My first original filk* song made it onto the “Brainstorming Poll” of the annual filk awards!
It’s not an official nomination, but it’s something.
(Pegasus Award logo.)
“The Monster Hunter Ballad”, inspired by the books by Larry Correia, made the poll in the “Best Song” category.
Nominations are open from now until the end of July.
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*Folk music with science fiction or fantasy elements.
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A half-century ago today — May 24, 1962 — astronaut M. Scott Carpenter became the second American to orbit the Earth when he launched from Cape Canaveral.
(Mercury Atlas 7 launch. NASA image.)
Mercury Atlas 7, also known as Aurora 7, carried Carpenter on three orbits before returning him to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean.
During the mission, Carpenter solved a mystery that had occurred on John Glenn’s earlier spaceflight. Glenn reported seeing what he described as “fire flies,” and Carpenter reported the same thing after he “accidentally tapped the wall of the spacecraft with his hand.” This led analysts to conclude that the “fire flies” were particles of frost dislodged from the reaction control system.
Interestingly,
The pilot was originally planned to be Donald K. Slayton but was changed to be M. Scott Carpenter after a medical examination of Slayton revealed an irregularity in his heartbeat.
“Deke” Slayton is an important historical figure in my alternate history story, “Memorial at Copernicus”, from the August 2010 issue of Redstone Science Fiction. You can listen to the story here, if you like.
by My summer science fiction & fantasy convention schedule starts the first weekend of June, when I’ll be at ConCarolinas at the Charlotte Hilton University Place (in Charlotte, of course).
(ConCarolinas program cover by Artist Guest of Honor Robert Luedke)
In addition to “Filking the Night Away” Friday and Saturday nights at 10 p.m., I’ll be on several panels and will also help out at Allen Wold’s writing workshop:
Friday, June 1
Saturday, June 2
Sunday, June 3
Should be fun!
by Beginning about midday, I’m taking myself on a writing retreat. As we used to say in mobile C2, I’ll be at an “undisclosed location.” (Thank goodness for Marriott Rewards points.)
(TYPEWRITER by HeavenlyCabins, on Flickr, via Creative Commons.)
Over the next couple of days, my goal is to write the improved opening I thought of for my novel. Wish me luck.
by Twenty-five years ago today — May 15, 1987 — the USSR launched its first Energia rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
(Energia-Polyus, prior to being raised for launch. Image from the Buran-Energia site.)
The Energia was a heavy-lift booster built by the Soviet Union to launch their “Buran” space shuttle. On its maiden flight with the Polyus upper stage instead of Buran, the Energia performed as intended but the upper stage did not place the payload in orbit. According to the Wikipedia entry:
The Soviets had originally announced that the launch as a successful sub-orbital test of the new Energia booster with a dummy payload, but some time later it was revealed that the flight had, in fact, been intended to orbit the Polyus, a UKSS military payload. The two stages of the Energia launcher functioned as designed, but the Polyus payload failed to reach orbit. Due to a software error in its attitude control system, the burn of the Polyus’ orbital insertion motor failed to insert the payload into orbit. Instead, the payload reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific ocean.
According to the Buran-Energia site,
It would seem that Polyus is the Soviet response to the project “Star Wars” launched by the American president Reagan. It was to be in fact a space combat laser station. Finally, we know very few things about this apparatus and its real use. Officially it was intended to make scientific experiments in upper atmosphere.
Very interesting.
[BREAK, BREAK]
Ten years later — on this date in 1997 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-84. The shuttle carried U.S. astronauts Charles J. Precourt, Eileen M. Collins, C. Michael Foale, Carlos I. Noriega, and Edward T. Lu; French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy; and Russian cosmonaut Elena V. Kondakova to the Mir space station. Foale stayed on Mir, and the shuttle brought astronaut Jerry Linenger back to Earth after his 123-day space station stay.
Quite a contrast with the cold war days.
by Thirty years ago today — May 13, 1982 — the USSR launched a Soyuz-T from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying the first crew to their newest space station.
(Salyut-7. At bottom, a Soyuz vehicle is docked with the station. USSR image from Wikimedia Commons.)
Mission Soyuz T-5 launched on (of course) a Soyuz rocket, carrying cosmonauts Anatoli N. Berezovoy and Valentin V. Lebedev. As noted on the Wikipedia page, it was the first mission to the Salyut 7 space station, which had only been launched a few weeks earlier.
by I’ve had my copy for a couple of weeks, but the new issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact that includes my short story, “The Song of Uullioll,” should be available on newsstands soon. (So to speak; I don’t suppose there are many actual newsstands anymore.)
