<rolux> real birthday

[sebastian at rolux.org]

> Robert Luxemburg is feeling festive with Edit Molnar, Sascha Wolters, Immo 
> von Arschleben, Ludger Blanke and Nicolas Siepen
>
> January 1, 2021 at 4:28 PM
>
> Apologies, but... for the past 25 years, I have entered "01/01/1970" - the
> Unix Epoch, the equivalent of typing zero - into every "Date of birth" form
> field I have come across. For a long time, I was convinced that everyone else
> was doing this as well, and I still believe that the internet would be a
> better place without real names and real birthdays.
>
> Still, thank you for your messages, ofc ;-) If you want to know my real
> birthday, which I don't celebrate on social media, why don't you subscribe to 
> the <rolux> mailing list: https://rolux.org/lists. Once you're all on it,
> I'll reveal it there. Promised! (My real birthday is *much* better than
> 01/01, btw.)

(https://www.facebook.com/robert.luxemburg/posts/10158904580734347)



Legend has it that when I was born, my father asked a mathematician to find out
something cool about my birth date. The mathematican made some calculations, 
but didn't come up with anything significant. According to the legend, it was 
me who, at young age, discovered that my 13th birthday would fall on a Friday 
the 13th. That day arrived in 1985; I felt ill, so I didn't go to school.

Only much later in life, I found out what is *actually* cool about my birthday. 
Which is that I was born on the day the last man left the moon. I liked this 
for several reasons: I am not into astrology at all, but this was clearly a 
very special constellation in the sky. Also, I think that the day the last man 
left the moon is a much more significant event in human history than the the 
day the first man set foot on it. That we would reach the moon had always been 
part of human imagination - but that we would stop going certainly wasn't.

It took me until 2020 to find the following transcript on the internet. This 
conversation took place on the moon, just a few minutes before I was born.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

152:18:02 Slayton: If you get to sleep in the next 5 minutes, you're one hour 
behind.

152:18:08 Cernan: Yes, sir; I'm putting my hammock up now, as a matter of fact.

[They are now on Surface 5-8. The rest period was scheduled to start at 151:25.]

[Schmitt - "Gene got his hammock up first and got in it, then I put mine up and 
got in it. There wasn't much spare space. The suits were on the engine cover 
under Gene's hammock and, as I recall, the helmets and visor assemblies were 
way at the back, sort of under the suits."]

152:18:16 Schmitt: What's he (Slayton) doing up so late?

152:18:22 Slayton: Well, somebody's got to sit up and keep you guys honest. 
(Pause) I think we're getting more sleep down here than you are. (Pause)

152:18:44 Schmitt: (Garbled).

152:18:47 Allen: I might add that not only do we have to stay up late, we have 
to get up mighty early to keep you honest, too.

152:18:58 Schmitt: Okay; you going to let us sleep 8 hours or what?

152:19:03 Allen: That's affirm, Jack. We're looking good on the time, and not 
only will you get, we hope, 8 hours of good sleep, but you'll have a full EVA 
tomorrow. So, it's not costing us anything there.

152:19:21 Cernan: Sounds great, Joe. I fully expect it won't be much longer 
now. (Long Pause)

152:19:48 Allen: And, Gene, just for rough planning purposes, we'll start to 
figure your sleep period starting around 152:30. And we'll be looking at your 
getting up around 8 hours from that time.

152:19:11 Cernan: Okay, Joe; I'll buy that. (Pause)

152:19:21 Allen: Might add, also, that there are a lot of us looking forward to 
that third EVA tomorrow. It's going to be the last one on the lunar surface for 
some time.

152:19:37 Cernan: I tell you, if it's anywhere near what the first two were 
like, we're looking forward to it, also. (Long Pause)

152:20:00 Allen: Gene and Jack, we're still marveling at the beautiful 
television pictures that we're getting from your TV camera there. It's fun, in 
fact, to watch the tracks that you're leaving behind in the lunar soil, both 
footprints and Rover tracks. And some of us are down here now reflecting on 
what sort of mark or track will - someday - disturb the tracks that you 
leave behind there tomorrow.

152:20:39 Cernan: That's an interesting thought, Joe, but I think we all know 
that somewhere, someday, someone will be here to disturb those tracks.

152:20:53 Allen: No doubt about it, Geno.

152:20:55 Schmitt: Don't be too pessimistic, Joe. I think it's going to happen.

152:21:00 Allen: Oh, there's no doubt about that. But it's fun to think about 
what sort of device will ultimately disturb your tracks.

152:21:13 Schmitt: Well, that device may look something like your little boy.

152:21:19 Allen: Ah; he'd make short work of them. (Long Pause)

[Joe's son, David Christopher Allen, was a very active four year old at the 
time of the mission.]

