March 11, 2024
This time I tried “mmhmm” studio. Some bumps and bruises, but managed to survive!
Oh, and it doesn’t really have a “pronunciation guide.” Oops. The names (I thought) were fairly easy to pronounce. (Weng is not “wehng” but more like “wong,” or even “wung,” but otherwise straightforward…)
Hope you like the video! (2 of 4, I hope)
March 8, 2024
Hello, everyone, and thank you for reading!
This is a short (~8 minute) video I made to introduce the story Bringer of Light.
I’ll be posting a couple more videos in the near future about the characters, location, and science behind the story.
Check it out, and share freely!
February 21, 2024
It’s been well-known for some time now that the building blocks of life called amino acids can be found on asteroids strewn throughout the solar system.
It’s also thought that water on Earth is largely (or entirely) the result of comets and asteroids bombarding it (it remains debatable to what degree Earth already had water, but since when it formed the Earth was first molten lava and then dry as a bone, I think it far more likely that water came here from elsewhere, and science tends to agree).
I’ve already blogged about the origins of Bringer of Light, when I (finally) finished the first draft back in early September. In a sense, I’ve been constantly blogging the science behind the story.
But I haven’t discussed the characters at all. And despite what some old-fashioned writers may think (just finished a particularly badly-written snarky “why your books don’t sell” piece of trash that claimed science fiction shouldn’t have any emotions in it…say what? sorry not sorry), if the characters of a story aren’t interesting, there isn’t much point in reading a story.
So for the next couple of weeks, I’ll write a bit about the characters — the crew of the Artemis, the crew of the Sagittarius, the UN flunkies (sorry, career politicos) on Mars and Luna and so forth. There are lots of characters, and their interaction is complicated. Or is it?
I would get into my scifi influences at this point, but long blogs are slogs. So I’ll come back to that tomorrow!
Coffee time. Also to finish up at least one unrelated project and also the hardcover manuscript (which needs to be a different paper size than the paperback for some reason).
February 15, 2024
The moment we’ve all been waiting for is nearly here!
Bringer of Light is finally set to be released on March 15, 2024! (Click the link to see a book synopsis and two brief excerpts; Smashwords also has an excerpt from the beginning chapters.)
Stop by Draft2Digital to see links to your favorite bookstore online!
UPDATE: I have some difficulty convincing D2D to distribute to Amazon. Therefore, I have decided to publish Bringer of Light directly on Amazon. Stop by here to order for Kindle (released March 15th). Paperback and hard cover are also in the works.
January 23, 2024
The so-called Big Ring has a diameter of about 1.3bn light years, making it among the largest structures ever observed. At more than 9bn light years from Earth, it is too faint to see directly, but its diameter on the night sky would be equivalent to 15 full moons.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/11/newly-discovered-cosmic-megastructure-challenges-theories-of-the-universe
This is important because it contradicts the so-called “cosmological principle” that everything in the universe is basically evenly distributed.
Just thinking about it, though, it makes little sense to assume that galaxies are all evenly spaced. Assuming the Big Bang was a single point should not imply even spacing of anything.
FWIW the “Big Ring” is evidently more a corkscrew shape, directly aimed at us. Evidence of “cosmic strings”? Maybe.
This is not as interesting as technology that will allow us to build hotels and colonies at LaGrange points or communities on Mars, but it’s still interesting. Sorta. Maybe?
December 20, 2023
Aiming the laser at the spacecraft so the transceiver knows where to point back is the most difficult part, Wright said. And because Earth and the spacecraft are both moving, the lasers must point to where the destination will be in a few minutes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/19/nasa-laser-video-streaming-space-mars-cat/
“The beam’s so narrow, it can’t just point to Earth. It needs to know exactly where on Earth,” Wright said. “Trying to hit a dime from a mile away while you’re moving at 17,000 miles an hour — that’s the challenge.”
So NASA has been working on this idea for a while now. The invisible laser beam that carried this video file came from the Psyche probe, on its way to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Psyche is 19 million miles away right now. The laser beam took 108 seconds to reach Earth.
