Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Story Sale, and Some Space History

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First things first: my story “Sensitive, Compartmented” is tentatively slated for the April/May 2012 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. I’m very happy about that, so it gets top billing on the blog.

For today’s space history tidbit: 40 years ago today — October 28, 1971 — Great Britain became the sixth nation to launch a satellite on its own rocket when a Black Arrow launch vehicle lifted the Prospero satellite out of the Woomera Test Range in Australia.

And speaking of Australia: the Australia party last night at World Fantasy Con seemed to go very well — a good crowd, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

And so it goes!

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First Saturn Suborbital Test Flight

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Fifty years ago today — October 27, 1961 — Saturn-I launched from Cape Canaveral. This launch was, as the title stated, the first test flight of the Saturn family of rockets that were intended to propel the Apollo astronauts to the Moon.


(Saturn SA-1 launch. NASA image.)

Also known as SA-1, the upper stages of the Saturn-I were filled with water ballast. The vehicle reached 84.8 miles altitude and flew 214.7 miles downrange into the Atlantic Ocean, achieving its mission objective of “verifying the aerodynamical and structural design of the Saturn 1 booster.”

Oh, to have been a part of that program! But at least I have a small collection of Saturn-related relics I salvaged during my time at the Rocket Lab.

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STEREO-A and STEREO-B

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I haven’t had a lot of space history posts recently. I try to limit myself to anniversaries in multiples of 5 years, to keep from repeating things, and to keep the pace from getting overwhelming. I also try not to include “routine” events like the launch of the Nth in a series of satellites … not that anything about space operations has become truly routine, of course. But here’s one for the record:

Five years ago today — October 26, 2006 — a Delta 2 rocket out of Cape Canaveral placed two solar observatories in orbit.


(STEREO spacecraft. NASA image.)

The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory consisted of two identical spacecraft, STEREO-A and STEREO-B. Once in space, the two satellites were allowed to drift into different heliocentric orbits: STEREO-B ahead of the Earth (leading), and STEREO-A behind the Earth (lagging). From those vantage points, their observations could be combined to image the Sun “stereographically” and predict whether a coronal mass ejection was heading toward the Earth.

On February 6th of this year, STEREO A and B reached 180 degrees of separation, which “enabled, for the first time, the simultaneous observation of the entire Sun.”

In other news, I’m heading to the World Fantasy Convention today. Folks have been urging me to go to WFC for years; it’s a small convention, primarily of SF&F professionals. It seems a little odd to think of myself as an SF&F professional in my own right, but my 3rd and 4th professional sales are forthcoming: more on those later, when the contracts are signed (or when the editors give me the okay).

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From the IES Blog: 4th Place or 3rd for NC Manufacturing?

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(Cross-posted from the Industrial Extension Service blog. Originally entitled, “For NC Manufacturing, 4th Place May Be Better Than 3rd.” Emphasis in original.)

A few days ago I had the chance to look into some statistics about manufacturing in North Carolina, and I found that manufacturing is doing pretty well here. Yes, we’ve seen some downturn and some of our companies are struggling, but overall the state has been doing well and is poised to do even better.


(Yes, there is a community in North Carolina called “Whynot.” Image: Whynot ? by Donald Lee Pardue, on Flickr, under Creative Commons.)

Amid the statistics on manufacturing output, contribution to Gross Domestic Product, exports, and so forth, I found that North Carolina rates highly compared with other states. For example, NC is 4th in the nation in terms of total manufacturing output, with California, Texas, and Illinois making up the top 3 (though Illinois is not too far ahead of us).

On another measure, NC is 3rd in the nation, but whether that’s good or bad depends on your point of view. As reported in a 07/18/11 Charlotte Business Journal article, NC is 3rd in terms of our dependence on manufacturing; i.e., in the share of total state GDP generated by manufacturing. By this measure, Indiana is 1st in the nation and Oregon is 2nd; in contrast, both states are behind North Carolina in total manufacturing: Indiana is 6th and Oregon is 16th.

I submit that it’s better for North Carolina to be in 4th place nationally in total manufacturing than it is to be in 3rd place in dependence on it. After all, what does dependence on manufacturing mean for the overall economy?

What would it mean if dependence on manufacturing changes? If that statistic rises, and we grow more dependent on manufacturing, it may be because factory output has improved, or other sectors of the economy have suffered, or a little of both. Likewise, if that statistic falls, and NC becomes less dependent on manufacturing, it simply means that comparatively more economic output is coming from other sectors — which isn’t necessarily bad.

For now, at least, NC is the 3rd most manufacturing-dependent state. Whether that’s good or bad depends on whether manufacturing begins to falter, taking the rest of the economy with it, or whether manufacturing holds its own or improves and so buoys the rest of the economy. Are you an optimist or a pessimist? That kind of statistic works for both types of people, but ultimately it really doesn’t mean much.

