I didn't think I would ever hear a folk song about the tragedy of time dilation....

light speed aside, this is the lament of mariners for centuries. While you're gone, life continues on shore without you.

There is a really shifty anime that I watched some years back called ‘Lilly cat’ I think. It’s pretty much just a Alien ripoff; but there is one scene that hit me between the eyes and stunned me. The Captain the ship talks for a moment about his time flying in space. How he’d been doing it for nearly 300 years earth time because of the time dilation. After his first trip his wife had died, and his son had grown older than him. Then his next trip his son had died, but after that he didn’t have any reason to come back. The show was bad, but that moment was really neat. We never really have any media that shows the sacrifice of what life among the stars would really mean for humans.

A folk song that takes into account the relativity of time and distortion as objects approach the speed of light! Awesome!

I love how haunting this is. I can just picture this set over a ship plunging through the void, her crew bent to their tasks.

Now the big ships fly to a hundred suns, by pushing the speed of light And they want good men for the deep space runs, pushing the speed of light And the pay is good, and you're young and strong, And you tell yourself that it won't be long So you sign on board, hear the drive's deep song, pushing the speed of light Pushing the speed of light And you've left behind you the world of men With no way in space to go home again When you're pushing the speed of light Pushing the speed of light Now it's two months out and it's two months back, when you're pushing the speed of light Twenty years on your homeworld's track, pushing the speed of light And your friends are gone and your lovers too And there's damn-all left that you can do And you try to lie, but you know it's true, pushing the speed of light Pushing the speed of light So you sign back on for another run of pushing the speed of light And you swear to God that your pushing's done, pushing the speed of light But that one run turns into four or five And your heart beats time to the humming drive And there's nothing left keeps you alive, but pushing the speed of light Pushing the speed of light Now you've spread your seed with the star drive's flame, by pushing the speed of light Left sons behind you to carry your name, pushing the speed of light And you watch them age, and you watch them die, As you race the light-wind across the sky And the gods are silent when you ask them, Why? Pushing the speed of light Pushing the speed of light Now, the speed of c is a wall, they say, when you're pushing the speed of light That cuts you off from yesterday, pushing the speed of light But you know someday you're gonna win that race And fly back the years to your starting space And you'll stay awhile 'fore you're back in space, pushing the speed of light Pushing the speed of light And you've left behind you the world of men With no way in Hell to go home again When you're pushing the speed of light Pushing the speed of light

This is such a beautiful, tragic song. Imagine being one of those lonely stargazers, stuck in space with no way home so all you can do is go forward. Everyone you knew and loved is gone, and you’re burning away years like calories as you drive. And you can’t help but weep as you imagine what could have been, and why is it like this? And the only answer you receive from the gods is silence.

"but you know some day you're gonna win that race/and fly back the years to your starting days/and you'll stay awhile 'fore you're back in space, pushing the speed of light." This line hits me harder, for some reason. That your wild fool's hope isn't an escape, it isn't living out your days on your Homeworld hoping to never push C again. The distant, mad hope you cling to is that you'd savor the days before you're "back" to burning away every year you could've lived, and that you'll still sign on, because even now escape is unthinkable.

Wow. Just, wow. Feels way ahead of her time, then again, the 70s & 80s were the kings of modern folk songs and were right around that spacefaring lust. I love, love, LOVE how they incorporated the science. It's not stuff to be ignored for the fantasy of it all, it's the reality, it's the focus. Moving compared to others makes your time slower than theirs', space travel is horrifyingly tough even in the sci-fi future, and you can't go past the speed of light or you start a bunch of paradoxes including reverse time-travel.. But you damn well wish you could. You wrecked your life not knowing about relativity and signing on for that couple months' run.

"The pay is good" To lose 20 years worth of opportunities and history, the pay better be INSANE. You'd legit have to be making enough to retire in 1 or 2 runs for the vast majority of qualified workers to even consider it.

Lovely - and dreadfully sad. Thank you - it's many decades on now, and half a world away, but I hear the sounds of filk sessions in cheap hotels. Cheap beer and cheaper food, but memories of gold.

