Pushin' the Speed of Light - Julia Ecklar & Anne Prather

Gonna try to run a Traveler game or at least a Spell Jammer DND session.

Doesn't even have to be about sci-fi. I think we all can relate to getting wrapped in work only to realize we missed out on important stuff. Just think about how often you want to go hang out with friends, go on a date, or spend time with family only to not be able to because you have work?

To the ship that is our home!

One thing missing, picture getting back just to find that the pay is in a now useless currency .
Out 20 years and literally nothing to show for it

When I first heard this utterly exquisite Space Shanty, I misinterpreted the lyrics as: "Left 𝙎𝙪𝙣𝙨 behind you to carry your name,"
Which in the context of interstellar exploration & extreme, relativistic time-dealation, seemed perfectly understandable.

It was only later after repeat listening that the true, stark, heart-breaking significance of the song finally struck me in all its depth.

One of the reasons I love the setting of the Lancer ttrpg is that it appreciates and integrates time dilation into the culture and subjective experiences of its characters

"The gods are silent when you ask them why" is one of the hardest lines in any song I've ever heard

Been reading Redemption Ark, Revelation Space universe, where Lighthuggers travel at a hair below the speed of light. One character has spent so long travelling he's over 400 years old due to time dilation

So I was just listening to this song for the nth time and I wondered how the math works out given the numbers in the song. Four month round trip while twenty years passes for the outside observer works out to 99.986% the speed of light. Pushing is right. And ten light years one way is a drop in the bucket when it comes to astronomical distances. The song says the ships fly to a hundred suns, which means they're not centered on Earth. There are only thirty stars within ten light years of Earth. What ever homeworld they're working out of must be significantly closer to the center of the galaxy where the average distance between stars gets shorter.

So how does pay and compensation work in this scenario, are you paid hourly/monthly based on your relative time or based on time as experienced at your home of record? Also what about taxes!? I can't even imagine the headache this would cause while trying to file your tax returns. Is this a union position? Would be vested in the International Maritime Space Workers (IMSW) union after 5 earth years or spacecraft relative years? So many unanswered questions in this song.

This hurts, so damn much. The song is a masterful gut punch of both fiction and reality. Think about it. This kind of disconnect happens in real life. With sailors making long hauls across the ocean. And truckers driving halfway across a country or maybe even through several countries on a weekly basis. And soldiers sent off to war only to end up broken and then thrown into a world far beyond the one the left. The true terror of this song isn’t in the fiction of it. It’s the reality

Doing some rough back of the napkin math it seems that the sailor in the song is doing around 60% the speed of light. Impressive and scary for how much life can be missed going that fast.





The Math:
C = Speed of light
V = Velocity

Gama = 1 / sqrt(1 - (v^2 / c^2)
1/3 = 20 / Gama

1/3 = 20 / (1 / sqrt(1 - (v^2 / c^2)))

1 / 3 * (1 / sqrt(1 - (v^2 / c^2))) = 20

sqrt(1 - (v^2 / c^2)) / 3 = 20

sqrt(1 - (v^2 / c^2)) = 3 * 20

60^2 = 1 - (v^2 / c^2)
3600 - 1 = -(v^2 / c^2)

3599 * -c^2 = v^2
sqrt(3599 * -c^2) = v

v / c ~= 60%

this song makes me feel sick, not really in a good way, but I feel like it's in the right way

This hits a little too close to home in an odd sort of way. One day, you start a project that you should be able to complete in a few months. Next thing you know, it's the distant future date of 2023; the sun still rises in the east, man has yet to set foot on Mars, and you've accomplished almost nothing but minor career improvements in the past 8 years. You don't feel like you've aged a day, but everyone and everything around you shows evidence of change. Months fly by in a matter of days, and the end of the next 20 years is waiting at the doorstep....
.....I'm gonna finish that project. And to hell with the overtime..

Wow, came here from a commenter of Sabine's channel, she made a video, that reports the possibility of time travel. This is really good 👍

istfatdweltrtetamlnoto🛖🥃

🛖🥃

Aytptwith🛖🥃

Wow. Just, wow. Feels way ahead of her time, then again, the 70s & 80s were the kings of modern folk songs and were right around that spacefaring lust.