152:21:32 Cernan: Joe, I'll tell you it's also a pretty philosophical thought 
to think that you're riding around out here on what is really undisturbed 
everything, you know. If there was someone here, way back when sometime, they 
didn't leave much sign of their whereabouts, but that's an interesting thought, 
too, as you drive around and all of a sudden cross your own Rover tracks and 
figure out those are the only ones that have maybe have ever been here.

152:22:06 Allen: Very true.

152:22:09 Cernan: And with that, I'm rolling out my hammock. (Long Pause)

152:23:11 Cernan: Okay, Joe. I'm waving goodnight to you. I'm rolling up my 
overhead (Rendezvous) window cover. (Pause)

152:23:24 Allen: Okay, Gene and Jack. We'll say good night to you from down 
here, unless there's some other way we can help you.

152:23:38 Cernan: No, sir. If there is, we'll give you a call, though. (Long 
Pause)

152:23:51 Allen: Just want to end by saying what a terrific job you did today, 
and we're really looking forward to tomorrow. Have a good 8-hours rest.

152:24:05 Cernan: Thank you, Joe.

152:24:09 Schmitt: Tomorrow we answer all the unanswered questions. Right?

152:24:15 Allen: If not more.

[Cernan - "It was easy to get philosophical. I've said before that I've always 
felt that sleep was one of the greatest wastes of the short time we had on the 
Moon. You're only there for 75 hours and you sure don't want to waste twenty 
four of it sleeping or resting. You'd like to be doing something that would 
allow you to go further in learning and exploring. And, yet, you had to rest if 
you were going to take advantage of your physical and mental capabilities the 
next day. Each EVA you became more tired and you began to sleep. When I slept, 
I slept pretty good. I don't know, maybe I got three or four good hours of 
sleep. So a lot of the time you'd just lay there and think. Just before you'd 
gone to bed, you'd look out the window and see the flag and the Massif and the 
Earth. There you were, a quarter of a million miles from Earth, laying in a 
hammock in a little tin can. 'Here I am; I'm really on the Moon. What should I 
be doing that I'm not doing? How can I take advantage of this? Is it real? Is 
it a dream?' I've always said that looking back at Earth was a link with 
reality from a place that was almost like a dream. During the rest of the 
mission you get caught up with all the things that you've got to do: checking 
out the PLSS, checking out the LM, doing the geology, driving. You get so 
caught up with what you're doing that you could be almost anywhere. So you've 
got to take time out sometime during the mission to think about where you are 
and what you're doing. You could do a little of that during the EVAs 
themselves. While Jack was dusting me off I could take a look around at the 
Massifs and the flag and the Rover and it was a pretty big chunk to swallow. So 
it was easy to get philosophical."]

(https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/a17.eva2post.html)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was born around 152:35, when the crew had just fallen asleep.

Now you probably still don't know my birthday. But according to Wikipedia, 
Apollo 17 was "launched at 12:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on December 
7, 1972" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17), and it shouldn't take a 
mathematician to add 152 hours and 35 minutes to that, and convert to CET.

Wikipedia also states that "Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt successfully 
lifted off from the lunar surface in the ascent stage of the LM on December 14, 
at 5:55 pm EST", which means that, technically, I was off-by-one, i.e. born on 
the last full day men spent on the moon. But for me, that's good enough.

If you prefer an answer that requires no computation and is easier to memorize: 
I keep seeing my birth date sprayed on walls, fences, sometimes even police 
vans, almost every single day, because I was born on All Cops Are Bastards Day, 
also known as 1312. I have never been in a place where this wasn't the most 
common four-digit graffiti, by far. Sometimes when I encounter a 1312 that I 
particularly like, I take a photo of it. My two favorites of 2020 were taken on
2207 in Potsdam (https://rolux.org/lists/rolux/attachments/1312.jpg) and on 
2507 on Hermannplatz (https://rolux.org/lists/rolux/attachments/1312a.jpg).

Other than that, I think that birthdays, compared to other days in life, 
receive too much attention. I would probably argue that Robert Luxemburg, who 
sometimes doubles at my ficticious alter ego, and who is on Facebook so that I 
don't have to be, was *actually* born on 01/01/1970, and that this is not just 
the best choice for every "date of birth" form field on the internet, but also 
a pretty good date to receive fake birthday wishes and not get too distracted, 
because usually, the overall mood on that day is vaguely festive anyway.

To close with a fun fact: On 10/10/2020, in the ghost town of Poggioreale, I 
was thinking of retiring that persona on that date and in that place, but then 
decided not to, because I suspected too many people would believe he, or I, had 
*actually* died. Upon which I almost died myself, IRL, on 12/12/2020, but in 
the end, of course, I didn't, and I'm okay, and I still believe that, on purely 
aestetic grounds, 10/10/2020 would have been the optimal date for retirement.