This was one of the first filk songs I ever heard. A haunting, beautiful one at that. Sadly, space travel has to take this into account. How I wish hyperdrives and FTL were real.

13 years since this was uploaded. I found it here some 5-6 years ago. The songs impact grows as I get older.

It's like a Woody Guthrie song subject but instead of being about miners, it's about space miners! It's cool to hear a minstrel ballad about disenfranchised space travelers. The juxtaposition gives a far out sci-fi subject a very familiar and human feel to it. Those are some heavy lyrics.

So grateful this was uploaded. I just wish it was taped with a better potato

why am I suddenly this sad about a fictional future universe?

This is quite profound. But I sometimes feel that way about our lives on Earth too. We only live like 75 years, we often lose friends and family, some die, some simply go away and you lose touch. Even if we had immortality we'd still only be able to experience an infinitely small slice of humanity. So life really, is just about enjoying the moment, the present, and the space around you, what is close, the people and things that are in proximity.

I actually ran the numbers. If the drive is inertialess (acceleration is instantaneous) then the necessary velocity for 4 months to equate to 20 years on the home world is 299955300 m/s, or 99.986% of the speed of light. Pushin' it indeed. If not, I don't know, because that would involve complicated integration which I have neither the time nor the inclination to do right now. If the drive is not inertialess, the need for gravity control or inertial dampeners is obvious: the necessary acceleration to reach the given speed only as a MAXIMUM speed - so the actual acceleration needed would be much higher - would be 57.03 meters per second per second, or about 5.8g the entire way. NASA's tests have shown that humans cannot function under accelerations of 6g for more than about half an hour, let alone for weeks on end. However, it occurs to me rereading this that flotation tanks could make those forces survivable.

Picked up a copy of The Forever War, incredibly appropriate.

I saw this on a list of space shanties, this perfectly fits the theme as a scifi sailor song

The fastest thing in the universe is sluggish... Years, decades, centuries from star to star.

The ghost ships of interspace and beyond. Eternally to travel and never to return home, ageless till they see the end of time itself across the passing sparks of light past their ship's windows. Haunting the highways of time and reality as their long-faded descendants talk tales as they race their own interstellar pursuits; technology leaving behind these faded hollow men and women for faster and safer ways of travel, yet they will still be there... Still pushing the speed of light.

This hits a little too close to home in an odd sort of way. One day, you start a project that you should be able to complete in a few months. Next thing you know, it's the distant future date of 2023; the sun still rises in the east, man has yet to set foot on Mars, and you've accomplished almost nothing but minor career improvements in the past 8 years. You don't feel like you've aged a day, but everyone and everything around you shows evidence of change. Months fly by in a matter of days, and the end of the next 20 years is waiting at the doorstep.... .....I'm gonna finish that project. And to hell with the overtime..

I always come back to this song because it's so beautiful and heartbreaking. I only wish it were in better quality, but nonetheless I am glad you put this up, otherwise I likely would have never heard it.

Just came here from Highwaymen. I fly a starship indeed.

Wow....what a lovely undiscovered treasure. Thank you.

"The gods are silent when you ask them why" is one of the hardest lines in any song I've ever heard

Only a fool would believe the second age of piracy would be silent. The Song will resonate through every hall of every ship, to the tune of the humming engines as it did a thousand years ago.

this song makes me feel sick, not really in a good way, but I feel like it's in the right way

One of the reasons I love the setting of the Lancer ttrpg is that it appreciates and integrates time dilation into the culture and subjective experiences of its characters

Pushing the speeeeed of liiiiiiiiiiighhhhtttt!!!

Found somewhere on the comments, just a few comments below in fact, a reference to animé movie Lily.C.A.T., telling it spoke of that spacers' time dilation curse. It also said the movie was terrible. It's on KZfaq. Just saw it, to me it's not terrible, but quite sensible, and time dilation is a psychological component of the story and ambience...

This is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard, aside from The Phoenix. The lyrics are reminiscent of Eric Brown's Engineman universe, though I'm pretty sure this tape predates those books by well over a decade.

Reminds me of "The Forever War" every time I hear it.

