Peter Cawdron's Blog, page 4

Walk the Plank!

Piracy has always been a problem in the electronic age. It’s easy and seems harmless, but it’s not. Someone gets an illegal copy of software or a movie or an ebook or an audiobook, and it’s no big deal. Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. Piracy disproportionately hurts small independent authors like myself more than the big names, but it hurts them as well.

As an example, consider my novel Xenophobia, which came out as an audiobook in 2014. Even with protests from me, it regularly appears as a “free” audiobook on YouTube. Trying to get it taken down is like playing whack-a-mole. And, as you can see here, it pops back up every few months.

In two months, it’s had 11,000 views! That’s great, but that’s also 11,000 sales that never happened.

Ah, but what about the sales that DID happen? That’s where the author and audio producer make their money, right?

Hmmm… about that… Over the past decade, Xenophobia has sold less than 500 copies.

For me, this is heartbreaking.

As an independent author, I struggle to get traditional publishing houses to even respond to emails, let alone pick up any of my work. When it comes to audiobooks, it’s a dead-end. Thankfully, Podium has thrown me a lifeline with some of my recent books, but most of my novels will NEVER be produced as audiobooks as they can’t pay for their production costs, let alone put bread on the table.

And the crazy thing about this is all the YouTube “fans” are hurting themselves. They’re the ones that are missing out on other audiobooks that will never be made because of how badly piracy hurts the industry.

Reading First Contact

Normally, a book series has a set reading order. Readers start with book one and move to book two, book three, etc. That’s not the case with the First Contact series.

The First Contact series is thematic rather than character driven. In other words, instead of following the same characters across dozens of books, the First Contact series follows one idea or theme over dozens of books. And this makes it quite unique. It’s the Black Mirror of book series as each story stands alone and can be read independently of any other book in the series. Think of it like The Twilight Zone or something like American Horror Story where each story is self-contained.

The advantage of this approach is we get to explore the concept of First Contact from multiple angles as though each was from a different timeline or a parallel world. Each is an experiment in what could happen.

Another benefit of this approach is you, as the reader, can pick and choose the subjects that interest you. You can read the synopsis for the different novels within the First Contact series and decide what you’d like to read—without missing anything in the overarching series. This gives you the freedom to be selective.

I often get asked if there is a recommended reading order, so I’ll post one here, but it’s only a guide. You can start and stop wherever you like within the series. The point of my reading guide is simply to give you some ideas. If anything, this is a reflection on the stories I enjoy most within the series.

Anomaly — is the first novel I wrote, and it’s a consistent favorite with readers. Cold Eyes — is a tribute to Larry Niven’s classic The Mote in God’s Eye and explores some really interesting themes3zekiel — if you’re looking for action, look no further than First Contact with gorillas in the African jungleThe Tempest — is a tribute to both Shakespeare’s play and the classic scifi 50s movie Forbidden PlanetWherever Seeds May Fall — a chilling look at how First Contact may be more complex than we’ve dared to imagineApothecary — if you’re looking for a story with heart and insights into medieval lifeStarship Mine — you’ll need a box of tissues. This book explores what it means for each of us to be human, navigating the cosmos in bodies which are, after all, our own personal starshipsClowns — looks at what aliens would think of our political and economic systemsJury Duty — what happens when First Contact goes wrong?Welcome to the Occupied States of America — Bullets and bombs have failed; now it’s time for a teenage girl in a wheelchair to save the day!

It pains me to leave novels like Losing Mars and Galactic Exploration out of the top ten, but there are only ten slots to fill. There are a lot of wonderful concepts to explore in the First Contact series.

Thank you for supporting independent science fiction. It’s readers like you that make these books possible. Without you, they wouldn’t exist as I’d still be working in web design—so, from the depths of my heart, thank you!

The Tempest

The Tempest launched last week and has been sitting at #1 in New Releases for Hard Science Fiction. It’s an obscure sub-genre, to be sure, but it’s still humbling to see readers are interested in a Shakespearean tragedy in space. I took several sections of dialogue from the original play and worked them into the story, updating the language but retaining the heart and meaning, making this quite a fascinating novel to develop.

The Tempest was written in homage to Shakespeare’s play and the 1950s classic Forbidden Planet, which was also loosely based on Shakespeare. 