Mars and Earth are on average 140 million miles apart and can be up to 250 million miles apart depending on the timing of their respective orbits.
I don’t think lasers are the answer here. A good start, maybe, but you can do the math. Having to wait between 10 to 20 minutes, or more, for a one-way transmission (double that for an exchange of messages) would not be ideal for a human settlement in an emergency.
Star Trek style instant interstellar communication is still just scifi. Unless there’s still something out there we haven’t found yet, even quantum communication will take time…
But at least NASA has finally realized that non-science people like cat videos.
🐈 🐈⬛
November 24, 2023
“NASA will hold off sending commands to its Mars fleet for two weeks, from Nov. 11 to 25, while Earth and the Red Planet are on opposite sides of the sun. Called Mars solar conjunction, this phenomenon happens every two years,” NASA said in a statement.
https://www.livescience.com/space/mars/nasa-is-pausing-all-mars-missions-effective-immediately-heres-why
It’s funny that Live Science just announced this three days…given that the time period in which Mars is directly behind the Sun opposite the Earth only lasts from November 11th through November 25th.
Which is, ah, tomorrow.
Thanks for the heads up, guys. Honestly…
September 10, 2023
Way back in 2015, my good friend Rami Z Cohen came to me with an idea for a story. He had written two or three scenes about a group of asteroid hunters who stumbled upon something bizarre. The idea of mining asteroids was news at the time (and still is, although probably too expensive right now and not a worthwhile investment until we actually get some people in space who need metals without relying on NASA/ESA/JAXA/ISRO/etc).
I was more interested in philosophical aspects of finding that we are all (as the late great Carl Sagan loved to put it) “star stuff” (he meant carbon being created by supernovas, but we also know that asteroids are the way we got amino acids to rain down on ancient Earth).
So Rami and I began to email ideas back and forth for a few weeks, then we started to flesh out his characters and plot. I wrote a synopsis and outline and we hashed out the background.
Continue Reading
September 4, 2023
NASA and its international partners see Gateway as a key platform to support the agency’s Artemis moon program and to build the technology required for future deep-space missions. Although the first elements of the small space station are expected to launch before the Artemis 3 mission lifts off in 2025 or 2026, NASA previously said that those astronauts will not use Gateway to “make that mission have a higher probability of success.”
https://www.space.com/artemis-4-first-astronauts-visit-gateway-moon-space-station
While it’s a good idea to see some planning for this, I think maybe NASA should focus on getting Artemis 1 to work properly before they go on about Artemis 3 and 4.
Taking advantage of Gateway’s orbit far away from Earth’s protective magnetic field, three instruments will study risks due to radiation from the sun and from cosmic rays. Scientists hope this knowledge can help inform future long-term missions to the moon and Mars.
Since Gateway will orbit the Moon and not the Earth, the biggest problem will be preventing astronauts (and instruments!) from getting fried by solar radiation. Scientists need to come up with materials to shield people on Gateway and the Moon, or else we’re going nowhere…
(That said, regolith – soil, basically – has already been proposed and even tested: Llamas et al. (2022). “Effectiveness of Martian regolith as a radiation shield,” Planetary and Space Science, 218, 105517 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0032063322001039)
August 24, 2023
India and Russia had been locked in a race to the lunar south pole. The Luna-25 spacecraft that crashed was the first moon-landing spacecraft launched by Russia’s space agency in almost five decades. Roscosmos officials said Sunday they lost contact with the lander after it fired its engines in preparation for a descent to the surface.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-chandrayaan-3-landing-moon-south-pole-rcna101296
It wasn’t much of a “race,” tbh. India had been planning this for years, while Russia randomly launched a craft that had virtually no chance of succeeding.
Congratulations, ISRO! You should have some company over the next couple of years. Here’s hoping that international cooperation and not competition will lead humanity to permanent settlements on the Moon. Mars, and beyond…
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