Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

A Little Nuclear Detection History, and a Big Gripe

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Forty-five years ago today, the first nuclear detonation detection satellites, Vela-1 and Vela-2, were launched from the Eastern Space & Missile Center. Considering the possible proliferation of nuclear weapons, NUDET is as vital today as it ever was, and those spacecraft paved the way for the capabilities we have now. Just thought you’d like to know.

Now for my gripe.

It’s really not that big a gripe, despite the title above. It’s based on the trials of the write-submit-receive rejection-submit again cycle. I can’t gripe about the cycle itself; it’s part and parcel of the business of writing. But sometimes ….

Here’s the story: Back on August 23rd, I submitted for the first time an essay entitled, “An Unsolicited Proposal for the Next Secretary of Education.” It was rejected, and since then it’s been submitted and rejected two more times and is currently in review at a fourth venue. With every submission, I’ve tried to tell the editorial staff that this is a timely piece, and last night’s Presidential debate proved me right.

Referring to education, both candidates pointed out the difficult situation in the Washington, DC, school system. That’s great, but it irritated me because one of the central tenets of my essay had to do with establishing a model school in DC.

😡 Timing is everything, and once again it’s something I don’t have.

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Blog Action, Space History, Whatnot

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I’m typing this while I try to watch the debate, which I now know from new research is really impossible (as I wrote about in this blog post) … but anyway:

This year’s Blog Action Day topic is “Poverty.” All the blog-savvy readers undoubtedly already know that Blog Action Day “is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.”

Hmmm, what do I post about poverty? As a science fiction writer and editor, I like this quote from Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long” (in Time Enough For Love):

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.’

Something to think about in this political season.

Moving on, we have two space history anniversaries today.

First, 50 years ago today the X-15 rolled out from the North American plant in Los Angeles, CA. When we were stationed at Edwards Air Force Base, I was on the Pegasus Flight Readiness Review Committee with Bill Dana, one of the X-15 test pilots. That was pretty cool.

And five years ago today, the Chinese launched their first manned mission with taikonaut Yang Liwei aboard Shenzhou-5 (“Divine Vessel 5”).

Finally, the “whatnot” … it looks as if this post is long enough already, so I’ll leave off the whatnot.

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Happy Discoverer’s Day … and A Publisher’s Public Slushpile

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Those who know me well know that I prefer politeness to political correctness, so my personal reference to Columbus Day as Discoverer’s Day is not (I repeat, not) (I tell you three times, NOT) the usual anti-Columbian protest on behalf of the American aborigines.* Rather, when the government decided that Presidents Washington and Lincoln would share a holiday with all the others who have occupied that office, I decided that other holidays named after famous people should also be renamed to share with those with similar accomplishments. The obvious exception to this is Christmas, since I can’t find anyone else in history who has changed the world as profoundly as did Jesus Christ.

End of rant/sermonette, and Happy Discoverer’s Day to one and all.

In other news, I was pointed to what appears to be an experiment by Harper Collins to let the online reading public sort through their slush pile for them. Called authonomy, it’s “a brand new community site for writers, readers and publishers, conceived and developed by book editors at HarperCollins.”

From their FAQ page,

authonomy invites unpublished and self published authors to post their manuscripts for visitors to read online. Authors create their own personal page on the site to host their project – and must make at least 10,000 words available for the public to read.

Visitors to authonomy can comment on these submissions – and can personally recommend their favourites to the community. authonomy counts the number of recommendations each book receives, and uses it to rank the books on the site. It also spots which visitors consistently recommend the best books – and uses that info to rank the most influential trend spotters.

…. HarperCollins hopes to find new, talented writers we can sign up for our traditional book publishing programmes – once we’re fully launched we’ll be reading the most popular manuscripts each month as part of this search.

In a way, this is similar to the process on Baen’s Bar whereby short story submissions to Jim Baen’s Universe can be critiqued and catch the eyes of the editors. The electronic slushpile for Baen Books works a little differently — the submissions aren’t available to every member of the Bar.

