Is This Heaven?

JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED 

MBTI as Monty Python and The Holy Grail Quotes

INFP: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?

ESTJ: Now go away or I will taunt you a second time

ENFJ: (After noticing that he has no limbs left) All right, we’ll call it a draw.

INFJ: Our King? Well I didn’t vote for you!!

ESFP: Your Mother was a Hamster, and your Father smelt of Elderberries!

ENTJ: Oh, stop your whining. First we kill him, then we have biscuts and tea.

ISTJ: WHAT is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

ISTP: Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out!

ISFJ: Oh, look. There’s some lovely filth over here.

ENTP: Help, I’m being oppressed. Come and see the violence inherent in the system.

ESFJ: ‘Tis but a scratch.

INTJ: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony.

ENFP: “What is your favourite colour?”

Red!… I mean blue! (falls down the crevice screaming)

INTP: It’s not a question of where he grips it! It’s a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut.

ESTP: What are you going to do, bleed on me?

ISFP: On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.

All the Ways Your Rich Friends Will Not “Get It”

I’m a kid from a blue-collar, working-class background, doing my master’s degree at an Ivy League school. I’m incredibly grateful to be here, and I fully understand that this is an opportunity most people of my upbringing never get to have. Not everyone here is from a rich background - there are other working-class kids, getting by on loans, scholarships and part-time jobs. But for the most part, the people around me grew up very differently than I did, and although I love my friends, there are things about my life and my college experience that they’re just never going to get. Things like:

Money can buy good grades. My wealthier friends aren’t slipping the TAs a wink and a $100 bill on their way out of the midterm, but being wealthier does make it easier to earn better grades. I have to work a part-time job in order to afford my rent, while my rich friends are abstaining from work so they can focus on school. That’s 20 hours per week that they can spend on school, while I’m at my job. Our school is in a neighborhood in Manhattan that I can’t afford to live in - I’m spending at least ten hours per week commuting, while they live steps from campus. That’s all extra time that they can spend studying, or just relaxing and getting the sleep they need to be mentally alert. Many of my friends pay to have a laundry service pick up their dirty laundry and bring it back clean and folded (which is common in NYC). I can’t afford this, so instead I spend hours lugging laundry up and down five flights of stairs, because I can’t afford to live in a building with an elevator. I cook and prepare my own meals, they eat mostly takeout. And so on, and so forth. My life is filled with hours of work, chores and annoyances that they don’t have to deal with, and all of it cuts into my time. We may be taking the same classes and doing assignments that are the same difficulty, but I’m going in with a 40-hour per week handicap that they can afford not to have. 

“Follow your dreams” is a risk some of us can’t afford to take. My old roommate spent long hours agonizing over whether she wanted to major in art history or creative writing. For me, that would be like asking if I preferred a pet dragon or a unicorn. My biggest passion in life is fiction writing, but I can’t justify spending tens of thousands of dollars to study it - I’m paying for my education by myself, and I had to choose a field that would let me make enough money to pay back my student loans and afford my own rent after graduating. My friends can focus on the things that really interest them, without worrying about future career prospects. A lot of them are using their college years to “find themselves” and plan to take some time off to travel the world or work on their art after graduating. Many of them have parents with connections in hard-to-access industries like fashion, publishing, television, or the art world. They can take unpaid internships and go for their shot at a one-in-a-million dream job - if it doesn’t work out, they can move on to something else, no harm done. If I put tens of thousands of dollars into being an author and it doesn’t pan out for me right away, I’m in deep shit. I’m happy for people who are able to follow their true passions, and I wish more people were able to do so without fear, but I’m tired of the pitying looks and condescending lectures I get when I tell my friends why I’m not in school for my greatest passion. I didn’t make that decision because I’m boring, or because I don’t believe in myself hard enough - I made that decision because my parents co-signed on all my student loans, and they could lose their house if I can’t find a job. 

