Time Dilation, Airborne Rabies, and Whether Thunder Makes Sound

TL;DR

Hank answers viewer questions on time dilation during Artemis, airborne rabies impossibility, and why thunder IS the sound rather than making it.

Key Points

• 1.Thunder is the sound, not a thing that makes sound. Hank argues lightning creates thunder; thunder doesn't 'make' noise any more than a honk honks — though a goose-honk-squeaking analogy nearly changes his mind.
• 2.Airborne rabies is extremely unlikely due to evolutionary constraints. Rabies is optimized for saliva-to-nervous-tissue transmission via bites; jumping to aerosol-respiratory infection would require simultaneous massive changes, like a duck evolving into a carnivore.
• 3.Time dilation on the Artemis mission is real but negligible, on the order of hundreds of microseconds. Two effects partially cancel: moving fast slows astronaut time, but being outside Earth's gravity well speeds it up — the gravity effect likely dominates.
• 4.Hank is approaching three years since cancer diagnosis and remission. He notes over half of cancer patients now die of other causes — a recent statistical shift in the last ~20 years — and considers himself among the fortunate majority.
• 5.The Artemis timeline project was open-sourced despite not being designed for easy expansion. Scott Manley and NASA's creative director both praised it; NASA suggested extending the timeline back to assembly, which would require dynamic NASA Images API integration.
• 6.Hank's creative philosophy is to get ideas 'out of your head' immediately, inspired by a 2006 Ze Frank video. He prioritizes finishing over perfection, accepting 90% done is functionally equivalent to 100% since others' aesthetic standards differ anyway.