Forbidden Planet was the first big-budget, science fiction film in Hollywood. It was recorded in color at a time when most contemporary movies were being recorded in black and white. Although the acting, special effects and dialogue are dated by today’s standards, it still stands out as a classic and its influence on the genre has been profound. 

The use of matte paintings gave the sound stage a sense of immeasurable size and depth. This set the tone for almost every other scifi movie that would follow, particularly Star Wars and the interior of the Death Star. As there was no actual edge of the stage, there was no need for a railing. Whether this was intentional or an oversight is uncertain, but this too has permeated Star Wars and other science fiction movies—even though it would be insanely dangerous and impractical in real life to have walkways like this with sudden drops. 

Although shows like The Expanse have avoided saucer-style spacecraft, they too still follow the pattern of making their spacecraft sleek and streamlined when in space there’s no need for any such constraint. Perhaps the biggest impact of the saucer from Forbidden Planet is seen in the most iconic spacecraft of all time, the USS Enterprise.

When considering various designs, Gene Roddenberry wanted to get away from the saucer but eventually, even he had to admit the futuristic look of a saucer worked well. He finally allowed it to be incorporated into the design (with the addition of a central body and nacelles)  

I’m not sure the Independence would have been quite as iconic as the Enterprise.

Even movies and shows that had nothing to do with space still pay homage to the Forbidden Planet.

In the Breaking Bad episode Crawl Space, the sound of the monster’s footsteps in Forbidden Planet is used in the closing scene. In the 1970s classic horror/thriller The Thing, the movie Forbidden Planet is playing in the background on a television within the Antarctic base. Forbidden Planet has had a lasting impact on science fiction.

So if you love compelling science fiction and you’re a fan of the classics, be sure to check out my novel The Tempest and keep an eye out for the various homages woven into the story, referencing both Shakespeare’s play and Forbidden Planet

My next project is Apothecary, which is set in 15th-century London. It asks the question, what would advanced intelligent aliens think of us if they visited while we were still wrapped up in superstitions and barbaric practices, like burning people at the stake? There are a lot of really interesting themes woven into the story, so I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. I hope to release it in January of 2023.

A storm is coming…

My latest novel The Tempest launches on November 4th this year and is available now for preorder! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BHL8ZZKW/

Synopsis: Marc and Emma are on the graveyard shift onboard the Sycorax, an interstellar spacecraft bound for New Haven, a colony world fifty light years from Earth. Eighteen thousand colonists lie in suspended animation, awaiting a new life around another star. For the crew of the Sycorax, interstellar flight is boring—that is until they run into a tempest. Before long, they find themselves on a crippled spacecraft falling in toward a black hole, but that’s the least of their problems…

The Tempest is a tribute to Shakespeare’s final play and explores similar themes while weaving some of his dialogue into the narrative. It includes references to the 1950s classic sci-fi film Forbidden Planet and Michael Crichton’s Sphere, both of which were influenced by Shakespeare’s work.

After the Afterword

My latest novel, Clowns, is a rather different take on First Contact with an extraterrestrial species. The central conceit is—What would an alien civilization think about our level of intelligence?

We may have landed rovers on Mars, walked on the Moon, and invented astonishingly complex, fast and compact computers, but are those really a measure of intelligence? They’re certainly not a measure of my intelligence. I get the benefit of them but I couldn’t build them.

Ask yourself this—how does a toilet work?

Toilets are simple enough. We use them several times a day. There’s a cistern holding water behind the seat. Buttons release that water and it washes away our bodily waste. Simple, right?

Build one.

Oh, not so simple now, huh?

Toilets are a remarkable feat of engineering

Toilets are a remarkable feat of design and engineering—and we take them totally for granted. They’re a great example of how modern society is built on someone else’s intelligence—not yours or mine. We benefit from the intelligence of others, regardless of any intelligence of our own (or any lack thereof).

What would an intelligent extraterrestrial species capable of traversing the stars consider a true sign of our intelligence? What would make them consider you or me intelligent?

It’s an interesting question and one I explore at length in the fictional narrative of Clowns.

