Archive for 'Space'
Return to the moon
Robert McCall was the dean of American space artists and his painting of a proposed moon base (for the 1960s Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey) still haunts my dreams. It might have come true but for the wasted billions spent on the stupid Democrat (JFK & LBJ) war in Viet Nam. Now with Uncle [...]
Posted: May 18th, 2012 under Library, Science/Engineering, Space.
Tags: Moon base, Robert McCall, space art
Comments: 3
The Kings of Eternity
I’ve yet to read a bad science fiction story by Brit author Eric Brown and Kings of Eternity, a tale of conferred immortality is certainly one of his best. It’s his characters and their inner lives that make the books as interesting as they are, even when the plot is as imaginatively intricate as it [...]
Posted: May 6th, 2012 under I Review Your Book, Library, Science/Engineering, Space.
Tags: eric brown, penumbra, starship summer, the kings of eternity
Comments: none
Those pathetic climate models
Real scientists (as opposed to those corrupted by the federal dole) know the climate is far too complicated for any computer model yet devised to measure what’s happening today, let alone a hundred years in the future. Like they say, GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. So this is not a surprise: “49 former NASA scientists [...]
Posted: April 30th, 2012 under Scribbles, Space, Weather/Climate.
Tags: climate change, global warming, NASA, those faulty climate models
Comments: none
Space is a place
I covered the first landing of the space shuttle in 1981. The first space ship. They did real work, hauling satellites to orbit, until the Challenger explosion in 1986. After that, it was busy-work and and increasingly boring. And the disintegration of Columbia over Texas in ’03 showed it was still dangerous. I remember the shuttle-inspired first [...]
Posted: April 20th, 2012 under Science/Engineering, Space, Texana.
Tags: space is a place, space shuttle retirement
Comments: none
Space Porno
Riding one of the (now defunct) space shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters to 41 miles high and back again to splash down in the Atlantic. Even the audio is orgasmic. Via Instapundit.
Posted: March 20th, 2012 under Blogosphere, Music, Science/Engineering, Space.
Tags: Instapundit, PJMedia, riding the SRB, Space Shuttle
Comments: 2
Climate Czar of Mars
The usual shrill babble and punchy trailer clips are flogging John Carter, Disney’s remake of Edgar Rice Burrough’s 1917 novel Princess of Mars, but it looks like a kiddie combo of Hercules and Avatar. The bad guys burn coal, you see, and are damaging the Martian atmosphere. Uh oh. John Carter is a Confederate soldier [...]
Posted: February 18th, 2012 under Blogosphere, Civil War, Science/Engineering, Space, Weather/Climate.
Tags: Climate Czar of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter
Comments: 3
Shock diamonds
SpaceX’s new rocket motor (for propulsive landings, just like the ones in the scifi stories) has “shock diamonds” in its plume. The phenom was first seen in the 1950s in the exhaust plume of the Bell X-1, the first craft to fly faster than the speed of sound. The “diamonds” are more visible in this [...]
Posted: February 12th, 2012 under Rancho Roly Poly, Science/Engineering, Space, Texana.
Tags: Dragon spacecraft, shock diamonds, SpaceX, Super Draco
Comments: 1
Bleeding imagery
Michael Flynn’s third installment in his January Dancer series falters nae a bit, with such lines as these: “A faint band of red has cut the throat of night and bleeds across the eastern horizon.” I’m only half through this one but it’s already safe to say it’s as good as the first two about [...]
Posted: January 29th, 2012 under Library, Science/Engineering, Space.
Tags: In The Lion's Mouth, January Dancer series, Michael Flynn, space opera
Comments: 1
Conserve Earth, Colonize Space
Had a bumper sticker by that title, years ago. Back in the 80s, I believe it was, when talk of O’Neil’s orbiting colony at L-5 (left) was rather more popular than now. But it should be, again, in some form, avers aerospace guy Rand Simberg. Exploration, per se, makes no sense. Unless we go [...]
Posted: October 15th, 2011 under Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, Space.
Tags: conserve earth colonize space, Gerard O'Neil, L-5, rand simber
Comments: none
WWW: Wonder
I’ve read a lot of Robert Sawyer’s scifi, and enjoyed most of it, but this conclusion to a trilogy (and, indeed, the first two books, Watch and Wake), takes the prize. It’s a bit preachy, as others have said, but the AI’s achievements, particularly the takedown of a dictatorship, justifies most of it. Sawyer’s usual [...]
Posted: August 23rd, 2011 under Library, Science/Engineering, Space, Texana.
Tags: hard science fiction, Robert Sawyer, WWW Wonder
Comments: 2







