Home on Lagrange (The L5 Song)

"Home on Lagrange (The L5 Song)" is a filk song, written in 1977 by William S. Higgins and Barry D. Gehm, intended to be sung to the tune of Home on the Range. It was inspired by the idea of placing large, self-contained space colonies into stable equilibrium at the L₄ or L₅ Lagrange points, which had been advocated by Gerard O'Neill.

Higgins and Gehm originally published it in the magazine CoEvolution Quarterly in 1978. It was subsequently republished in many other media, including the NESFA Hymnal and the L5 Society newsletter, and eventually made its way into The Endless Frontier, a collection of stories about space colonization, edited by Jerry Pournelle. Today, it can be found at various websites on the Internet, often without attribution.

Home On Lagrange

Set to the tune of home on the range.

Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus Where the three-body problem is solved, Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K, And the cold virus never evolved. (chorus)

We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high, Our ball bearings are perfectly round. Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed, And a kilogram weighs half a pound. (chorus)

If we run out of space for our burgeoning race No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart, If we just find a big enough wrench. (chorus)

I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space, And living up here is a bore. Tell the shiggies, "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye 'Cause I'm moving next week to L4! (chorus)

CHORUS: Home, home on LaGrange, Where the space debris always collects, We possess, so it seems, two of Man's greatest dreams: Solar power and zero-gee sex.

External links

• James Oberg's website has permission to host the song.
• The L4 and L5 Lagrangian Points explained by David P. Stern