As with all of my novels, the book has an afterword exploring the various concepts woven into the story. When it came to Clowns, it was easy to go off on a tangent in the afterword so I pulled a few concepts out and stuck them here for hard-core fans.

Here are the out-takes from the afterword.

Subsidizing The Spectacle

When it comes to economics, most people’s eyes glaze over. Like the example of a toilet, we want to be able to use it, not build it, but our blissful ignorance leaves us vulnerable to being exploited.

Let the free market decide, is the clarion call of economists, but does the market really decide about things like fossil fuels? Or is capitalism a quagmire of conflicting interests? 

Fossil fuel prices are kept artificially low by subsidies even though there’s an undeniable, detrimental effect on humanity. The impact of pollution isn’t limited to climate change. Globally, we waste six trillion dollars a year on fossil fuel subsidies—that’s eleven million dollars a minute! 50% of natural gas and 99% of all coal is priced at less than half its true cost. By subsidizing fossil fuels, the government is lying to us about their benefit to the economy. You pay half in the cost of goods and the other half in tax, but either way, you’re still paying the full amount. It might feel good to pay less for things, but it’s an illusion—and The Spectacle loves nothing more than the allure of a good illusion.

Personally, I’d rather remove all subsidies and let the free market decide! Studies have shown that most of these subsidies go to investors as profit so removing them won’t increase the price of gas, oil or coal—it would simply reduce company profits, while CO2 emissions would reduce by about a third as clean, green energy takes off in a truly free market. The global GDP would increase by 3.8% and one million lives would be saved each year due to reduced air pollution alone!

Clowns from the Roe City Rollers

The Spectacle and The Pandemic

I know this will raise the heckles of those that despise government intrusion, but the free market will not regulate itself. It can’t. Imagine a game of football without a referee—that’s the free market. Left to themselves, companies will lie and cheat and cut corners in order to beat each other and make a buck. The fossil fuel industry, in particular, has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted. 

Governments have their own problems, like corruption and bureaucratic incompetence, but they are “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Their role is to represent us and our best interests. Speed limits are an example of how sometimes they even need to protect us from ourselves. When it comes to capitalism, governments should provide the bit and bridle in the horse’s mouth.

Cholera is an excellent example of proper government intervention. These days, we’re told, “we need to learn to live with COVID,” but we haven’t learned anything as nothing has changed. Politicians are scared of the impact on the economy. The Spectacle will not tolerate any interruptions. Unbridled capitalism is the guiding principle, not the public good. If our modern approach had been applied to the cholera outbreaks in the 1800s, we wouldn’t have sewage systems in our homes or clean drinking water in our taps. Cholera would be left to “individual responsibility.” 

It’s easy to think there are no solutions to something as pervasive and complex as COVID, but that’s not true. There are simple solutions. The adoption of Far UVC lights in places like schools, shopping malls, on trains and planes would drastically cut the transmission rate of all airborne diseases, not just COVID. Far UVC has been shown to be safe and 99.9% effective, but The Spectacle isn’t interested in our health and happiness, only monetary profit. Oh, and just wait. If it is adopted, there will be the usual batshit crazy conspiracy theories undermining the public health effort and resisting change. 

For some bizarre reason, we hate change. We’ll do anything to avoid changing our minds on a subject, even if it means inventing fairy tales. A lifelong friend of mine in the US died during the pandemic. His family couldn’t bring themselves to admit they’d made a mistake by not getting vaccinated. Instead, they blamed his “bad lungs.” The only thing more heartbreaking than losing him was seeing how his family dismissed his death. But they’re not alone. Denial is a defense mechanism. During the height of the pandemic, it was common for people to die denying what was happening to them. 

We all want the pandemic to be over. We all want to “go back to normal,” but as I write this in April 2022, the pandemic is not yet over. Pretending it’s over is a mistake. Don’t confuse the issues at play here: Omicron isn’t mild—vaccines are effective! Without vaccines, Omicron would be killing millions of people. As it is, there’s no lasting immunity to COVID so Omicron is ripping through the country in wave after wave. The elderly, the young and those with compromised immune systems are still dying from this damn thing. And we have no idea just how bad long COVID will be (where people have lingering symptoms).