Your “funny mishap” is my “life-changing disaster”. My friends talk about the time that they accidentally got drunk and spent all their rent money at a strip club, or the time that they slept through their final and had to re-take a class. For them, these are funny stories. For me, this would be a life-defining catastrophe that could change the course of my 20s and beyond. If I blow all my rent money, I can’t call my parents to beg for more - I could get evicted, or ruin my credit score. Best-case scenario, I’d probably have to take on so many extra hours at work that I could barely finish my schoolwork. If I sleep through a final and fail a class, I will lose my scholarship and be unable to complete my degree. To my friends, I come across as uptight and overcautious, but I don’t have a choice. The same mistake carries much greater consequences for me than it does for them, and they have a hard time understanding that. I wish that I could be carefree about money, and laugh about accidentally getting drunk and spending $500 on Amazon, but I can’t. It can be hard to tell the difference between “oh shit, this really sucks” and “oh shit, I’m going to be dealing with the consequences of this for years” when you’ve never been on the latter end of the spectrum. Again, I love my friends, and I’m happy that they don’t have to have these stresses in their lives, but it’s hard when they attribute my cautiousness to a personality flaw, and not to the financial reality of my life. 

Having no safety net is more stressful than you can imagine. Many of my friends insist that they aren’t really rich - rich people own private jets and private islands and party with celebrities, while their parents just own a modest condo in Manhattan and a sensible vacation home in Connecticut. They’ve grown up around people who are much richer than they are, and they’ve come to think of themselves as middle-class, even though many of their parents easily make double or triple the federal upper boundary for the middle class. But they don’t have unlimited money. They don’t have their own 6-figure bank accounts or unrestricted use of Daddy’s black credit cards.  If they run out of money, they will have to call home and ask for more, which will be awful for them - their parents will probably yell at them, and make them feel shitty, and give them a huge unwanted lecture about responsibility. It could have a huge toll on their mental health, and that really sucks. But if I run out of money, I’m just kind of screwed. My parents cannot help me, even if they desperately want to. The best they can do is let me move into the guestroom of their home, in a desperately poor rural area where the best job available is cashier at the grocery store in town, because it pays $2 above minimum wage. I wouldn’t be homeless, but I would almost definitely default on my student loans, launch my credit score straight into the sun, and waste months or years trying to get back on my feet in an area with no opportunities. If my friends screw up, they have to face their parents’ scorn and disappointment. If I screw up, I have to face my entire life coming apart at the seams. Living with that constantly hanging over your head can affect your entire life, and it really does feel like you’re trying to walk across a tightrope dozens of feet up, with no net to catch you if you fall.  Once again, I love my friends dearly, and I am grateful to have every single one of them in my life. They have made my life and my time at graduate school infinitely better with their humour, their wit, their friendship and their sympathetic ears. I am in no way blaming them for the way they grew up - they didn’t choose their lives any more than I did, and many of them appreciate how lucky they are. But there’s still a gulf between me and them, and it’s one that can be surprisingly difficult to cross. My rich friends love me, but they don’t understand me. They don’t understand that money isn’t just an aspect of my life - it shapes my entire life, for better or for worse, and I don’t have the luxury of forgetting that it exists for even a moment. My rich friends love me, and they try. But they just don’t get it. 

By: Brian | brianmcw

Capturing Space Stories, One Click at a Time!

It’s World Photography Day!

To celebrate the occasion, we’re sharing photos from our photographers that chronicle what’s making news across the agency - from launches and landings to important science announcements to images taken from the vantage point of space.

Take a look!

A Closer View of the Moon 

Posted to Twitter by European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, this image shows our planet’s Moon as seen from the International Space Station. As he said in the tweet, “By orbiting the Earth almost 16 times per day, the #ISS crew travel the distance to the Moon and back – every day. #Horizons”

The International Space Station is the world’s only orbital laboratory. An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the station. The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.

Photo Credit: NASA

Spacewalk Selfie

NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold took this selfie during the May 16, 2018, spacewalk to perform upgrades on the International Space Station, saying in a tweet “An amazing view of our one and only planet.”

Arnold and fellow spacewalker Drew Feustel donned spacesuits and worked for more than six hours outside the station to finish upgrading cooling system hardware and install new and updated communications equipment for future dockings of commercial crew spacecraft.

Photo Credit: NASA

Preparing to Leave Earth

The mobile service tower at Space Launch Complex-3 is rolled back to reveal the United Launch Alliance Atlas-V rocket with NASA’s InSight spacecraft onboard, Friday, May 4, 2018, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a Mars lander designed to study the “inner space” of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core. 

Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Launch Long Exposure

The United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket is seen in this long exposure photograph as it launches NASA’s Parker Solar Probe to touch the Sun, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018 from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Parker Solar Probe is humanity’s first-ever mission into a part of the Sun’s atmosphere called the corona.  Here it will directly explore solar processes that are key to understanding and forecasting space weather events that can impact life on Earth.

Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Waving Farewell

Expedition 56 flight engineer Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA waves farewell to family and friends as she and Soyuz Commander Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos and flight engineer Alexander Gerst of European Space Agency depart Building 254 for the launch pad a few hours before their launch, Wednesday, June 6, 2018 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Auñón-Chancellor, Prokopyev, and Gerst launched aboard the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft at 7:12am EDT (5:12pm Baikonur time) on June 6 to begin their journey to the International Space Station.

Photo Credit: NASA/Victor Zelentsov

Launching Humans to Space

The Soyuz MS-09 rocket is launched with Expedition 56 Soyuz Commander Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, flight engineer Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA, and flight engineer Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency), Wednesday, June 6, 2018 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Prokopyev, Auñón-Chancellor, and Gerst will spend the next six months living and working aboard the International Space Station. 

Photo Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Rethinking Aircraft Design

In an effort to improve fuel efficiency, NASA and the aircraft industry are rethinking aircraft design. Inside the 8’ x 6’ wind tunnel at NASA Glenn Research Center, engineers tested a fan and inlet design, commonly called a propulsor, which could use four to eight percent less fuel than today’s advanced aircraft.

Photo Credit: NASA/Rami Daud

Flying Observatory

SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is the largest airborne observatory in the world, capable of making observations that are impossible for even the largest and highest ground-based telescopes. During its lifetime, SOFIA also will inspire the development of new scientific instrumentation and foster the education of young scientists and engineers.

Photo Credit: NASA/SOFIA/Waynne Williams

Experimenting with Venus-like conditions

A close-up view of crystals that developed on materials exposed to conditions on Venus in NASA Glenn’s Extreme Environments Rig. This unique and world class ground-based test rig can accurately most simulate atmospheric conditions for any planet or moon in the solar system and beyond.

Photo Credit: NASA/Bridget Caswell

Honeycomb Close Up

A close-up view of 3-D printed honeycomb patterns made in NASA Glenn manufacturing lab using a method called binder jetting. The honeycomb structures can find use in several applications such as a strong core for lightweight sandwich panels, acoustic panels for noise attenuation and innovative cellular structures.

Photo Credit: NASA/Marvin Smith

To see even more photos of our space exploration efforts, visit us on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

mbti as ways they say “i love you”

(x)

istp

“stay over”

“you might like this”

“i was just in the neighborhood”

estp

“i want you to be happy”

“you look like you could use a hug”

“i’ll wait”

isfp

"you didn’t have to ask”

“i’ll meet you halfway”

“i’ll be here when you’re ready”

esfp

“i saw this and thought of you”

“i’m worried about you”

“i like your laugh”

istj

“don’t worry about me”

“i’m proud of you”

“that’s okay, i bought two”

estj

“you should take a break - you work too hard”

“take my jacket, it’s cold outside”

“you’re important too”

isfj

“i made this for you”

“we can share”

“i don’t mind”

esfj

“it reminded me of you”

“i made your favourite”

“i want you to have this”

infp

“listen to this song - it reminded me of you”

“i’m happy you’re here”

“i saved you a piece”

enfp

“well what do you want to do?”

“i picked these for you”

“stay there, i’ll come get you”

infj

“you dont have to say anything”

“i’ll help you study”

“i noticed”

enfj

“do you need any help with that?”

“call me if you need anything”

“it’s no bother”

intp

“i’ll do it for you”

“i really want your opinion on something”

“wow”

entp

“you can have the last slice”

“what do you want to watch?”

“do you want to come too?”

intj

“is there anything i can do to help?”

“it’s okay, i couldn’t sleep anyways”

“take mine”

entj

“i appreciate what you do for me”

“you just made my day”

“we’ll figure it out”