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FreeWill Pulls Firmaments From Voids
Nov. 12th, 2014 07:52 pmSagittarius Horoscope for week of November 13, 2014
Ancient people knew about Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn because all of those planets are visible to the naked eye. From the second millennium B.C. until the late 20th century, only three additional planets were found: Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. (Pluto was later reclassified as a dwarf planet, however.) Then in 1992, astronomers began to locate planets orbiting other stars. On one spectacular day in February of 2014, NASA announced it had identified 715 new planets. I foresee a similar uptick for you in the next seven months, Sagittarius. Your rate of discoveries is about to zoom.
Have we run out of names for gods?
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The Ultimate F
Aug. 24th, 2013 10:49 pmSpace. The Final Everything.
This month NASA announced their latest Astronaut candidates (they won't earn their wings till they go to space)...and gave some insight into the qualifications for the position.
Applicants must have a Bachelor's Degree or better in a "hard science", plus three years of experience in their field. (Of course, I don't meet either because I only made it to Associate's...and have zero experience in my own field!)
But let's go to an alternative continuity to another version of Stephen Bierce. His parents were more successful and more affluent (Jane made the Times Best Seller List, for a possibility) so he got to finish secondary education with a Bachelor's in Astrophysics, then went into the military (probably Air Force, tho' perhaps his mother's cousin the commander of a Top Gun Tomcat squadron could have lobbied him for Navy) for two tours. Maybe he'd have seen action in the former Yugoslavia or the Shock-And-Awe phases of Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Then, he'd apply for NASA...
...And even now, still be waiting, as it nominally takes TEN YEARS for an application to go through all the checks and cross checks. And furthermore, the odds of success are a measly 0.2%. One in 500.
Some "Space Age" this is.
This month NASA announced their latest Astronaut candidates (they won't earn their wings till they go to space)...and gave some insight into the qualifications for the position.
Applicants must have a Bachelor's Degree or better in a "hard science", plus three years of experience in their field. (Of course, I don't meet either because I only made it to Associate's...and have zero experience in my own field!)
But let's go to an alternative continuity to another version of Stephen Bierce. His parents were more successful and more affluent (Jane made the Times Best Seller List, for a possibility) so he got to finish secondary education with a Bachelor's in Astrophysics, then went into the military (probably Air Force, tho' perhaps his mother's cousin the commander of a Top Gun Tomcat squadron could have lobbied him for Navy) for two tours. Maybe he'd have seen action in the former Yugoslavia or the Shock-And-Awe phases of Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Then, he'd apply for NASA...
...And even now, still be waiting, as it nominally takes TEN YEARS for an application to go through all the checks and cross checks. And furthermore, the odds of success are a measly 0.2%. One in 500.
Some "Space Age" this is.
SPACE: 1969
Jun. 2nd, 2012 09:29 pm
The Orion ship design, as rendered for the companion book to Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series. If I built it as a 1/72nd scale model, the result would be over six feet long.
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I went to the library's annual book sale and got a hardback copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which I'll probably spend the summer reading and re-reading.
What piqued my immediate interest are diagrams of the three main hypothetical starship designs of the Sixties and Seventies: Orion, Daedalus, and the Bussard Ramscoop. I'd first learned about Orion from The Future of Flight by Dean Ing and Leik Myrabo, a book I got when I was a Freshman in college--some twenty-five years after the program's cancellation following the imposition of the Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty. The Orion program centered around a rocket whose thrust was generated by atomic bomb blasts. The U.S. Air Force had already succeeded in tests with a scale model powered by conventional explosives and had started spadework on a full-size vehicle when they were ordered to drop it and move on to other things.
The full-sized ship would have been over 100 meters long, probably weighed in the neighborhood of 100 thousand tons, and have a likely crew of 35 people. And, if the program had contined, manned missions to the planets and possibly even beyond the Solar system would have begun by 1970.
Now I'm thinking about building a model of the ship and plotting out a low-budget movie asking the question: "What if an Orion had been built and secretly launched out of the Solar system then? Where could the ship be now?"
What piqued my immediate interest are diagrams of the three main hypothetical starship designs of the Sixties and Seventies: Orion, Daedalus, and the Bussard Ramscoop. I'd first learned about Orion from The Future of Flight by Dean Ing and Leik Myrabo, a book I got when I was a Freshman in college--some twenty-five years after the program's cancellation following the imposition of the Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty. The Orion program centered around a rocket whose thrust was generated by atomic bomb blasts. The U.S. Air Force had already succeeded in tests with a scale model powered by conventional explosives and had started spadework on a full-size vehicle when they were ordered to drop it and move on to other things.