Doing some rough back of the napkin math it seems that the sailor in the song is doing around 60% the speed of light. Impressive and scary for how much life can be missed going that fast. The Math: C = Speed of light V = Velocity Gama = 1 / sqrt(1 - (v^2 / c^2) 1/3 = 20 / Gama 1/3 = 20 / (1 / sqrt(1 - (v^2 / c^2))) 1 / 3 * (1 / sqrt(1 - (v^2 / c^2))) = 20 sqrt(1 - (v^2 / c^2)) / 3 = 20 sqrt(1 - (v^2 / c^2)) = 3 * 20 60^2 = 1 - (v^2 / c^2) 3600 - 1 = -(v^2 / c^2) 3599 * -c^2 = v^2 sqrt(3599 * -c^2) = v v / c ~= 60%

Time to add this to the Starfield Playlist

That looks like the ship from the Carmen Miranda's Ghost album cover.

This hurts, so damn much. The song is a masterful gut punch of both fiction and reality. Think about it. This kind of disconnect happens in real life. With sailors making long hauls across the ocean. And truckers driving halfway across a country or maybe even through several countries on a weekly basis. And soldiers sent off to war only to end up broken and then thrown into a world far beyond the one the left. The true terror of this song isn’t in the fiction of it. It’s the reality

Twenty years on my homeworld's track, I'll sign back on for another comment.

Imagine working for a company for sixty years but it only counts as one

I swear I've almost driven myself insane trying to find the chords to this song

Please oh please put more of these up...I'd love to be able to download the songs onto my pc...I miss them from the old conventions

now the big ships fly to a hundred suns by pushin' the speed of light and they want good men for the deep space runs pushin' the speed of light and the pay is good and you're young and strong and you tell yourself that it won't be long so you sign on board, hear the drive's deep song pushin' the speed of light pushin' the speed of light and you've left behind the world of men with no way in space to go home again when you're pushin' the speed of light pushin' the speed of light

Can you imagine coming back to a planet after one of these runs only to find it is now uninhabited?

Ah, relativity. How cruel you are to interstellar travelers.

This song would be great in a film based on the Forever War.

This was like a cautious tale. Very pretty.

Does anyone else think this is incredibly fertile ground for some good old sci-fi social commentary? Like, spacing companies have to do this on purpose. Round up young and impressionable folks, send them on a near-C voyage, and when they come back to find there's nothing left for them, they've nowhere else to go but back up. You've trapped them into your workforce basically for the rest of their lives. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if some future billionaire pulls exactly this stunt.

Marvelous. Thank you.

What I wouldn't give to go to another solar system, even if I couldn't go home.

now its two months out and its two months back when you're pushin' the speed of light twenty years on your homeworld's track pushin' the speed of light and your friends are gone and your lovers too and if they've all left then you can too and you try to lie but you know it's true pushin' the speed of light pushin' the speed of light

Very sad song.

I would like to point out: How much did our Tech evolve in the last 20 Years? Do two pushes (if you are lucky) and you need a year of schooling to be allowed a third push. Because as long as there is money to be made humankind will be inventive and newer ships will have better or cheaper tech, not the kind you have experience in. That is on top of the disconnection of the time flow the pushers have, always coming back to a world they dont know anymore.

This song isnt blueshifted enough

(4) now you spread your seed with the star drive's flame by pushin' the speed of light left sons behind you to carry your name pushin' the speed of light and you watch them age and you watch them die as you race the light, wing across the sky and the gods are silent when you ask them why pushin' the speed of light pushin' the speed of light

This would've been a great song for Mass effect Andromeda trailers

Man, those kids would have the ultimate daddy issues XD imagine seeing them for a week or two every *twenty years* >

the gods are silent as you scream why. no matter how far you travel you can never find your way backwards, only forward.

Someone needs to just pull these songs and build a movie

So many people in the comments not understanding time dilation.

I feel like this song works for jet pilots too, only ots the sound barrier. Think, a lot of em leave behind family's, and quite a few never come home. Lots sign on for more tours

Now the speed of c is a wall they, say , when you're pushing the speed of light, that cuts you off from a yesterday[...] And from having imaginary mass, and other weird stuff, you know.

