Difference between revisions of "893: 65 Years"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Jump to: navigation, search
(Transcript)
Line 4: Line 4:
 
| title    = 65 Years
 
| title    = 65 Years
 
| image    = 65 years.png
 
| image    = 65 years.png
| imagesize =
 
 
| titletext = The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
 
| titletext = The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
 
}}
 
}}

Revision as of 00:12, 28 February 2013

65 Years
The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
Title text: The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.

Explanation

In this comic, over 65 years, Randall is projecting the number of living humans who have walked on another world, which seems to include the moon as well. He is using actuarial tables or life tables which shows for each age the probability that a certain person will be alive by their next birthday.

This comic assumes that no one else is going to walk on another world going forward into the future which, as is mentioned in the image text, is a terrible idea for the future of the human race. If the human race only exists on one planet - one disaster can destroy the whole race. However, if humans extend their society to other planets, they lessen the risk of complete extinction.

Transcript

[A graph titled 'Number of Living Humans Who Have Walked on Another World' -- its y-axis is numbered 5, 10, 15, it's x-axis increments every ten years from 1960-2040. The line of the graph has a bracket above it that says '65 Years', starting at 1969, ending in 2034.
The line starts at 1969 and increases steeply to 12 by 1972. It then plateaus until the early nineties declines gradually to 9 between 1991-1999, and then plateaus again.
From 2020-2035, which is labeled 'Projected Actuarial Tables', the line branches into three and begins to decline more steeply to zero. The area between the first and second branch is shaded and labeled '5th percentile' and the area between the second and third branch is shaded and labeled '95th percentile.']


comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

I wonder if it would be possible to identify individual people who are behind those vertical jumps in the graph (in the not projected part)... --JakubNarebski (talk) 19:18, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

  • Glad you asked! </Information Hen> Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in July 1969; that's two. Pete Conrad and Alan Bean joined the group that November; that's four. Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell in February '71; that's six. David Scott and James Irwin in July '71; that's eight. John W. Young and Charles Duke in April '72; that's ten. Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in December '72; that's twelve. Irwin died in '91, dropping it to 11. Shepard and Conrad died in '98 and '99 respectively, making it 9 as of the date this comic was published. Armstrong died in '12, so our current number is 8. The oldest living person to have landed on the moon is Aldrin, 83. There are two 82-year-olds, two 80s, one 78 and two 77s. Ekedolphin (talk) 13:28, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Almost prophetic and very, very sad. RIP Neil Armstrong ------


Can we add the 5% and 95% columns to the table? Spongebog (talk)

i dont feel like this would add to the explanation of the comic and would require us to know a great deal about the author's calculations. rather than attempt to redo the actuarial calculations performed to make the chart and assign this to the individuals in the table we should rather explain the concepts behind the 5% and 95% and preserve the intention of actuarial information as applying to demographic groups. 5% of people in the demographic the author selected live to _ age 95% of those people live to _ age and how this affects our subject population. Mrarch (talk) 21:43, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Why is this explanation incomplete? The second paragraph does a good job explaining what the 5th percentile and 95th percentile are referring to. String userName = new String(); (talk) 23:35, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I prefer to think of the inhabitable planets as extensions to earth reserved for when we have learned not to kill all the inhabitants of the only inhabited planet in the universe.

I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 22:39, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I see no reason this is marked as incomplete; I've tidied up the percentile explanations, but haven't really added much more. I think it's fine, and will remove the incomplete tag in a few days if nobody objects. Cosmogoblin (talk) 13:53, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

UPDATED GRAPH: I've updated the image with a red line showing actual moon walker deaths. View here: [1]. Sadly, it's right on track. 172.68.58.59 22:19, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

As of mid April, 2020, this prediction is still accurate, but I'm really scared of what it'll be by the end of 2020 or 2021. Stay healthy everyone, astronaut or not! PotatoGod (talk) 07:04, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Interesting that 6/12 of all the people who walked on the moon were born in 1930, and all bar Alan Shepard was born 1930-1935. Reminds me of some of the ideas in Malcolm Gladwell's *Outliers* about there being especially good birth years to succeed at high levels in given fields. It seems you want to have been mid-30s to early-40s (Shephard the outlier at 47) in the late 60s/early 70s. This also makes the comic more dramatic - if there had been a wider spread of ages, then the "death curve" would be a lot more gradual. -Honeypuppy (talk) 01:15, 30 September 2020 (UTC) What? No. That's a false correlation. The moon program took place over a very short span of time, and was looking for very specific qualification. Including age.

Honorary mention: Michael Collins (1930-2021), RIP this date. 162.158.158.104 17:44, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Also Thomas Stafford (1930-2024). 172.71.242.5 17:10, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

IMO the saddest part isn't astronauts dying - it's lack of any new people getting to walk on another planet. 162.158.90.157 14:04, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, if the Artemis missions go as planned, the count might soon be increasing again for the first time in fifty-three years. Hopefully, not all of the remaining veteran astronauts will have died by then. --162.158.22.16 22:57, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
But with increasing delays (now until 2026) the window of time is closing. 172.71.242.43 17:03, 19 March 2024 (UTC)