Monthly Archives: February 2011

First Saturn-1B Test Launch

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Forty-five years ago today — February 26, 1966 — AS-201 (or “Apollo-Saturn-201”) launched from Cape Canaveral.


(AS-201 launch. NASA image.)

AS-201 was a suborbital test flight, and the first flight of the Saturn-1B with the Command and Service Modules. The flight test objectives were to:

  • Verify Saturn-1B structural integrity
  • Measure Saturn-1B launch loads
  • Evaluate Saturn-1B stage separation
  • Validate Saturn-1B subsystem operations
  • Evaluate Apollo spacecraft subsystems
  • Evaluate Apollo heatshield
  • Exercise Apollo mission support facilities

All of the objectives except the heatshield evaluation were met, marking another milestone on the way to the Moon.

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Codex Blog Tour: GARETH D. JONES

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The fourth installment in our discontinuous series of “blog tour” posts featuring fellow members of the Codex Writers online community.

Today our guest is Gareth D. Jones, editor of The Immersion Book of Steampunk — an anthology of original stories due out in April from UK-based independent publisher Immersion Press. The Immersion Book of Steampunk covers the whole spectrum of steampunk from science fiction to fantasy, adventure to romance. Contributors to the anthology include veteran author Paul Di Filipo and steampunk authority GD Falksen.


(Gareth D. Jones. Courtesy of his Blogger profile. Click to enlarge.)

Gareth D. Jones is an environmental scientist from the UK who also writes stories and drinks lots of tea. His stories have appeared in 40 publications and 20 languages. He has recently completed his second novel and is also working on comic scripts and screenplays.

We appreciate Gareth taking time out to give us some insight into what it took to turn this anthology into reality.

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How long was it between first conceiving The Immersion Book of Steampunk and getting down to work on it?

I’ve discovered over the past year that a lot of publishing opportunities are a result of serendipity as well as inspiration. I’ll fill you in on some related history that leads to how I ended up working on The Immersion Book of Steampunk. It’s a long and waffly story, I must warn you.

When my first story saw print in a UK small press magazine, I was most disappointed to find that nobody reviewed the magazine. I decided to rectify this by starting to review as many UK-based print and electronic ‘zines as I could, and later anthologies, which appeared on several different reviewing websites, most recently SF Crowsnest. I came in contact with several editors and publishers by doing this and later posted interviews with many of them on my website.

When I had an idea for a different anthology, I emailed a small press publisher to ask what he thought. He liked the concept and said he’d like to publish it if I edited it. This led to momentary panic as I had no idea where to start. That project has been put aside for a while but is still under development.

When I attended EasterCon, the British national SF convention, in April 2010, I met up with that publisher and several other editors and publishers. These meetings led to my 4th pro story sale, and I was offered the editorship of a new pro webzine and also asked to edit The Best of Murky Depths, which is due out soon. I also met Carmelo Rafala, whose name I recognized from Jupiter magazine, where several of my stories have appeared. Carmelo was launching the first title from Immersion Press, a new independent press. Soon afterwards, Carmelo asked me to edit The Immersion Book of Steampunk. After I’d bombarded Carmelo with numerous questions, I got stuck straight in to working on the anthology.

The Immersion Book of Steampunk is due to be released in just a few weeks, and as an anthology it went through a much different genesis than a novel. How did the stages of the project progress?

I love a bit of steampunk, but I’m not a great authority on the subject, so the first stage was to do some research, find out who are the hot names in steampunk, who are up-and-coming and which authors I’ve enjoyed recently also write steampunk. I wanted to include some well-known names, but the idea behind Immersion Press is also to showcase newer writers.

It’s an invitation-only anthology and I started sending out invites in June 2010. It’s difficult to know how many to invite, not knowing how long the stories are going to be, or how many will sign up. A couple had to pull out due to other commitments, but I had such a great list of possibilities that I had no trouble filling my quota and could easily have filled a much fatter volume. I had all the stories by my deadline of December, and edited each as it arrived, sending them back to the authors for approval and then proof-reading again. I collected bios from the authors and then struggled over my intro, handing the whole package over to Immersion Press by the end of the year.

What major obstacle did you have to overcome while working on The Immersion Book of Steampunk?

Too much choice of great authors.

What was the biggest surprise you got out of working on The Immersion Book of Steampunk? Is there anything in particular you hope your readers get out of the finished work?

