Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Made Word-Count Goal, Still Not Done (grumble)

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Thanks to my loving and understanding family, I was able to hole up and write-write-write this weekend in order to make my goal of finishing MARE NUBIUM. I had anticipated the book would be about 100K words long, and originally planned to be finished by Halloween; I pushed that deadline back a month after my lovely wife’s injury, and this weekend I did indeed cross the 100K-word mark — in fact, I’m up to about 110K after incorporating a previously-written short story that was an Honorable Mention for Writers of the Future.

Unfortunately, the overall novel still isn’t finished yet. Hopefully I can wrap it up in the next 10-20K words, and then go back and edit it back down to where it should be. Whether that will happen by the end of the year, I’m not sure … but I’m going to try.

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Space History Today: Cape Kennedy

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Forty-five years ago today — on 29 November 1963 — President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order Number 11129 to change the name Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy.

According to this site,

On November 28, 1963 President Lyndon B. Johnson announced in a televised address that Cape Canaveral would be renamed Cape Kennedy in memory of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated six days earlier. President Johnson said the name change had been sanctioned by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names. Executive Order Number 11129, issued by President Johnson on November 29, 1963 decreed that the NASA Launch Operations Center (LOC), including facilities on Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral, would be renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center, NASA.

Florida residents didn’t appreciate the historic Cape Canaveral name being taken from them without their approval. Ten years later, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names responded to challenges from the State of Florida by officially recognizing the state’s name change from Cape Kennedy back to Cape Canaveral. The space center remained John F. Kennedy Space Center, NASA.

On a political note, this makes an interesting contrast to the numerous calls to name places after the current President-elect. At least, I think it’s an appropriate counterpoint.

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On the Writing Retreat, and Today's Space History Tidbit

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The writing retreat is working out well so far; in the last 24 hours, I’ve added 4000 words to the novel. MARE NUBIUM (THE SEA OF CLOUDS) is now about 95,000 words long. If I make it to 100K by the end of the weekend, I will have made my word count goal, but it looks as if the complete draft is going to be around 120K.

[break, break]

In today’s space history tidbit, 25 years ago today Space Shuttle COLUMBIA lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-9. The mission included astronauts John Young — one of the most experienced astronauts and a veteran of the Gemini and Apollo programs — Brewster Shaw, Owen Garriott, Robert Parker, Byron Lichtenberg, and Ulf Merbold, and was the first Spacelab mission.

And now you know.

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50 Years Ago in Space History: 26 Nov 58

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An obscure tidbit from the space anniversary files: on November 26, 1958, the Project Mercury designation was officially approved. Project Mercury went on to place our first U.S. astronauts in space and in orbit, and paved the way for Gemini and then, of course, Apollo.

You can read more about Project Mercury at this Kennedy Space Center web page.

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Two New Space Warfare Items

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Two items of interest — and concern — with respect to national defense and space technology, up for discussion in the Space Warfare Forum. Thanks to Bill Romanos for bringing them to my attention.

First, under the heading of “Chinese Space Ambitions,” a report of more space technology being stolen from the U.S. by China.

Second, an item about missile warning, and especially the apparent failure of one of our missile warning satellites.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep the Space Warfare Forum active; the old compadres with whom I started it have moved on and don’t seem to have time or inclination to use it. But I keep hoping — and I’m reminded of what my high school English teacher, Jim Parker, wrote in my yearbook with respect to writing: “Our beach is a lonely beach, and few come to see our castles. But, on we build.”

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Progress Report: 90% Toward the Goal

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In football terms, I guess I’d be first-and-goal at the ten right now. Tonight I finished writing Chapter 17 and crossed the 90,000-word mark in my novel-in-progress. That gives me less than a week to crank out the last 10K if I’m going to make my word-count goal by the end of the month.

(Despite the fact that it’s November, I did not enroll in National Novel Writing Month. I knew there was no way I would crank out 50K in a month, so there’s no correlation between my writing progress and any NANOWRIMO standard.)

The problem right now is that I’m going to reach my word count goal without actually finishing the story. I expect when I hit 100K my characters will be deep in midst of handling ecology and equipment failures that will threaten the lunar colony, and it will take a couple of extra chapters to wrap up those threads. So I probably won’t actually finish the entire draft until the end of the year, at which point I will get to practice my blue-pencil skills on my own manuscript.

