Gold Rush Quotes

“Money buys power over others. But you cannot buy power over yourself.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“We think there’s a permanence to life when there isn’t. And as soon as you accept that, you’ll find peace.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“His first impression on walking into the vast open chamber with its high beams crisscrossing the steep ceiling is one of intimidation, but Aaron realizes that says more about him than it does the church.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Billionaires are an illusion, he decides, a delusion, a self-perpetuating myth sustained by hoarding the construct of wealth, an excuse to enslave others.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Back in 1974, science fiction author Jerry Pournelle was chatting with Robert Heinlein and made the point that “If you can get a ship into orbit, you're halfway to the moon.” Heinlein replied, “If you can get your ship into orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.” And, broadly speaking, Heinlein was right. The following table is in km/s and is a little simplistic and uses Hohmann transfer orbits, but it makes it easy to see Heinlein’s point: when it comes to exploring the solar system, most of the effort lies in getting off Earth in the first place. Destination Δv from Earth From LEO Low Earth Orbit (LEO) (~400 km) 10 - Geostationary Orbit (GEO) (~35,786 km) 10.5 – 11 1 Moon (Lunar Orbit Insertion) 12 – 14 2 — 4 Venus (Aerobraking at Venus) 16 – 18 6 — 8 Mars (Aerobraking at Mars) 16 – 18 6 — 8 Jupiter (Arrival at orbit) 20 — 22 10 — 12 Saturn (Arrival at orbit) 22 — 25 12 — 15 When you recognize the average distance to Jupiter is 715 million km or 444 million miles, it is quite astonishing to realize that it takes roughly the same delta-v as getting into orbit in the first place, when orbit is only 400 km away!”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Since ammonia only makes up roughly 1% of regular comets, I’ve suggested that the comet in question came from somewhere akin to the Kuiper Belt, where the ammonia content can be as high as 5%. Given that the reaction to neutralize sulfuric acid with ammonia is… H2 SO4 +2NH3 →(NH4 )2 SO4 The comet needs twice as much ammonia as sulfuric acid, plus a little extra to account for losses along the way, putting it in the region of four trillion tons. Although that sounds like a lot, it would result in a comet with a diameter of 10 km (6 miles). The comet Hale-Bopp is 60km (37 miles) in diameter, so this is well within the constraints of comets in our solar system and not far-fetched.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“the same way that we sail across the seas here on Earth, the most viable option for Venus is for us to sail through the air. Forget about the hellish surface where temperatures reach 460 °C (860°F) and crushing pressures of 92 bar (which equates to about 3,000 ft beneath the ocean), Venus is still habitable—but at 55 km (34 miles) above the surface. At that height, the pressure drops to about 1 bar—Earth’s sea-level pressure—and the temperature falls to a range of roughly 20°C to 60°C (68°F to 140°F).”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“the same way that we sail across the seas here on Earth, the most viable option for Venus is for us to sail through the air. Forget about the hellish surface where temperatures reach 460 °C (860°F) and crushing pressures of 92 bar (which equates to about 3,000 ft beneath the ocean), Venus”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Mars is more than twice the size of the Moon, but it is still roughly half the size of Earth, being much closer to the Moon in size. Consider the following comparison… Diameter (km) Mass (1024kg) Gravity (m/s2) Earth 12,756 5.97 9.8 Venus 12,104 4.87 8.9 Mars 6,792 0.64 3.7 Moon 3,475 0.07 1.6 Mars may be half the diameter of Earth, but it has 1/3rd the gravity and barely 1/10th the mass. When compared side by side, the difference is obvious.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Knowledge isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. Knowledge is a platform, a launch pad.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“We want to be comfortable. We’ll take a bed of lies over a thicket of thorns even if that’s the truth.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Ah, this is a text dump.” “Well, that clears things up,” Aaron says, raising an eyebrow as he scans the screen. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \ TDRS GLOBAL ACTIVE \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \ NSTED_DEFAULT_ID = "VNS" \ DATA_CATEGORY = “EXO_EMR” \ TIME_REFERENCE = “HJD” \ PUBLIC = “N” \ FREQ DOWN = "2295 MHz” “S-BAND” = “8415 MHz” “X-BAND” HJD MODULATION CONTENT 2455059.6261813 BPSK EMISSARY CONTACT QUESTION 2455059.6261967 BPSK ABANDON EMISSARY 2455059.6262011 BPSK EMISSARY SENT OKAY 2455059.6262017 BPSK AU FAST EMISSARY 2455059.6262024 BPSK SACRIFICE EMISSARY “VNS is the scientific notation for Venus,” Jill says. “And these numbers? The HJD ones?” “Heliocentric Julian—never mind. So long as they’re in order, we’re reading messages sequentially. Oh, and ignore the public tag.