Deserts of Mars

Check out this awesome video Billy Garetsen did of himself creating his latest Rocktopuss painting.  If you haven’t done so already, go check out Billy’s Deviant Art site and all of his awesome artwork.

This Rocktopuss artwork is featured on the poster for our Dec 28th, 2013 show at the Red Eyed Fly.  This will be our last show of 2013 and we’re excited to end out this awesome year rocking with all of you!

We often joke around at shows that we are from Mars, and will someday head back to our home planet to put on an EPIC rock concert.  That day may be closer than you think is they have discovered  clean water on Mars.

The NASA rover Opportunity while out poking about looking for things discovered that not only is there water on Mars, but now they have proof that there is water of neutral-pH (essentially benign drinkable water) there.  WOW.  How cool is that?!?!?

Checkout this article for a deeper dive into the pool of life-giving water on Mars and prepare yourself to quench your thirst while we rock the red planet!

I hear Tony say it at every show: “This next one is a love song… about the apocalypse“.  I take it as my que to count us in to Cities on Fire, a truly EPIC song that reminds us to fight for love.  As an impending apocalypse may are may not be on the horizon, it never hurts to be prepared.  To that extent, and most likely with only earthly bound vehicles at our disposal, it makes sense for everyone that wants to survive to learn HOW to survive by driving like a crazed yet controlled maniac.  Sam Sheridan recently did just that and not only wrote a book about it Disaster Diaries: How I learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Apocalypse, but also a cool article on Jalopnik that you should definitely check out.

Happy Thursday,
-erik

It’s a great time to be alive. Very soon we civilians will have the opportunity to go to space. Of course at first it will cost a pretty penny to do so, but in time the price will drop and make it more accessible to all of us. This week Scaled Composites successfully completed a cold-flow test of its rocket nozzle on SpaceshipTwo over the Mojave desert. This test proved the flow-path of rocket fuel and is another step in the process of getting SpaceshipTwo ready for powered flight tests.

For those that do not know about SpaceshipTwo, its all really awesome. Spaceship Two will be flown to a height of roughly 50,000ft where it will be released from the “mothership” WhiteKnightTwo. Once dropped SpaceshipTwo will ignite its rocket engine and blast into sub-orbital space. Peak altitude will be about 68miles above the Earth’s surface where passengers will get to experience about 5minutes of weightlessness. Smart Martian Maniacs will note that just because you’re weightless, doesn’t mean you don’t have MASS! Perhaps coolest; Passengers will officially be “astronauts” when they pass the 62mile mark. RAD! Passengers will also get to travel at roughly 2500 mph, or over three times the speed of sound. How cool is that?!?!

All of this madness is being operated by Virgin Galactic and flights to space are currently priced at $200k. So when you slap down the mega-bucks ($$$) to become and astronaut  and take that space flight be sure to crank Deserts of Mars in your headphones as you make history and leave the bounds of this earth. For each step we take is one more step towards an epic rock concert on Mars and that is damn cool.

Perhaps most importantly, this flight will change your life by changing your perspective on life. Seeing earth from space will give you a new perspective on how fragile life is, how we are all connected, and how awesome a rock concert on Mars will be! Richard Branson has a nice post on this topic dubbed “The Overview Effect” with a link to a cool video on his blog.

Rock On!
-erik

You can read more at : http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/04/17/virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-makes-stunning-leap-toward-private-spaceflight/

We just uploaded some pics to VISUALS of us from the show last Saturday in Waco. We had a blast sharing the stage with Orthodox Fuzz and HellGoat. Both bands are on top of their game and are a blast to see live. If you get a chance you should check them out for sure! Really a bunch of solid guys. We were honored to share the stage at Fast Eddie’s with them and look forward to the next time we can ROCK together!