What impressed me was that authors not only submitted stories for the anthology, but that most of them were written specifically for the anthology. I felt honoured to be the first to read these stories from authors across the globe. I also had the privilege of ‘discovering’ a new author and buying his very first published story.

I’m hoping that readers will enjoy the stories as much as I have, that they will appreciate the sense of fun and adventure in the broad variety of stories I’ve collected.

You mentioned the privilege of ‘discovering’ a new author. How did that work, since this was an invitation-only anthology? Is this another case of serendipity as well as inspiration?

Meanwhile I’d joined the Critters online writing workshop. Anatoly Belilovski had several short steampunk stories to be critted, so I sent my crit back with an invitation to submit the final version. It wasn’t until I’d accepted it that I found it this will be his first published story.

What did you learn from The Immersion Book of Steampunk that you’re applying (or will apply) to your next projects?

I’ve learned all of the questions that I need to ask of the publisher before I start, rather than randomly thinking of them throughout the project. I’ve gained much more confidence in editing too, and in approaching authors to start with. Everyone I corresponded with, even those who turned me down, which included multiple-best-selling-novelists, were very supportive.

I mentioned The Best of Murky Depths, which is a reprint e-anthology containing my choice of prose and graphic stories from the first 3 years of the fabulous Murky Depths magazine. I wrapped that up at almost the same time and it should be out soon. I’ve just finished my second novel too, so I’m now planning to get back to my original anthology idea, now that I have a much better idea of how to go about it. I also have great plans for a TV pilot screenplay and the outline for a series, and a graphic novel.

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It sounds as if Gareth has more than enough to keep him busy, and we wish him the best of luck with all his projects!

For more information on Gareth D. Jones and The Immersion Book of Steampunk, visit his web site at http://www.garethdjones.co.uk/.

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Polar: Studying the Magnetosphere

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Fifteen years ago today — February 24, 1996 — a Delta-II rocket out of Vandenberg AFB lifted a spacecraft simply named “Polar” into a polar orbit.


(Diagram of the Polar spacecraft. See text below for acronyms. NASA image.)

Polar was one of several spacecraft in the International Solar Terrestrial Physics Project. (Here is a better project overview site.) Together with “Wind” and “Geotail,” Polar’s mission was to “obtain coordinated, simultaneous investigations of the Sun-Earth space environment over an extended period of time.”

Polar operations ended in April 2008.

In the image above, the labels point out different instruments on the spacecraft:

  • CAMMICE = Charge and Mass Magnetospheric Ion Composition Experiment
  • CEPPAD = Comprehensive Energetic-Particle Pitch-Angle Distribution
  • EFI = Electric Fields Investigation
  • HYDRA = Hot Plasma Analyzer
  • MFG (should be MFE?) = Magnetic Fields Experiment
  • PIXIE = Polar Ionospheric X-ray Imaging Experiment
  • PWI = Plasma Waves Investigation
  • SEPS = Source/Loss Cone Energetic Particle Spectrometer
  • TIDE = Thermal Ion Dynamics Experiment
  • TIMAS = Toroidal Imaging Mass-Angle Spectrograph
  • VIS = Visible Imaging System
  • UVI = Ultraviolet Imager
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U.S. Rocket Mail

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Three weeks ago I posted about the first official “rocket mail” flight, 80 years ago in Austria. Technically that was “rocket history” instead of “space history,” but I don’t care. I find it interesting.

Along those same lines, today in “rocket history” marks the 75th anniversary of the first official U.S. rocket mail flight, on February 23, 1936, in Greenwood Lake, NJ. This past Sunday the town held a commemorative event at the Greenwood Lake Public Library to mark the occasion.

I should note that The Rocket Mail Page mentions an earlier rocket mail flight in Ohio in June 1931, but this excerpt from Aerospace America magazine* makes it clear that the earlier flight could not be considered official.

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*The magazine of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

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Of Tethers and UFOs

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Fifteen years ago today — February 22, 1996 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on another attempt to study the behavior of tethers in space.


(Tethered Satellite System being extended from its cradle aboard STS-75. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

STS-75 carried the Tethered Satellite System Reflight (TSS-1R) — “reflight” because the tether jammed on its first flight (STS-46 in June 1992), demonstrating that even the simplest of ideas turn out to be not so simple in space. U.S. astronauts Andrew M. Allen, Scott J. Horowitz, Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, and Jeffrey A. Hoffman, along with Claude Nicollier of Switzerland, and Maurizio Cheli and Umberto Guidoni of Italy, deployed the TSS-1R’s conducting tether and monitored its performance … right up until the tether broke “just short of full deployment of about 12.8 miles (20.6 kilometers).”

