“Final planning stages” usually translates into “we have no idea when, if ever, this thing will work.”
Psyche!
Yes, actually.
Let’s hope NASA doesn’t resort to this:
Full Metal Asteroid! Um. Maybe.
June 24, 2019
The Dearly Departed
June 10, 2019
On this day, June 10th, what would have been my mother’s 69th birthday had she not passed away suddenly last October, I am conflicted.
Do I have the right to write about family history yet again?
And yet without the past, it’s difficult to write about the future. They are connected, by both visible and invisible lines, threads of beliefs and behaviors, attitudes and antagonisms, odd coincidences and strangely fortunate happenings. Particularly in my family. Continue Reading
Interstellar Travel Tech — oh, Really?
April 27, 2019
“It is time to venture beyond the known planets, on toward the stars.”
Yes, I agree, but I don’t see how any of the ideas in this article will help us achieve that goal. I think the problem is the reliance on conventional means of propulsion. Clearly some sort of bending of space/time is needed to leave the solar system faster than, say, a decade, let alone reach other star systems.
Dawn already used an ion engine (way too slow). The solar gravitational lens is neat but it won’t take us there physically. The “space-based laser” idea is funky but impractical.
Getting off Earth should help (Moon Base, Mars, somewhere else like Triton). Escaping our own planet’s gravity well takes way too much effort. But after that, it’s time to forget about rockets and start thinking of truly “wacked out” ideas.
For starters, Discover, how about dumping your absolutely awful page design? Yeesh, this page is hard to read.
— http://discovermagazine.com/2019/apr/new-technologies-could-let-us-explore-beyond-the-solar-system
Quantum downloading the brain
April 16, 2019
The research is in early stages, but it invokes ideas like uploading brains to the cloud or hooking people up to a computer to track deep health metrics…
Hm. This sounds like an idea for a cool science fiction…
Ah.
Customers who purchased digital books from the Microsoft store will soon be forced to return them.
Already widely reported.
Note that if you buy ebooks *directly from the author – or *from Smashwords – then you get to keep them.
Yet another reason to cut out the middle man, especially if the middle man is a huge corporation that doesn’t care about its consumers.
via Microsoft’s ebook store closes, and will take all customers’ ebooks with it —
The Race for Your Face: Recognize this?
April 4, 2019
The Chinese government uses facial recognition for large-scale surveillance in public CCTV cameras, both to catch criminals and monitor the behavior of all individuals with the intent of turning the data into a score. Seemingly harmless offenses like buying too many video games or jaywalking can lower your score. China uses that score for a sort of “social credit” system that determines whether the individual should be allowed to get a loan, buy a house or even much simpler things like board a plane or access the internet.
Yeah. That’s a real advantage for human rights and democracy. And when the hackers get involved, it’ll lead to an entirely new definition of the term “face lift.”
The Stainless Steel Musk Strikes Again!
January 23, 2019
He described the concept as a “stainless-steel sandwich” that can “bleed water…fuel” through tiny holes on its surface to keep it cool as it enters the Martian atmosphere at breakneck speeds.
Not sure, but I don’t think there are a lot of people who want to travel to Mars inside a sandwich…
www.inverse.com/article/52605-starship-spacex-elon-musk-stainless-steel
Earthrise: Fifty years and counting (Don’t count on it)
December 28, 2018
“To really think about ourselves as citizens of Earth is something that I think we’re still working toward,” Jacob Haqq-Misra, a research scientist at Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, told Space.com. “[Seeing this image] may be enjoyable and fun and awe-inspiring, and you might think about it later that day, but I don’t think most people have a perception of ‘I’m a citizen of Earth’ when they’re driving to work.”
He’s curious how potential future space developments — establishing a human presence on Mars, or discovering extraterrestrial intelligence, for example — might make that Earthling perspective easier to grasp by creating a group to contrast it against.
That’s us: the forever simian, defining ourselves in contrast to what we aren’t as opposed to what we could be.
So what would happen if some of us became Martians, Venusians, or Jovians? Hmmm…
www.space.com/42842-earthrise-apollo-8-photograph-50-years-later.html
Who’s up for some Mars skating?
December 23, 2018
Just in time for Christmas!
The Korolev Crater, 51 miles wide and over a mile deep of ice. Perfect spot to place a colony or two.
Or play a massive game of ice hockey. Game on!
Two of the greatest Science Fiction authors of all time, were both born on this day December 16 – Arthur C. Clarke in 1917 and Philip K. Dick in 1928.
Note that I always put “Sir” in quotes, because, basically, $%# that BS. Clarke may have conceived of (NOT invented) the satellite, but PDK (NOT a “Sir”) has had infinitely more influence on modern society.
So I’m calling PKD “Esq.” Also a Pope. Remember that “All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.” Hail Eris!
Anyway, thanks to blackwings666 for the reminder…
via SCIENCE FICTION LEGENDS: ARTHUR C. CLARKE & PHILIP K. DICK — blackwings666
M Thomas Apple Author Page 