“It’s just a cold,” is one of the worst mantras to come out of the pandemic. The reason people think COVID is just a cold is because there are flu-like symptoms. But what most don’t realize is that a cough, fever, chills, etc, are symptoms of your immune system fighting COVID. That’s why they’re so similar. Same immune system. Same symptoms. These are not COVID symptoms. COVID is a multi-organ virus. Actual COVID symptoms are damage to organs like the lungs, heart, brain and liver, etc—not an annoying cough for a few days. And for most of these organs, the damage isn’t obvious. 

At this point in the pandemic, the best strategy is to avoid repeat infections.

Do you wear a seatbelt?

Do you stop at red lights?

Ask yourself—why? 

To protect yourself. Because of the outside, remote chance you might be hurt in an accident. That’s why you should wear a mask during a pandemic. It’s the same logic. There’s no loss of freedom in wearing a mask. Think of how extraordinarily shortsighted it is for people to be celebrating the “freedom” to remove masks on a plane while still wearing seatbelts! Oh, the irony!

If we want to make contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species, we’re going to have to start displaying some intelligence ourselves.

You can find Clowns on Amazon in ebook, paperback and hardback.

Creepy clowns personify our fear of being manipulated __ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-626e0a95d93e0', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });

Forget about Hollywood

Have you ever wondered what First Contact will be like with an extraterrestrial species? Does Hollywood get it right?

I was privileged to work with Arvin Ash on a video exploring this concept. He delves into some really interesting science and science-fiction angles.

Fans of my novels will notice points taken from Galactic Exploration, Xenophobia, 3zekiel, Wherever Seeds May Fall and my upcoming novel Generation of Vipers!

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Behind-the-scenes

My daughter Sarah is studying film and fine arts at university. For her final project, she had to put together a book trailer, so she settled on a novel I wrote for her in 2015 called What We Left Behind. Sarah’s always been a big Walking Dead fan, so I penned this zombie novel and it won a Kindle Scout award. Seeing her and her university team bringing it to life, though, has been astonishing. Their passion and enthusiasm is refreshing. The final cut will even have an original music score!

Once the trailer is complete, we’ll put it in front of a few producers and see what happens from there.

Here are some behind-the-scenes shots…

Don’t go in there! What are you thinking? Lights, camera, action! The production crew was totally professional. You wouldn’t think they were students There was a team of six special effects makeup artists on the crew This is between scenes, adding a headshot before filming the zombie falling Ouch! It’s just a flesh wound He seems nice Here’s Sarah filming at Hinze Dam True story: Mary Shelley (the author of Frankenstein) kept her husband’s heart in a jar on her writing desk!

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Postmarked from the Stars

I love talking about science and science fiction. As much as possible, I try to base my novels around actual scientific concepts and weave in ideas from biology, physics and astronomy but it’s rare I get to talk about the inspiration in detail.

If you’re interested in hearing a little behind-the-scenes on my novels 3zekiel and Cold Eyes, be sure to check out my interview on Postmarked from the Stars—it was a lot of fun!

UFOs and UAPs

Are there UFOs? Yes, there are flying objects we can’t easily identify.

Are they alien? Not so fast.

Aliens is one possibility, but it’s not the only possibility and shouldn’t be our first choice when considering an unknown phenomenon.

We humans have a long history of jumping to conclusions. For thousands of years, this resulted in superstitions and traditions that lead to bizarre beliefs. To this day, people avoid black cats, think bad luck comes in threes, and avoid anything with the number 13. As irrational is these sentiments are, they’re persistent.

Science has given us the means of removing our natural biases and flawed intuition about the world around us, giving us a clear (or at least clearer) view of reality. Science has shown us we can’t trust our own senses. The sun doesn’t rise each day—Earth turns. Even scientists need to be “double blind” to avoid any bias.

If you’re not familiar with the term “double blind,” it arose from trials comparing new drugs with harmless placebos. Although patients didn’t know who got the real drug and who didn’t, they were able to read subtle, unintentional clues from researchers and this influenced the outcomes. It became necessary to “blind” even the researchers handing out the drugs. So when giving pills as part of a trial, even the researchers don’t know who gets what until after the experiment concludes.

The point is—science cannot identify genuine results without first eliminating any human bias. When our natural tendency is to jump to the spectacular, this becomes extremely difficult.

