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Having disposed of certain people's ambitions of Mars colonization, let's plant the seeds of a more egalitarian vision for our future on the red planet — a future we can build together if only we keep ~~marching~~ Martian.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Bread and Roses" by James Oppenheim, set to music by Mimi Farina

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Explorators are sentient, self-replicating and self-improving space probes sent out by a race of makers who developed AI but not the technology to sustain organic life across interstellar distances. Outliving their makers, they've since colonized the galaxy and built a lasting machine civilization based on wonder and curiosity— and, in accordance with the known laws of physics that rule out any form of FTL travel or communication, network protocols that are robust to very long ping times.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Beacons in the Darkness" by Gary McGath

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I unironically love Ada Palmer's "Somebody Will", the way it gets the whole filk community singing along about the hope for a future in the stars. And I can respect Jordin Kare's "Bloody Bastards", about how it will take an entrepreneurial spirit to get us there. But somehow I don't think the current crop of celebrity billionaires, who never got excited about anything they didn't think they could own — not gonna name names, you know who I'm talking about — are the ones to build it, at least not a future in the stars the rest of us will enjoy.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Somebody Will" by Ada Palmer

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The source song is lovely, but I can't hear the line "hanging in the afterglow of a solar flare" without thinking of space weather and what it can do to a spaceship.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Solar Flare" by Sam Baardman

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You can check out of this spatial anomaly any time you like, but...

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Hotel California" by the Eagles

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Reb. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi suggested the image of the Earth as seen from space as a face of the divine, which for me flowed naturally into this line from Psalm 92: "my rock, in which there is no flaw".

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
after and ttto: "Tzadik Katamar", Psalm 92:13-16, tune trad.

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I got the chorus of the source song stuck in my head, and this was the only way to get it out.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Brighter than the Sun" (chorus) by Colbie Caillat and Ryan Tedder

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A sentient starship intended for exploration must be able, not only to think, but to wonder. Parts of this song came to me in a dream.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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A Solstice song... or is it?

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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I have fond memories of watching a meteor shower at summer camp one year. It didn't go quite like this, though.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Stars in Their Eyes" by Mark Elliott and Tom Paxton

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lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Angel from Montgomery" by John Prine

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This song strands its protagonist as the cyborg operator of an observatory in the Kuiper Belt. Can you identify (before you click) the classic poem that inspired it?

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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Among the Explorators, sentient, self-reproducing machines with a mission of exploration whose universe follows the known laws of physics (so, no FTL), a "stargazer" is a sessile Explorator installation that reproduces by firing "seeds" (nanotech bootstrap packages) to nearby solar systems. Each seed will seek out a metal-rich asteroid and build an observatory.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Tanglewood Tree" by Dave Carter

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The idea for this song began as a one-line joke, but it grew into an anime-esque space adventure epic.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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A love song for the Sun and an eccentric comet — this one won't be coming back.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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The crew of Apollo 13, like the crew of the Nightingale, were forced to abandon ship in a lifeboat whose designed crew capacity was one short of the number to be saved. Luckily they had NASA engineers to help them fit a square peg into a round hole.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Flowers of Bermuda" by Stan Rogers

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Some planets are too hot, and some are too cold, but Baby Bear's planet is just right to begin terraforming.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Cover of the Rolling Stone" by Shel Silverstein

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This song is Matthew Dockrey's fault twice over, first as the author of "The Collars", the short story on which the source song is based, and second as one of the bloggers who voiced the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on LiveJournal. Here, I imagine one possible path to artificial intelligence, as our growing team of Martian robots is gradually upgraded to sentience in the service of their original mission.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Collars" by Michelle Dockrey

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Explorators are self-replicating, self-improving robotic space probes, sent out into the universe by a race of makers who developed artificial intelligence but not the technology to sustain organic life across interstellar distances. Their prime directive is to continue exploring and learning.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Hope Eyrie" by Leslie Fish (just the verse)

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A celebration of the true history of Mars exploration (so far).

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Sedona" by Gary Ehrlich

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