I'm starting to agree with Maddox that "Internet really needs to stop sucking Neil deGrasse Tyson's dick." [1]

The man is not without accomplishments, but it's getting to the point of complete over-saturation. Just enough already.

[1] http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd

It's just a little bit ironic that you can't express your opinion that an internet celebrity is overexposed without name-checking another internet celebrity.

I certainly could.. but then my comment would surely disappear under a wave of downvotes.

Really? The only place I've ever heard of him was on HN and I'm still not sure who he is. If I recall correctly he is a physics popularizer.

He used to be a research physicist in the old days.

Wow, that guy is a pompous ass. His doling out of nerd status is too ridiculous.

For those unfamiliar with Maddox, he is a blogger whose public persona is in fact an over-the-top professional pompous ass. So your observation is spot on, but he does it on purpose.

I'll bet he would have a different opinion if it was him standing on that little ledge before stepping off.

> I'll bet he would have a different opinion if it was him standing on that little ledge before stepping off.

If he was standing on that little ledge: "The theory of gravity definitely no longer needs to be tested this way. Now let me back in!"

>I'll bet he would have a different opinion if it was him standing on that little ledge before stepping off.

That doesn't even make sense.

You're just being needlessly and nonsensically indignant over a joke from a guy who is hardly unaccomplished himself [1].

Chill out.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson#Selected_aw...

One accomplished person should not be belittling the accomplishments of another.

A good check to see if something is a joke is to see if you thought it was funny. To me it looks as if he wants to make this seem totally insignificant, and to increase his own stature by appearing to be above (pun intended) this all.

My God, what is going on in this thread?? It was a fucking joke. Do you follow Tyson? That's kind of his "thing."

We don't need hours of analysis and arguing over what he possibly may have meant by his tweet.

No, he's simply calling out the idiots who are calling it "Edge of Space".

> I'll bet he would have a different opinion if it was him standing on that little ledge before stepping off.

I don't know. Most scientists I know have a tendency to put things back into perspective to highlight the really impressive stuff, so yeah, afterwards they would very probably say "Yeah and you may think that was high, but compared to a school globe, on scale it was only a millimeter. Isn't it amazing how stupefyingly BIG space is?!!", though that may make the Red Bull marketing team somewhat angry :P

> «The "Edge of Space" jump: A corresponding fall to a schoolroom globe begins 1 millimeter above its surface. I'm just saying.» [1] > «I'm told somebody's jumping out of a perfectly good balloon from 23-miles up. The theory of gravity no longer needs to be tested in this way»[2]

Oh come on... this man worked and prepared for this for 5 years and the way I understand it, there were definitely some uncertainties about how his body would take it; black out, red out, burst arteries etc. so even in the case of all parts working as intended and a safe landing he was in enough danger. A lot of preparation and a lot of technology went into this.

Why belittle it like that? Just because it did not immediately bring humanity forward a gigantic leap? You could argue the same about music, heck Mozart's and Bach's works are just soundwaves and the same frequencies have been tested very thoroughly, they propagate through air and water just fine! All sorts of colours can be found in nature, why draw a painting? No need to test whether our eyes can perceive colours on a canvas!

I am sorry, Mr. deGrasse Tyson, but humans are more than just efficient, self-improving robots and our most human moments were and are to be found in play and in otherwise completely "useless" activities like art, music, sports or record-chasing which do nothing but making us and maybe others feel good or thrilled and captivating people's attention for a moment.

For one, as other people have pointed out, these are jokes. They aren't intended to belittle anything that is useless; they are just meant to provide a little perspective about something that is getting a lot of hype.

For another, the hype has been a bit excessive on this one. Calling this "the edge of space" is not really honest. He jumped from 23 miles up, from a balloon. Just the fact that he jumped from a balloon should make you stop to ask if it's really "space"; one of the defining features of "outer space" is that it's beyond Earth's atmosphere, and if a balloon is functional, it is not beyond the atmosphere. While where "space" begins is a bit of a fuzzy question, as the atmosphere slowly thins rather than stopping at an exact altitude, a commonly accepted limit is 100km (62 miles) above sea level. Other measures range from 50 miles to 76 miles. Regardless, 23 miles is nowhere near "the edge of space".

Now, he did break some impressive records; highest manned balloon flight, highest skydive, and greatest speed in free fall. But he did not, by most measures, approach the edge of space. So throwing in a little perspective about that is not bad, it's just deflating the hype a little.

> For another, the hype has been a bit excessive on this one. Calling this "the edge of space" is not really honest.

And you can probably thank the Red Bull marketing teams for that, it's their job to spread exactly that hype, even if it's completely dishonest.

As a point of reference, NASA didn't award gold astronaut pins to shuttle astronauts until they went above 50 miles altitude.

Imma let you finish, but I just want to tell you that the Space Shuttle hit the highest record for a manned spacecraft OF ALL TIME.

Seriously, until a man launches himself from the thermosphere, you can colour me unimpressed.

> the Space Shuttle hit the highest record for a manned spacecraft OF ALL TIME

What about the Apollo missions?

Not trolling at all(Honestly!).. but Wow! the fact that someone does not know about the Apollo missions really, really, makes me feel old!

I knew about the space missions, just don't know much about the vessels they used to get the men into space!

I guess I showed my ignorance, but I did learn something. It's been many years since I saw the movie, to be honest... and that's about the extent of my knowledge of the mission.

P.S. they happened in the '60s and '70s. I'm in my 30s with two kids. You're not that old :-)

If it makes you feel better, this millennial knows very well what the Saturn launch system looks like!

You can thank Space Camp for that :)

For a second I was impressed, thinking you were born in this millenium. Oh well.

The last Apollo mission was almost a decade before the first flight of a space shuttle.

In that case, I was very much mistaken!

No.

It's called a joke. Lighten up.

Perhaps you're legitimizing his insult because of who he is? I certainly think that if some random person made the same comment, many would not rush to their defense.

Yeah, I think NDT has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his sentiments about the importance of science and exploration. So yes, it is different than if some random schlub said the same thing.

No, these are very obviously jokes, not insults. They include several joke tropes so that they're easily recognized as jokes.

What are the tropes in the first joke with the 1mm? Not being a native speaker, these must have been lost on me. The second quote, I agree, there is something there. I just wanted to point out it shouldn't matter how "useless" it is in the perspective of all things because that's pretty much 90% of humanity's doing and playing - just in case anyone took these too serious.

"I'm just saying" is a trope. It's certainly not as tropey as what you see in the second joke. The humor in the first is in the pure ridiculousness of comparing the height with what it would be on a globe, which is why it's written with the adoption of the sort of persona that would follow up a comment with "I'm just saying."

He's not making fun of the guy who made the jump, but of the marketers who called it "Edge of Space".

Well, there's the fact that marketers are primarily there to make things look interesting. We're all very aware of this. Marketers gonna market. A snappy bit of branding like 'The Edge of Space' sounds much better than 'Jump From High Atmosphere'.

90% of the people who watched probably don't care that it's not technically the edge of space, and whilst we can all spend time quibbling about it and getting semantics right, we're wasting time going "Not technically space!" when we should instead be focussing on the achievements made.

The main achievement being convincing this 90% that it was the edge of space.

Really, that's the main achievement of this? Not the testing of the next-gen pressure suits? Or the scientific data on the effects of free-fall and Mach level speeds on the human body? Or the fact that the results will be able to be applied to ongoing efforts with space travel?

No, I guess you're right. I'm an idiot.

Exactly. [Outer] Space is 100 km or more