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Ode to Odie

Shen Ge
1 min readApr 6, 2024

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Image Credit: Intuitive Machines

I wrote this poem before the Intuitive Machines launch to describe my excitement on working on it on console. I originally shared it with my company coworkers. This picture is one taken shortly after launch vehicle separation on February 15, 2024. You can see Australia clearly depicted.

Come February — give me your darkness and coldness

We can be warmed by the roar of a fiery liftoff

— every second of sound a stirring symphony

like heavenly fire doused on mundane kerosene

Start of an odyssey across the vastness of space

— a boundless cold hard vacuum

deter not our intrepid vessel

Its every tangible wire and intangible line of software

resonates with the touch of the hands, hearts, and minds

of a myriad of souls over the spans of countless hours

to turn soft conceptions of immaterial fantasy

into the hard metal of material reality

To see our dreams take first flight

… I pause here

Predictive words can only go so far

and indubitably fail to capture

feelings that require

the true trajectory of experience

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Shen Ge
Shen Ge

Written by Shen Ge

Explorer of space who helped America land on the moon on 2/22/2024. Loves code + self-growth + poetry + literature https://shenge86.medium.com/subscribe

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