When it comes to UFOs—Unidentified Flying Objects—also known as UAPs—Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, our first concern needs to be eliminating our own bias to ensure we’re seeing clearly.

To the credit of those involved in the recent 60 Minutes special on this, they considered (1) advanced US technology (2) advanced foreign technology and only lastly (3) alien technology.

So what are these things?

1, 2 or 3?

Being unidentified, we don’t know and shouldn’t guess.

Honestly, that’s the conclusion we can reach. They could be 1, 2, 3, or 4, 5, 6, as there may be other possibilities we haven’t yet identified.

One of the claims in this video is that UFOs/UAPs were observed on an almost daily basis over the Atlantic. This is good for science. It means we can make multiple observations. More data leads to better analysis. Let’s get a look at these things through a dedicated spectroscope and figure out their composition. Let’s get some focus on this and collect detailed information so we can form a proper hypothesis. If UFOs/UAPs are really visible on a daily basis, the guys at JPL are going to love this. It’s a lot easier than spending decades planning missions to Mars, Europa, Enceladus and Titan to look for microbes. And it would be a great way to silence the critics like me.

[image error]

Science loves converging lines of evidence. Take evolution as an example, there are multiple converging lines of evidence that support the theory of evolution—the fossil record, the phylogenetic relationships between species at a genetic level, the ability to observe evolution both in the lab and in the wild, etc.

When it comes to UFOs, we expect to see converging lines of evidence. So far, we have eyewitness testimony of extremely competent, trusted military aviators, video and radar imaging. That’s a great start.

For me, the most compelling point so far is when the pilots discussed the object disturbing the ocean as that’s showing an interaction with the physical environment.

A lot of these sightings defy physics, which is not something that should be taken lightly. An acceleration of 700 gees or descending 80,000 meters in seconds is going to have a physical effect on the environment. We may not be able to measure much on the craft itself, but we should be able to observe clear physical effects within the atmosphere.

When an airplane breaks the speed of sound, it generates a sonic boom occasioned by a vapor cone. Regardless of the alien technology, any UFO that suddenly accelerates beyond the speed of sound is going to cause something similar in the air around it. This is an unavoidable consequence of moving through our atmosphere. So far, we haven’t seen any evidence of this, leaving a significant question about what is actually being observed.

Another factor to consider is these things are showing up on the video and radar of a fighter jet, but they’re not showing up in orbit, where we are tracking space debris with considerable care and our most advanced technology.

The US Air Force and various other space agencies in different parts of the world are ALL tracking space debris. We’re looking for nuts and bolts up there—literally. Anything that could potentially interfere with a space mission. We’re tracking half a million objects in a variety of orbits, looking at debris down to about two inches in length, but we haven’t detected anything the size of a UFO.

Our ability to use radar from a ground installation and satellites is more advanced than anything in a fighter craft simply because it doesn’t need to be minimized to fit into a high-performance jet. Oh, and this is run by the Department of Defense. Orbital debris is taken very seriously.

Someone might argue that UFOs are dark and intended to fool our instruments. The problem here is they’re not fooling the instruments on fighter craft. Even if a UFO was pitch black, we would see them in outer space as we’re constantly looking for asteroids that might pose a threat to life on Earth. We wouldn’t see a completely dark UFO, but we would see it occult or block out distant stars. Imagine someone walking in front of the porch light. As soon as a shadow blocks the light, you know someone’s there. We don’t see this. If we did, it would raise alarm bells around the world.

Again, like the space debris, asteroid tracking is conducted by multiple space agencies in various countries. This is a great opportunity for converging lines of evidence, but… crickets.

Another thing that bothers me about UFOs is their size. They’re roughly the size of the fighter jets observing them. That doesn’t seem like a comfortable ride across the galaxy.

At the moment, the odds are this is either US tech, foreign tech or simply mistaken sightings. There’s no compelling evidence UFOs or UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin.

Sorry.

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Tom Petty was right—we’re free falling

Everything everywhere in the universe is falling—even you.

You might think you’re sitting on a chair, reading this article, but you’re not. You’re falling toward the center of Earth. It’s just that you have no distance left to fall. This creates the illusion of being still. If everything everywhere in the universe is falling then nothing is still. Not even you on your chair. 