I’ll be interested to see how the Harper Collins experiment works out.

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*Disclosure: I may fall into this category myself, having a percentage of Cherokee blood; I’ve never gone the route of documenting how much to see if I qualify for tribal membership.

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Noting Two Key Space History Anniversaries

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Today is a red-letter day in space history, with a failed flight that still featured some success, and a big success that followed on the heels of a tragic failure.

Fifty years ago, October 11, 1958, NASA launched Pioneer-1 — the first launch by NASA, which was less than two weeks old. Its target was the moon, but a launch vehicle malfunction sent the spacecraft into a ballistic trajectory instead. It reached an apogee of 70,700 miles altitude and returned some scientific observations of our planet’s magnetic field before it burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere on the 13th.

Ten years later, on October 11, 1968, NASA launched Apollo-7. Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham checked out the newly redesigned Command Module — redesigned, that is, after the fatal fire that destroyed Apollo-1 — in the first manned flight of the Apollo program. This mission achieved a string of spaceflight firsts:

  • First flight test of the Apollo Command/Service Module, with the first rendezvous & station-keeping maneuvers
  • First launch of a three member crew
  • First launch from Launch Complex 34
  • First crew-assisted flight of the Saturn-IB rocket
  • First live network TV broadcast from space during a crewed space flight
  • First time astronauts experienced head colds during a mission
  • First flight of the Apollo space suits
  • First crew to drink coffee in space

Wally Schirra was one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, and Apollo-7 was his third and final space flight. Here’s a brief and amusing tribute to Schirra and particularly to the flight of Apollo-7 and Schirra’s key role in redesigning the Command Module.

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NC State of Business Post Reference

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Yesterday I wrote a post on “NC State of Business,” the blog we started at the Industrial Extension Service. I should probably just cross-post it, but I’m too lazy this morning to worry with rebuilding all the links. Instead, I just offer a single link to the post itself: “Multitasking, Procrastination, and Corporate Failure.”

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Project Mercury, and A Useful List for Writers

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Today’s space history anniversary: Fifty years ago today — October 7, 1958 — Project Mercury was formally organized in Washington, D.C. Almost makes me want to watch The Right Stuff.

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In other news, my friend Edmund Schubert, editor of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, posted a nice list of writerly terms on his blog. It’s a good run-down of terms aspiring writers need to understand.

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Fifty Years Ago in Space and Military History

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On October 4th, 1958, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, was dedicated — and a few years later we were stationed there. For those who don’t know, Vandenberg is also known as the Western Space and Missile Center, and we spent two years there (1993-95) managing launch facility refurbishment projects as part of the Titan System Program Office.

Congrats, Vandenberg, on 50 years of service to the nation!

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Space History, and We Were There

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Twenty years ago today, the Space Shuttle Discovery landed on Runway 17 at Edwards Air Force Base, California, after the “return to flight” mission following the loss of Challenger. It just so happens that we were stationed at Edwards at the time, and got to see it.

Later, I was on the Air Force Flight Test Center shuttle recovery team, and worked four shuttle landings as part of the crew that would help extract astronauts in an emergency. For this landing, though, I was just a spectator — which was, in itself, pretty cool.

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Wife Injured; Playing Nursemaid For Awhile

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My lovely bride took a tumble this morning in her classroom; she called me from Urgent Care, and I got there in time to help her back to X-ray. Turns out she cracked two ribs, so she’s in a good deal of pain right now and I’m doing my best to help her around and fetch and carry what she needs (like ice packs).

I’ll still post on the blog from time to time, but I don’t expect to do a lot of writing in the next little while. Priorities, you know?

I’m just glad that the University folks let me work from home when I have to … and of course I can do my reading for Baen from almost anywhere.

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Happy 50th Birthday, NASA

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Fifty years ago yesterday was the end of NACA, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, and 50 years ago today was the first day of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Congratulations — you’ve accomplished a lot since then, but there’s a lot still to do.

Onward and upward!

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