Yesterday the good folks over at SF Scope posted the table of contents for the issue.
by Twenty years ago today — May 7, 1992 — Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to rendezvous with the Intelsat VI satellite.
(Three mission specialists work on the Intelsat VI satellite. STS-49 marked the first three-astronaut EVA. NASA image.)
STS-49 was the maiden flight of Endeavour, and included astronauts Daniel C. Brandenstein, Kevin P. Chilton, Richard J. Hieb, Bruce E. Melnick, Pierre J. Thuot, Kathryn C. Thornton, and Thomas D. Akers. Their mission was to retrieve the Intelsat VI satellite, which had been stranded in orbit since March 1990, and install a perigee kick motor to boost it to geosynchronous orbit.
The capture required three EVAs: a planned one by astronaut Pierre J. Thuot and Richard J. Hieb who were unable to attach a capture bar to the satellite from a position on the [Remote Manipulator System]; a second unscheduled but identical attempt the following day; and finally an unscheduled but successful hand capture by Pierre J. Thuot and fellow crewmen Richard J. Hieb and Thomas D. Akers as Commander Daniel C. Brandenstein delicately maneuvered the orbiter to within a few feet of the 4.5 ton communications satellite. An [Assembly of Station by EVA Methods] structure was erected in the cargo bay by the crew to serve as a platform to aid in the hand capture and subsequent attachment of the capture bar.
In addition to being Endeavour‘s first flight, STS-49 included the first extravehicular activity with three astronauts outside the shuttle at the same time, was the first shuttle mission to feature four EVAs and the first time a live rocket motor was attached to an orbiting satellite, and featured the first use of a drag chute during a shuttle landing.
by … from our little part of this galaxy, not that long ago.
Forty-five years ago today — May 4, 1967 — an Atlas Agena rocket launched from Cape Canaveral carrying the Lunar Orbiter 4 on its mission to the Moon.
Because the previous three Lunar Orbiters had “completed the required needs for Apollo mapping and site selection,” NASA tasked this fourth orbiter to “perform a broad systematic photographic survey of lunar surface features in order to increase the scientific knowledge of their nature, origin, and processes, and to serve as a basis for selecting sites for more detailed scientific study by subsequent orbital and landing missions.”
Lunar Orbiter 4 developed problems with the camera door, however: it did not open and close correctly when commanded, and mission controllers feared that it might stick closed so they commanded it to remain open.
This required extra attitude control manuevers on each orbit to prevent light leakage into the camera which would ruin the film. On 13 May it was discovered that light leakage was damaging some of the film, and the door was tested and partially closed. Some fogging of the lens was then suspected due to condensation resulting from the lower temperatures. Changes in the attitude raised the temperature of the camera and generally eliminated the fogging. Continuing problems with the readout drive mechanism starting and stopping beginning on 20 May resulted in a decision to terminate the photographic portion of the mission on 26 May.
Even with those problems, the spacecraft was able to read and transmit “419 high resolution and 127 medium resolution frames were acquired covering 99% of the Moon’s near side at resolutions from 58 meters to 134 meters.”
And in more recent space history …
Just a decade ago, on this date in 2002, the remote sensing spacecraft Aqua was launched from Vandenberg AFB by a Delta-II rocket.
(A depiction of the “A-Train” formation of satellites in similar orbits. Aqua was the first vehicle in the A-Train. NASA image.)
Originally known as Earth Observation System Afternoon One (EOS-PM1) for the time of day it would cross the equator, the mission was renamed Aqua
for the large amount of information that the mission is collecting about the Earth’s water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. Additional variables also being measured by Aqua include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures.
If I recall, one of the folks I worked with at the Defense Technology Security Administration came to us from the Aqua program. Pretty cool.
by May Day was very good to me! For the first time in my writing career, I received two short story contracts on the same day.
The contracts are signed and will shortly be in the mail, so I feel as if it’s safe to broadcast the details.
After a minor rewrite a couple of weeks ago, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine accepted my novelette “The Second Engineer.” I posted news of the story acceptance on Facebook, but didn’t identify the magazine because I didn’t want to get ahead of the paperwork. So yesterday the contract showed up in my e-mail …
… along with a contract from Analog Science Fiction & Fact for my novelette “SEAGULLs, Jack-o-Lanterns, and Interstitial Spaces.”
So on the same day I got contracts for my second story for Asimov’s and my third story for Analog. My head is still spinning.
On a Related Subject: My short story “The Song of Uullioll” is in the July/August issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact, which has been mailed to subscribers and should be on newsstands soon. (I’ll post the cover when I get the image file for my web site.)
Color me overwhelmed!
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P.S. I understand “The Second Engineer” is scheduled to appear in the October/November issue of Asimov’s. GWR
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