Sunday, August 03, 2008

the most dangerous number?

Eating brunch with my brother.

Me: "Last week I met a Googler who used to be an astronaut. He lived on the space station for six months."

Tom: "Wow, that's cool."

Me: "The space station is designed to house five people, though there were only two when he lived there."

Tom: "Did the two people speak the same language?"

Me: "Ha ha. I hope so."

Tom: "What would happen if they didn't get along?"

Me: "I assume NASA selects for people that will get along with anyone. Though, I was wondering what the most dangerous number of occupants would be. If there's only one person, they'll certainly go crazy from the loneliness. If there's two people, they might get into a fight and chase each other, knocking over equipment. If there's three, two of them might form an alliance, and the third person would feel left out."

Tom: "Two is the worst. What if they hate each other? They can't just draw a line down the middle of the space station."

Me: [laughing]

Tom: "They'll make a line of potato chips in zero-gravity. It'll be really obvious if someone crosses the line."

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I guess you had lunch with Ed Lu. Cool! I'm trying to get him to speak next year...

Unknown said...

well, I guess it depends on the gender:a man and a wonman would be nice for number two; may be two men and a woman is ok for number three-man usually have the best performance while a charming lady standing behand him...

Anonymous said...

A line of chips? Sounds like someone's thinking two dimensionally.

Anonymous said...

Interesting thought. I'll mark it to write about this in my blog.
It would be nice if they could bring chipmunks to the space station. :P

Anonymous said...

But, you can eat the line without crossing the line.

Anonymous said...

It would have to be a wall of potato chips not a line.

Unknown said...

@arc - "He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking."
- Spock, The Wrath of Kahn