Uploaded August 2021 | Updated September 2026, 4 minutes ago

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Sung by Mitchell Burnside Clapp. Thanks to rocketman0739 for providing high-quality versions of these songs.
Download the album here: archive.org/details/filk_unreal_estate
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Lyrics:

It's a damn tough life far from home and wife
That we astronauts undergo,
And we don't much care when the mission's done
How far the ship did go.
But you'll be sad to learn our deorbit burn
Won't be made, for our tanks are empty,
And the fuel line's torn, so you'd better warn
All the folks in New Jersey.

Chorus:
Falling down on New Jersey, me boys,
Falling down on New Jersey,
We thought it wise we apologize
To the folks in New Jersey.

Well it's widely known that a ship alone
Would be burned up and destroyed,
But the ship and crew, we brought with us too
An eleven-mile asteroid.
So when you've awoken all the folks in Hoboken
And the profs at Princeton too,
We'll divulge the fact that the rock's impact
Will be at seven thirty-two.

(Chorus)

Well now, why the shock? Hell, it's just a rock.
Are we just alarmist fools?
But it has, you see, potential energy
Of roughly ten to the nineteenth joules.
With the rock's advance, there is Buckley's chance
That the Garden State'll be spared,
And soon we'll show, if you didn't know,
That e is mc squared.

(Chorus)

We will strike a spark that'll toast Newark
And will flatten Perth Amboy.
Well, it won't be pretty in Atlantic City,
You should shade your eyes in Troy.
Even so—and yet—we have one regret:
That we haven't the delta-V
To push it forth just a few miles north
To land smack on NYC.

(Chorus x2)