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“The frequencies. These are the coherent downlink frequencies used by Voyager… It seems we weren’t the only ones listening to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft during its grand tour of the solar system.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“With the best of intentions, scientists try to science, but they invariably get bogged down in bureaucracy and internal political hierarchies.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about NASA, SETI, JPL, or any number of university astrophysics departments; their primary concern isn’t science.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Knowledge has built our culture. Knowledge is our only real currency. Knowledge is where our wealth lies.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“hypergolic”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” “I like that,” the priest says. “Who said that? Was it Gandhi? Buddha?” “Carl Sagan.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Humanity is a species of accomplishment: the pyramids, the statue of David, the sonatas of Mozart and the symphonies of Beethoven, the plays of Shakespeare, the musings of Voltaire, the essays of Oscar Wilde and the novels of Virginia Woolf, the paintings of Rembrandt, Monet, van Gogh and Picasso, the observations of Galileo, the mathematics of Newton, the theories of Einstein and Planck, the voyage of Darwin on the Beagle, the kindness of Florence Nightingale, the compassion of Ghandi, the insights of Pasteur, the courage of Jonas Salk, and the first, faltering flight of the Wright Brothers on a windswept sandy beach being followed within a century by astronauts riding into the sky on a column of fire.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“For a trillion dollars… Tucson, Arizona. Waco, Texas. Montgomery, Alabama. And Savannah, Georgia?”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Life could be common and yet rare. I’ll give you an example. Supernovas are among the most violent explosions in the universe, outshining entire galaxies. If one went off near us, it would wipe out life on Earth. And they’re common. Every second, there are roughly forty supernovas exploding somewhere out there in the universe—each and every second!”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Actual news barely makes the news. Most news breaks the surface like a dolphin darting beneath the waves, with a dorsal fin breaking through for a moment, leaving news pundits jumping for joy and making it all about themselves and what they saw.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Modern news is the art of repetition—regurgitation—”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Yes, exactly. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad or risky—just unknown. In 1776, the future of America was unknown. There were roughly two million British subjects in the thirteen colonies, and a population of about eight million back in England. Think about how the futures market would have viewed the revolution. No one could have foreseen that, just over two hundred years later, the population ratio would be reversed. Now, the US has 350 million people compared to 70 million in the UK. We went from being the underdogs with a 1 to 3 ratio to outgrowing Great Britain by 5 to 1. Back then, that kind of growth was inconceivable.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“she has told her boss she thinks he’s outlandishly and irreverently insane with some of his wild ideas.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Russian space program was literally using 18th-century technology to get into orbit. Dozens of these oversized matchsticks were shoved up inside the various engine bells and wired together. Katerina told him that the launch control officer wouldn’t open the valves on the rocket propellant lines until he’d confirmed ignition in all chambers. Although it seems strange to Western minds, the wood and wires were vaporized, making them an effective ignition source with no potential to damage the launch infrastructure.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“Everyone’s narcissistic to some degree. And that’s natural. There’s nothing wrong with being concerned about yourself. But, like everything in life, the extreme is poisonous.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“His ego wouldn’t allow him to see reality, and so he died beside that pond, and flowers sprang up from his corpse. The Narcissi is a species of daffodil, a lush green plant with brilliant flowers. Six white petals surround a narrow, yellow cone containing a delicate stigma and stamen. It’s fragile, which is appropriate.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush

“reflection in the water and believed a lie—that he was seeing himself. But the beauty he beheld was an illusion, the reverse of the truth.”
― Peter Cawdron, Gold Rush