’s book “The Making of ‘The Trouble with Tribbles'” there was a bit of testiness, not with TTWT, but another episode. I got the impression that the cast and the director were having a rough day. The director says something like “…and then you press THIS button..,” to which Sulu (?) says “I can’t.” “Why not?” “If I press that button I’ll blow up the Enterprise!”
re: Temporary Music during editing– the music we hear in “2001: A Space Odyssey” is the temporary music they used during the editing.
–Paul E Musselman