See You in the Cosmos: New Recordings 1–22

I said, Come here boy, don't be scared, but he was crying and curling his tail because we were still strangers at that point. I told him I’m not going to hurt him, I’m a pacifist, and I guess he believed me because when I picked him up he didn’t even fight me or try to run.

I said, I've been saving the money for my rocket but I can use some of it to buy Carl Sagan's food because he's not that big of a dog, and besides, you should come back to Rockview sometime and meet him in person—I mean, in dog—before you make any brash decisions.

The official name is the Southwest High-Altitude Rocket Festival but everyone on Rocketforum.org just calls it SHARF. It's an acronym.

Acronyms are words made using the first letter of other words, like how NASA is National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I guess their plan backfired.

I told him he should just download a simulator for his motorcycle like the one I found for my rocket called OpenRocket.

Justin laughed and he asked me how's Ronnie doing, and I told him Ronnie's busy like usual with his prospective clients.

This year in Mrs. Campos’s social studies class we learned about genealogy, which is the study of who you come from, and we had a lab day where we went on computers in the library to a site called Ancestry.com.

The paramedics in the back of the ambulance were talking to whoever was sick or maybe dying, and Carl Sagan and I got closer and the person was wearing an oxygen mask on his face and he was nodding and shaking his head at whatever the paramedics were asking him, and then we got even closer and I saw his face more clearly, and I saw his blue bandanna—it was the older kid!

I would've gotten you a burger too but I wasn't sure if you were vegan like Zed.

The site here is just really flat desert with wide mountains in the distance, and when I first saw the tents and RVs on our way in, it felt like we were driving toward a colony on Mars, except instead of being red and orange it was gold and brown and a little purple.

Ken typed the letter D for D-class in the column next to my name and he said I’m ready to go, I'm the first official entrant!

It said he's married to some person named Donna but that's not my mom's name, and besides, my parents got married in Colorado, not Nevada, so I'm pretty sure it's just a coincidence.

She gave me her business card also and she said if I’m ever looking for a summer internship, they’d be glad to have me.

I told her he lets me take home the science magazines he doesn’t sell every month, so with my job right now I get paid in knowledge but I get paid in money too. Elisa said that I'm a tough negotiator.

I'm putting in the charger cable with the Golden iPod so that way you can charge it, and I wish I had something beautiful and poetic to say like my hero would about how we’re all hurtling through the vastness of space on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam and stuff like that but I don’t, so I guess, um, just let me know if you get these recordings!

I'm putting in the charger cable with the Golden iPod so that way you can charge it, and I wish I had something beautiful and poetic to say like my hero would about how we’re all hurtling through the vastness of space on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam and stuff like that but I don’t, so I guess, um, just let me know if you get these recordings!

I'm putting in the charger cable with the Golden iPod so that way you can charge it, and I wish I had something beautiful and poetic to say like my hero would about how we’re all hurtling through the vastness of space on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam and stuff like that but I don’t, so I guess, um, just let me know if you get these recordings!

Like, what if when he had his accident instead of dying he got amnesia, and when he woke up he forgot everything except his name and birthday and he didn't know he had a family in Rockview.

They could either let it stop them or they could redouble their efforts, figure out what went wrong, and fix their mistakes so they can make the next try a success.

Then during the awards ceremony, Steve was saying how him and Nathan's rocket could have done a lot better if they had big sponsors too, and they should put a camera on THEIR next rocket like Skywalker team did so they can post the video on YouTube and make some ad revenue.

[soft pattering]
Do you guys hear that?
Listen.
That’s the rain.

Zed wrote on his chalkpad, Monsoon Season, and there were clouds in the distance that were big and fluffy at first but then they dissolved and looked like huge gray curtains, they were rain curtains, and they had bends in them from the wind just like real curtains.

I asked the guys, Why doesn't Johnny Rockets have any real rockets or even model rockets and why does everything in here look so old? and Zed wrote on his chalkpad, It's Nostalgic.

Zed loves that kind of stuff. Did he tell you that he used to be a motivational speaker?

And then he went to India to find some guru but he never found the guy, and when he got back he gave away most of his money to charity.

Steve, you're always coming up with ways to make money or BMWs. You're very entrepreneurial.

Las Vegas is straight ahead in front of us and with all the lights it looks like a galaxy or a nebula of orange and white stars.

We’re in the sky! We’re at the top of the Stratosphere! Except it doesn't go all the way to the real stratosphere, not even close.

It's hard to tell though, because the only buildings I can see clearly right now are the hotel and casinos. There's an Eiffel Tower one and a Caesar’s Palace one, and a medieval castle and New York City and a big glass pyramid and sphinx and it's like the wonders of the whole earth smushed into one place.