So, onward.

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Damaging Your Credibility as a Writer

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I went to a Public Relations & Marketing seminar this week in Chapel Hill, and had the pleasure of listening to a luncheon speech by Marty Clarke, author of COMMUNICATION LAND MINES. His web site is http://www.martyclarke.com/, and I highly recommend him — he’s a terrific speaker.

Marty asked whether or not we agreed that a single typographic error or misspelled word on a resume could prevent a person from getting a job interview. We all said, “Yes.” So he asked why we weren’t as careful with e-mail as we would be with a resume — with proofreading instead of just relying on the spell checker (“Spell check is your enemy,” he said), and doing whatever we can to ensure that the message we send out doesn’t inadvertently destroy our credibility.

I don’t recall the entire question exactly, but he asked something along the lines of, “How many of you have received an e-mail from someone higher up in your company and when you read it you thought, ‘How did you get to where you are if this is how you choke out a paragraph in your native language?'”

I ask the same thing sometimes with respect to some of the novel manuscripts I look at for Baen. I should ask those authors whose manuscripts are riddled with spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors if they take as little care with their resumes. Because in this case the manuscript is their resume.

Then again, sometimes a gem of a story lies hidden inside a very rough manuscript — so I have to look beyond some pretty bad writing to see if the story itself is good. But I wish those writers would take a little more care to present themselves better — that they would polish that gem so it sparkled the first time I saw it.

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Space History, 11.21: The Time Dilation Song

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This isn’t the usual “multiple of 5”-year space anniversary I usually post, but it’s too good not to include. On this date in 1975 — according to Wikipedia, the official source for everything that might be true — Queen released the album A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.

What does that have to do with space history, you ask? Because, in the fine tradition of such songs as “Rocketman” and “Major Tom,” this album included a song about space travel: “’39.” Written and sung by Brian May — the astrophysics student who stopped working on his doctorate to pursue music but eventually earned his PhD in in 2007 — the song involves the time dilation effect of traveling at near-relativistic speeds. A science fiction song by someone who knows science.

And that’s today’s space history, kids. Now, back to your regularly-scheduled browsing.

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Space Technology Exports and Installations

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Two space-related items today: an article in New Scientist covers the illegal export of space technology to China, and the Space Shuttle crew plans to install a new toxic gas detector on the ISS.

First, from New Scientist: China denies attempting to get US space data. The story relates how Shu Quan-Sheng, a physicist born in China but now a naturalized US citizen, pled guilty to illegally exporting space technology to China: specifically, data on space launch vehicle technology.

This piqued my interest because I was a space technology security monitor for almost 3 years in the Defense Technology Security Administration. The NS article was heavy on Chinese denials, but light on their previous shenanigans (although it did link to an article with a list of a few previous items). Yet all they had to do was Google “Cox Commission Report” and downlink the file to learn about previous activities in which China obtained launch vehicle technology from U.S. corporations.

(I cross-posted this item in the Space Warfare Forum.)

Second, a link I got from Twitter: Astronauts to Install ENose Hazardous Gas Detector. The “ENose” detector is the latest version of a detector to warn station residents of dangerous levels of toxic gases.

I was interested in this item for two reasons. First, I used a variety of vapor detectors in my assignment as a Bioenvironmental Engineer at the AF Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards AFB, and I hope — but have some doubts that — the device will perform as advertised. I don’t doubt at all that it will work: it’s a polymer film detector based on electrical conductivity, more sophisticated than the old paper-tape, photosensitive detectors and certainly easier to use than some of the more complex, chemically-intensive instruments we had. I’m more concerned with its useful life, what happens if the detector medium gets saturated, that sort of thing.

But enough geeky reminiscing.

The second reason that story interested me is that two of the main characters in my novel (my work-in-progress) are environmental engineers who are trying to keep the new lunar colony alive — and detecting hazardous vapors is a big part of that job. I’m trying to get just enough realism in the novel to make it believable, without going to the geeky extreme. Hopefully, I’ll do a better job in the novel than I did in this blog post. :rolleyes:

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