The full-sized ship would have been over 100 meters long, probably weighed in the neighborhood of 100 thousand tons, and have a likely crew of 35 people. And, if the program had contined, manned missions to the planets and possibly even beyond the Solar system would have begun by 1970.
Now I'm thinking about building a model of the ship and plotting out a low-budget movie asking the question: "What if an Orion had been built and secretly launched out of the Solar system then? Where could the ship be now?"
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Writer's Block: Muwahahaha!
May. 16th, 2012 04:36 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Dr. Scribbles is working on a device to move the planets of the Solar system to new orbits. To prove it, he'll set Mercury so its new orbit perpetually eclipses the Institute and puts all those fools "where the sun don't shine".
Dr. Scribbles is working on a device to move the planets of the Solar system to new orbits. To prove it, he'll set Mercury so its new orbit perpetually eclipses the Institute and puts all those fools "where the sun don't shine".
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Writer's Block: I'm Doing Science!
Apr. 7th, 2012 04:00 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Liquid fueled rocketry. The only way off this hunka junk.
Liquid fueled rocketry. The only way off this hunka junk.
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Writer's Block: Out of this world
Dec. 7th, 2011 12:46 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Depends on where it is. I halfway expect the first liveable planet discovered outside the Solar System to be dubbed Vulcan.
I play around with the concept frequently, as a budding science-fiction writer and space wargamer. The reality is that whoever is going to colonize a world is going to be the ones who name it.
Depends on where it is. I halfway expect the first liveable planet discovered outside the Solar System to be dubbed Vulcan.
I play around with the concept frequently, as a budding science-fiction writer and space wargamer. The reality is that whoever is going to colonize a world is going to be the ones who name it.
You Are HERE
Oct. 1st, 2011 01:21 am
*Arrow pointing to the southeast side of the Milky Way Galaxy*
And this is just the Local Group. The graphic shown here is just the first step of a much larger and grander mapping of the Known Cosmos. It wouldn't surprise me if there existed an Earthlike planet for everybody now living on Earth, if not in the Milky Way then in the Local Group, because we are talking about billions and trillions of star systems.
Writer's Block: See you on the dark side
May. 2nd, 2011 12:07 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
You bet your sweet @$$ I'd go! Space Cadet for life am I.
You bet your sweet @$$ I'd go! Space Cadet for life am I.
Let's put a story through its paces and see how it's put together.
TITLE Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff
STORY PREMISE: The birth of America's space program, told from the perspective of test pilot Chuck Yeager and the seven Mercury Astronauts.
SETUP: The X-1 rocket plane is brought to Edwards Air Force Base, and Chuck Yeager volunteers to make the first attempt at supersonic flight.
PLOT POINT I: Yeager's success and the Space Race with the Soviets leads to the official demand that military test pilots be recruited and trained for space duty. The candidates endure an arduous selection program.
PINCH I: The Mercury Astronauts move to Cape Canaveral to await their missions.
MIDPOINT: Alan Shepard is the First American in Space--after a horrible delay.
PINCH II: Gus Grissom's launch nearly results in disaster.
PLOT POINT II: John Glenn's flight is a great success in spite of a glitch that could have ruined everything.
RESOLUTION: Gordo Cooper's flight completes the program on a high note, and sets the stage for further adventures in spaceflight.
TITLE Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff
STORY PREMISE: The birth of America's space program, told from the perspective of test pilot Chuck Yeager and the seven Mercury Astronauts.
SETUP: The X-1 rocket plane is brought to Edwards Air Force Base, and Chuck Yeager volunteers to make the first attempt at supersonic flight.
PLOT POINT I: Yeager's success and the Space Race with the Soviets leads to the official demand that military test pilots be recruited and trained for space duty. The candidates endure an arduous selection program.
PINCH I: The Mercury Astronauts move to Cape Canaveral to await their missions.
MIDPOINT: Alan Shepard is the First American in Space--after a horrible delay.
PINCH II: Gus Grissom's launch nearly results in disaster.
PLOT POINT II: John Glenn's flight is a great success in spite of a glitch that could have ruined everything.
RESOLUTION: Gordo Cooper's flight completes the program on a high note, and sets the stage for further adventures in spaceflight.