Makes me think of Merin Aspic's story from the Hyperion Cantos.

Been reading Redemption Ark, Revelation Space universe, where Lighthuggers travel at a hair below the speed of light. One character has spent so long travelling he's over 400 years old due to time dilation

(5) now the speed of C is a wall, they say, when you're pushin' the speed of light that cuts you off from yesterday pushin' the speed of light but you know some day you're gonna win that race and fly back the years to your starting space and you'll stay a while 'fore you're back to space pushin' the speed of light pushin' the speed of light and you've left behind you the world of men with no way in hell to go home again, when you're pushin' the speed of light pushin' the speed of light

Wow, came here from a commenter of Sabine's channel, she made a video, that reports the possibility of time travel. This is really good 👍

Reminds me of "Halo Jones'" and "The Forever War"...

This song is even sadder if you imagine obsolete ships are still profitable for whatever god kings rule the galaxy; because they must make the rum again.

Who else is here from rimmy?

Heraclitus would be proud: "And you've left behind you the world of men" "With no way in space to go home again" Ta panta rhei

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson may unconfused some of you.

So... could one perhaps call this... a c shanty?

Having just seen Passengers, I was thinking this would have made a fitting requiem for one of the characters...

it's a fucking space shanty!

(3) so you sign back on for another run of pushin' the speed of light and you swear to god that your pushin's done pushin' the speed of light but then one run turns into four or five and your heart beats time to the hummin' drive and there's nothin' left keeps you alive but pushin' the speed of light pushin' the speed of light

I'm not crying, you're crying. See ya, space cowboy...

The fact my son may be doing this

if i ever get on a ship to mars, i'm playing this.

The Forever War's soundtrack.

The hell are they transporting that its worth 10 years wait to get

What a lovely song. I am not familiar with this duo but they really are good! Where did you find this tape? Thanks

So I was just listening to this song for the nth time and I wondered how the math works out given the numbers in the song. Four month round trip while twenty years passes for the outside observer works out to 99.986% the speed of light. Pushing is right. And ten light years one way is a drop in the bucket when it comes to astronomical distances. The song says the ships fly to a hundred suns, which means they're not centered on Earth. There are only thirty stars within ten light years of Earth. What ever homeworld they're working out of must be significantly closer to the center of the galaxy where the average distance between stars gets shorter.

Anyone here because of "The Bar"?

Someone did a takeoff of this song called Pushing the Speed of Sound covering the X-1 to the Space Shuttle programs. I know it is somewhere in my collection but can't find it. Anyone know who or what Filk tape it was published on?

I know it really shouldn't, but this song reminds me of Ellen Ripley.

abit of a side-thought related to wing commander (the movie); it's no wonder the Pilgrims stopped thinking of themselves as human.

Space Shanty?

So how does pay and compensation work in this scenario, are you paid hourly/monthly based on your relative time or based on time as experienced at your home of record? Also what about taxes!? I can't even imagine the headache this would cause while trying to file your tax returns. Is this a union position? Would be vested in the International Maritime Space Workers (IMSW) union after 5 earth years or spacecraft relative years? So many unanswered questions in this song.

Sign me up!

Anyone had chords for this?

There is also a great takeoff of this song 'Pushin' the Speed of Sound". Anyone know if it has been posted?

There is a reason why we are using jump drive

No family, few friends...I'll go.

If we warp space around our voidcrafts one day, can we avoid all this unnecessary (but seemingly unavoidable) drama?

I have the chords, but I'm pretty sure they've capoed up a few frets......actually, I figured out they've capoed up one fret.

This whole nonsense could have been avoided if they just created a Krasnikov Tube in their wake....just saying....

Anyone know which album this is on? I tried searching the website in the description and couldn't find it. I'd love to buy this song (or possibly a whole album)!

Has anyone found a way to download this song?

Do you sell any of these original cassettes?

Heh, I don't want to push it...I want to go around the speed of light astride my ride. Riding inside the ship is for sheep. Real sentients RIDE their ship.