I love, love, LOVE how they incorporated the science. It's not stuff to be ignored for the fantasy of it all, it's the reality, it's the focus. Moving compared to others makes your time slower than theirs', space travel is horrifyingly tough even in the sci-fi future, and you can't go past the speed of light or you start a bunch of paradoxes including reverse time-travel.. But you damn well wish you could. You wrecked your life not knowing about relativity and signing on for that couple months' run.

Just came here from Highwaymen. I fly a starship indeed.

Time to add this to the Starfield Playlist

I would like to point out: How much did our Tech evolve in the last 20 Years?
Do two pushes (if you are lucky) and you need a year of schooling to be allowed a third push. Because as long as there is money to be made humankind will be inventive and newer ships will have better or cheaper tech, not the kind you have experience in.
That is on top of the disconnection of the time flow the pushers have, always coming back to a world they dont know anymore.

Only a fool would believe the second age of piracy would be silent. The Song will resonate through every hall of every ship, to the tune of the humming engines as it did a thousand years ago.

13 years since this was uploaded. I found it here some 5-6 years ago. The songs impact grows as I get older.

Imagine working for a company for sixty years but it only counts as one

The fact my son may be doing this

I'm not crying, you're crying. See ya, space cowboy...

turns out capitalism is still the problem, even in space

Relativity is a lie, it only alters the perception of light and travel from a fixed point. The speed of light is just velocity, you can go faster, it just makes you invisible from behind.

Sign me up!

Can you imagine coming back to a planet after one of these runs only to find it is now uninhabited?

Does anyone else think this is incredibly fertile ground for some good old sci-fi social commentary? Like, spacing companies have to do this on purpose. Round up young and impressionable folks, send them on a near-C voyage, and when they come back to find there's nothing left for them, they've nowhere else to go but back up. You've trapped them into your workforce basically for the rest of their lives.
Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if some future billionaire pulls exactly this stunt.

Heraclitus would be proud:
"And you've left behind you the world of men"
"With no way in space to go home again"
Ta panta rhei

This is quite profound. But I sometimes feel that way about our lives on Earth too. We only live like 75 years, we often lose friends and family, some die, some simply go away and you lose touch. Even if we had immortality we'd still only be able to experience an infinitely small slice of humanity.
So life really, is just about enjoying the moment, the present, and the space around you, what is close, the people and things that are in proximity.

This song is even sadder if you imagine obsolete ships are still profitable for whatever god kings rule the galaxy; because they must make the rum again.

So... could one perhaps call this... a c shanty?

This is such a beautiful, tragic song. Imagine being one of those lonely stargazers, stuck in space with no way home so all you can do is go forward. Everyone you knew and loved is gone, and you’re burning away years like calories as you drive. And you can’t help but weep as you imagine what could have been, and why is it like this? And the only answer you receive from the gods is silence.

abit of a side-thought related to wing commander (the movie); it's no wonder the Pilgrims stopped thinking of themselves as human.

Man, those kids would have the ultimate daddy issues XD imagine seeing them for a week or two every twenty years ><

Pushing the speeeeed of liiiiiiiiiiighhhhtttt!!!

The ghost ships of interspace and beyond. Eternally to travel and never to return home, ageless till they see the end of time itself across the passing sparks of light past their ship's windows. Haunting the highways of time and reality as their long-faded descendants talk tales as they race their own interstellar pursuits; technology leaving behind these faded hollow men and women for faster and safer ways of travel, yet they will still be there... Still pushing the speed of light.

I feel like this song works for jet pilots too, only ots the sound barrier.
Think, a lot of em leave behind family's, and quite a few never come home. Lots sign on for more tours

it's a fucking space shanty!

This whole nonsense could have been avoided if they just created a Krasnikov Tube in their wake....just saying....

This song isnt blueshifted enough

Do you sell any of these original cassettes?

Someone needs to just pull these songs and build a movie

There is a really shifty anime that I watched some years back called ‘Lilly cat’ I think. It’s pretty much just a Alien ripoff; but there is one scene that hit me between the eyes and stunned me. The Captain the ship talks for a moment about his time flying in space. How he’d been doing it for nearly 300 years earth time because of the time dilation. After his first trip his wife had died, and his son had grown older than him. Then his next trip his son had died, but after that he didn’t have any reason to come back. The show was bad, but that moment was really neat. We never really have any media that shows the sacrifice of what life among the stars would really mean for humans.