The test

1) How many guitar shots does it take to kill a Play-Doh dinosaur?

2) In the original version of "Astronomy Domine," as performed by Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett (and later David Gilmour) sang:

Blinding signs flap
Flicker, flicker, flicker blam,
Pow (pow)
Stairway scare Dan Dare, who's there?

In the Voivod version, lead singer Denis "Snake" Bélanger sings,

Stairway scared and ______ rules there...

Who rules there?

3) Where does Shonen Knife's Naoko Yamano want to go first?

4) When you kill an alien cone-monster, what edible substance does the body immediately decompose into?

5) Is it possible for an enormous ball of hydrogen/helium plasma held together by its own mass and undergoing spontaneous nuclear fusion to experience extreme fear? Explain.

6) The Pink Floyd version of "Astronomy Domine" references the Uranian moons Oberon, Miranda and Titania (named after characters in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest). Do you think "Snake" Bélanger actually knows the words to the song?

7) Shonen Knife thinks a blue-eyed kitty cat wants to travel with them. Considering that most cats hate car travel, and Siamese cats are especially noted for their moodiness, does this seem like a plausible interpretation of the cat's vocalizations? Explain.

8) Compute the necessary minimum fuel for a trip itinerary that travels (in this order) to Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. Show your work. (Assume that Mercury will be at perigee when your spaceship arrives.)

9) Just how cool is it that, screwed-up lyrics aside, the version of "Astronomy Domine" by a Canadian speed-metal band in the '80s is, like, totally faithful to the original version by a bunch of Cambridge architecture students almost twenty years earlier? (I think it's, like, totally cool. You can just write that in and it'll count.)

10) (Essay portion) "Riding On The Rocket" postulates that there may be entire planets in the universe that are made out of candy and are home to some kind of alien asparagus-people. Briefly highlight and explain some of the problems facing potential human colonists on these distant, sugary worlds.