On one level, it quite compellingly points out how our obsession with building an engine to propel us to faster than light (FTL) speeds is silly. The bigger challenge by far, even if we built a USS Enterprise, would be finding our way home again :)
On another (less abstract) level, it tries to visualize the path traced through space by an object "at rest" at the equator. In this, the frame of reference it chooses is one that accounts for the Sun's and Earth's motion, but not the movement/ drift of the Solar System itself. I was disappointed when, on a further 'zoom out', they didn't show a projected 3D path for the Solar System relative to the Galaxy near the end... but I suppose that is hard to show?
Here's the thing that hits me: despite all this relative motion at ridiculous speeds, the constellations as we see them don't change for thousands of years... I know! As if we needed more proof for how far and unreachable they are!
Finally, on a poetic/ romantic level, it reminded of one of my favorite pair of poems: The Morning Song of Senlin and The Evening Song of Senlin by Conrad Aiken. Both of those are worth reading in full of course, but still... below the fold, I quote what I think is an appropriate excerpt from the latter
(This is how the Evening Song starts...)
IT is moonlight. Alone in the silence
I ascend my stairs once more,
While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight,
Crash on a white sand shore.
It is moonlight. The garden is silent.
I stand in my room alone.
Across my wall, from the far-off moon,
A rain of fire is thrown …
There are houses hanging above the stars,
And stars hung under a sea:
And a wind from the long blue vault of time
Waves my curtains for me...
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