Being stationary is an illusion. It’s a convenient one, but it’s like a magician’s trick, it hides reality from us.

Einstein proposed that gravity is the warping or distorting of spacetime by a massive object. The consequence of this simple insight is that space (and time) are not flat. Far from being empty, space is lumpy. Bumpy. It’s curved everywhere by gravity.

Gravity effects everything, even light

We’ve all seen astronauts floating in outer space, like on the International Space Station. We say they’re weightless. We used to call this zero gravity. Now it’s referred to as microgravity, but even that’s not entirely correct. 

The International Space Station orbits about 250 miles above Earth, roughly 400 kilometers up. What would happen if I could build a tower that reached 250 miles into the sky? What if the Burj Khalifain, the world’s tallest building, had an elevator that took you to an observation deck at the same altitude as the International Space Station? What would you see? What would you feel? Would you be weightless like the astronauts? Would you be in microgravity? 

Astronauts are falling with style

Most people think the answer is yes. If astronauts are floating around up there, then why wouldn’t I float as well?

The answer is astonishing. You’d weigh less, but not by much. You certainly wouldn’t be floating around. Your feet would be firmly on the floor of the observation deck.  

At sea level, Earth’s gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared—meaning if you drop something, it’s going to fall almost ten meters in the first second (ignoring wind resistance for a moment). That’s about 32 feet. 

On top of our hypothetical super-high Burj Khalifain, at an altitude of 400km, Earth’s gravity has reduced as we move away from the planet, but it’s still astonishingly strong. It’s 8.7 meters per second, or about 28 feet.

But what about our astronauts in microgravity. Yeah, they’re not really in microgravity. They’re experiencing the same 8.7 meters per second acceleration down toward the center of Earth as I am standing on a tower 400 kilometers high.

The reason they’re floating is they’re falling. Remember. Everything everywhere in the universe is falling toward something. Earth is falling around the Sun. The Sun is falling around the Milky Way. Our galaxy is falling around the Great Attractor. Yep, the entire Milky Way is moving at well over a million miles an hour toward a super-cluster containing 10,000 galaxies the size of Andromeda.

The Great Attractor dwarfs even the local group of galaxies we’re in

And here you are sitting on a chair reading an article. It’s an illusion. We’re all falling. It’s just that most of us are falling along with a rather large mass we like to call Earth.

Going back to the observation deck on our imaginary Burj Khalifain, we’re looking for the International Space Station. Only there’s a problem. It’s not floating in space. It’s in orbit. And that means it’s falling. And it’s falling at five miles a second. It’s falling so fast it never reaches the ground.

Here it comes.

Blink and you’ll miss it as it whizzes by at five miles a second. 

The International Space Station as seen from the Space Shuttle in 2008

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe describes flight as…

…an art… [that] lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss

Douglas Adams

This is true of orbits as well.

In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton was inventing modern physics and he wondered how far a cannonball could go if the army kept increasing the amount of gunpowder behind the shot. He knew Earth was a sphere. He realized that with each increase in distance, the cannonball would slowly disappear over the horizon.

Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Our modern concept of orbits was born when he realized that at a certain speed, his cannonball would keep falling. It would be moving so fast that it would fall around Earth rather than back to it. 

And that’s what’s happening to our astronauts and satellites. They’re moving so fast sideways, that when they fall back toward Earth, they miss the entire planet.  

The next time you see a rocket launch at night, watch how it moves in an arc, curving until it’s going sideways.

SpaceX Launch captured by That Rocket Scientist

Look at how the rocket clears the lower atmosphere and then races sideways. Why does it do that? Because getting into space is one thing. Staying there is another. Gravity is still strong up there, right? Remember, it’s 8.7 meters per second squared at 400 kilometers in altitude. So our rockets have to race sideways until they’re going fast enough to fall around Earth rather than falling back to Earth.   

Astronauts floating in space are no different to you or me floating as an airplane hits turbulence and plummets a few hundred feet in a couple of seconds, or if we’re falling on a rollercoaster at the fairground, or falling while bouncing on a trampoline. The only difference is astronauts have mastered the art of missing the ground. 

It seems Tom Petty was right—we are free-falling.

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