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Primate Time Programming
Mar. 17th, 2011 12:54 amThe shopping-without-buying-anything habit of mine only goes so far.
I was in Knoxville overday, checking on the availability of knockoff anime toys at an independent discounter. There were people in the toy aisle already when I showed up, so I went to the books aisle--and found something that I would never have expected! An obscenely-cheap copy of Tim Eldred's masterful graphic novel Grease Monkey!
I knew I would fall in love if I saw it, and I did, and I bought it. If the store had a stack of them I would have gotten copies for all my friends--but they didn't so I can't. Sorry.
I was in Knoxville overday, checking on the availability of knockoff anime toys at an independent discounter. There were people in the toy aisle already when I showed up, so I went to the books aisle--and found something that I would never have expected! An obscenely-cheap copy of Tim Eldred's masterful graphic novel Grease Monkey!
I knew I would fall in love if I saw it, and I did, and I bought it. If the store had a stack of them I would have gotten copies for all my friends--but they didn't so I can't. Sorry.
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A Book I Should Have Gotten Years Ago
Feb. 26th, 2011 01:22 pmTales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem.
Found it at a library sale at the same time as my replacement copy of Red Storm Rising and I'm taking advantage of the downtime this weekend to read it. I'd already read the first story--in a thirty-year old copy of Omni magazine, so I know what I'm getting into.
Pirx and I have a lot in common...probably more than I'm comfortable admitting, but sure. It's a future I expected we'd have by now, but don't--a burgeoning spacefaring civilization, with little colonies scattered across the near planets of the Solar System. The demand is high for space pilots and captains and navigators, and so the search for talent has gone beyond the Chuck Yeagers and Yuri Gagarins and Neil Armstrongs to...Pirx.
He has a lot of things going for him but is in no way perfect. Everybody who knows him describes him as a "decent, regular sort of fellow"--a description that irks him to no end as he wants people to see him as heroic. Meanwhile, he does his job adequately but not without trial. He survives rather than wins. In that regard he is like most pilots--although pilots themselves likely won't own up to the fact. Sometimes Murphy's Law is his foe; other times it's his ally.
I should have read these stories a long time ago.
Found it at a library sale at the same time as my replacement copy of Red Storm Rising and I'm taking advantage of the downtime this weekend to read it. I'd already read the first story--in a thirty-year old copy of Omni magazine, so I know what I'm getting into.
Pirx and I have a lot in common...probably more than I'm comfortable admitting, but sure. It's a future I expected we'd have by now, but don't--a burgeoning spacefaring civilization, with little colonies scattered across the near planets of the Solar System. The demand is high for space pilots and captains and navigators, and so the search for talent has gone beyond the Chuck Yeagers and Yuri Gagarins and Neil Armstrongs to...Pirx.
He has a lot of things going for him but is in no way perfect. Everybody who knows him describes him as a "decent, regular sort of fellow"--a description that irks him to no end as he wants people to see him as heroic. Meanwhile, he does his job adequately but not without trial. He survives rather than wins. In that regard he is like most pilots--although pilots themselves likely won't own up to the fact. Sometimes Murphy's Law is his foe; other times it's his ally.
I should have read these stories a long time ago.
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Mysteries Solved?
Feb. 22nd, 2011 03:07 pm
My friend's mystery ship. Paul Francis acquired this space shuttle model from a Hollywood effects shop years ago when he was working as a make-up and effects man. He wanted to know what it was and possibly what movies it might have been used in; I had hunches.
This is from a NASA .pdf file from their archives. The model shown is smaller than Paul's but is the same configuration; this one was tested in the hypersonic wind tunnel at the Ames Research Laboratory. It is a North American Rockwell NAR-134B orbiter concept from about 1969. According to other parts of the document, if the real thing had been built it would have been bigger than the Enterprise/Columbia-class orbiter by about three-fourths.
I've contacted the historian at Boeing by e-mail overday to see if they might have more information or possible film archives.
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Getting Ready For Next Year--Part I
Oct. 23rd, 2010 02:14 pmToday in the mail I received...my wall calendar for next year. It's a freebie from Agilent Technologies' Aerospace & Defense division. (www.agilent.com/find/AD)
I've got loads of other things to do before January 2011 rolls around...but I'm already working on them. How about you?
I've got loads of other things to do before January 2011 rolls around...but I'm already working on them. How about you?