The crew also conducted materials science and condensed matter physics experiments using the United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-3), but that’s not where the UFOs come in.

The UFO controversy surrounding STS-75 concerns images that appear in video of the TSS experiments. UFO enthusiasts content that the bright disk shapes may be alien spacecraft, but NASA maintains that they are simply out-of-focus dust particles and similar phenomena. If you’re interested, you can read about the issue on this page and in this discussion thread, or you can watch one of several online videos.

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Making Human Spaceflight (Almost) Routine

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Fifty years ago today — February 21, 1961 — the Mercury Atlas-2 (MA-2) pathfinder vehicle launched from Cape Canaveral.


(Mercury Atlas-2 launch. NASA image.)

Launched, of course, on an Atlas rocket, Mercury Atlas-2 flew a suborbital test profile “designed to provide the most severe reentry heating conditions which could be encountered during an emergency abort during an orbital flight attempt.” This was a precursor, of course, to the first U.S. human spaceflight, which would take place about two months later.

Thirty-five years later, human spaceflight had become nearly routine. For example, on this date in 1996, the Russians launched Soyuz TM-23 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the 25th expedition to the Mir space station. Cosmonauts Yuri Onufrienko and Yuri Usachev docked with the station on the 23rd.

And, for a little bonus space history: 30 years ago today — February 21, 1981 — the Japanese launched the Hinotori to study solar flares. It rode atop an M-3S launch vehicle from the Uchinoura Space Center.

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MystiCon Schedule

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Next weekend I’ll be at MystiCon in Roanoke, Virginia. I’m scheduled to participate on several panels:

Friday, 02/25

  • 8 p.m. – When SF Goes Wrong – SF’s Abuses of Real Science
  • 10 p.m. – From SF to US – Making It Real

Saturday, 02/26

  • 10 a.m. – Allen Wold’s Writing Workshop
  • 2 p.m. – Star Trek – Where To From Here?
  • 5 p.m. – When Is It Time to STOP

Sunday, 02/27

  • 10 a.m. – Allen Wold’s Writing Workshop (conclusion)
  • 11 a.m. – Stroking Your Editor’s Ego

I took Allen Wold‘s writing workshop at CapClave many years ago — I like to think I learned a little about writing better story openings — and I look forward to working it from the other side of the desk, as it were. And, of course, I look forward to spending time with my writing friends, and especially to learning from David Gerrold, the MystiCon Guest of Honor.

Should be a good weekend!

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The Era of Mir Begins

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Twenty-five years ago today — February 19, 1986 — the core module of the Mir space station was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Mir space station. NASA image.)

The first piece of Mir was launched atop a Proton rocket — an earlier model of the same type of rocket I saw being processed at Baikonur in 2002 — and over the years was joined to other modules to form the complete station.

As of the date of this post, the National Space Science Data Center page on Mir references a 1993 European Space Agency information page, but still presents some good information about the station. In contrast, this Wikipedia page has the full story on the space station, from this first launch until its re-entry in 2001.

“Mir” is usually translated as “peace.”

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NEAR-Shoemaker Launched

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Fifteen years ago today — February 17, 1996 — the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft launched on a Delta-II rocket out of Cape Canaveral.


(NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft. NASA image.)

The spacecraft was renamed NEAR-Shoemaker in honor of astronomer Gene Shoemaker, and was sent on its way to the asteroid Eros.

NEAR-Shoemaker flew by the asteroid 253 Mathilde on June 27, 1997, made a gravity-assist maneuver around Earth on January 23, 1998, flew by Eros on 23 December 1998, and finally entered into a tight orbit around Eros on (appropriately enough) Valentine’s Day 2000. As we noted a few days ago, after a year of observations NEAR-Shoemaker landed on Eros on February 12, 2001.

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Explorer-9

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Hat tip to J Michael Antoniewicz II, for calling this one to my attention:

Fifty years ago today — February 16, 1961 — the Explorer-9 inflatable sphere was launched into orbit on a Scout rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia.

Explorer-9 was the first spacecraft orbited from the Virginia launch facility, and the first placed in orbit by an all-solid-fuel launch vehicle.

Thanks for flagging this for me!

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