Think about it this way: Oregon’s manufacturing output in 2010 was less than half of ours, yet their state is actually more dependent on manufacturing for total GDP than the Old North State. Based on that statistic, problems with manufacturing output are likely to have much worse general economic consequences for Oregonians than for North Carolinians.

So I say it’s far better for North Carolina to take pride in being the 4th most productive manufacturing state in the nation. Maybe we should set our sights on knocking off Illinois and taking 3rd place in that statistic.

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Thanks Are in Order, So: Thanks, Whoever You Are

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Imagine my surprise at learning that I now have a page of my own in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.


(Image from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.)

The page lists all of my published stories to date, which is pretty cool.

The database is maintained by a rather large community of volunteers, so I have no idea who entered my information. As a result, I can only offer general (but genuine!) thanks to the kind person(s) responsible, and wish them — and you — only the very best.

Thanks!

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Redstone — 70 Years of History, Much of it in Space

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Seventy years ago today — October 6, 1941 — the U.S. Army activated the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.


(Redstone Arsenal building 7101, with Redstone missile in front. U.S. Army image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Redstone Arsenal was originally built to produce chemical ammunition for use in World War II, which it did very well. Then, in the postwar years, that experience with handling dangerous chemicals made Redstone a natural place to experiment with rockets and rocket propellants and eventually to be the home for the Army’s Aviation and Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center; Army Space and Missile Defense Command; and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

Of course, I can’t mention Redstone Arsenal without mentioning the online magazine Redstone Science Fiction, the third issue of which included my story “Memorial at Copernicus.”

Also on this date, 30 years ago in 1981, the Solar Mesosphere Explorer launched from Vandenberg AFB, California, on a Delta rocket. SME was built to “investigate the processes that create and destroy ozone in the Earth’s mesosphere and upper stratosphere,” and operated until December 1988. The small experimental UoSAT (Oscar 9) satellite, built by the University of Surrey, launched as a dual payload on the same Delta rocket.

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First Orbital Launch From Kodiak

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Ten years ago yesterday — sorry, I haven’t been feeling well — on September 30, 2001, an Athena-1 launch vehicle lifted off from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska.


(Starshine-3 undergoing inspection at the US Naval Research Laboratory. NASA image.)

The rocket carried the Starshine-3 microsatellite (pictured above) along with three other small satellites.

Starshine-3 was an updated version of the “Student Tracked Atmospheric Research Satellite Heuristic International Networking Experiment,” which I first covered in this space history blog entry.

The other payloads on this launch were:

  • Picosat-9, a British-built US DoD space test satellite
  • PCSat, the “Prototype Communications SATellite,” an amateur radio relay spacecraft built by US Naval Academy midshipmen
  • Sapphire, the “Stanford Audiophonic Photographic Infrared Experiment,” a US DoD microsatellite built by Stanford University students and faculty
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Having Failed to Be Raptured, I Wrote This Stupid Song

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Yes, that’s really the title of my latest musical nonsense … or maybe, in this case, semi-sense … to hit the web.

Filmed in the Baen Barfly suite at Dragon*Con, you can click to watch it here:

Having Failed to Be Raptured, I Wrote this Stupid Song


(“Guitar Player” by Mister Wilson. From Flickr, under Creative Commons.)

I explain the genesis of the song in the video — I wrote it a while back, but it took months to add a chorus — so I won’t repeat those details here. But here’s one verse for consideration:

It seems to me when folks like that pick up the Bible
They only read the passages they like
They pick and choose what to believe for their agendas
And if you ask me, well, I’ll tell you that ain’t right

As always, tremendous thanks to Tedd Roberts for his video magic.

And, of course, I hope you get a chuckle out of it! And if you like it, feel free to share it with someone else who might appreciate it.

Finally, if you’re so inclined, now that I have four songs available, I started my own YouTube Playlist.

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Think I'll Run for Congress, 'Cause I've Got Some Bills to Pay

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More of my musical nonsense …


(Write me in for any office, anywhere, anytime.)

Filmed in the Baen Barfly suite at Dragon*Con, a little ditty about “the only sport for adults.”* Here’s the chorus:

Politics, that’s the life for me
It fits my arrogant, megalo-maniacal personality
I’ll get my name in the papers and my face on your T.V.
And take good care of myself, my friends and my family — yes, that’s the life for me

You won’t find honesty like that in any standard campaign commercial, will you? So I think of this as the theme song for the Anti-Campaign.

Watch it here: Playing Politics.

Many thanks to Tedd Roberts for both the videography and all the YouTube magic.

Hope you get a chuckle out of it — the melody is a little monotonous (sorry), but consider the subject matter. And remember, if you don’t want to vote for any of the folks on the ballot, you can always write my name in!

I’m the Anti-Candidate, and I approved this message.

___
*Attributed to Robert A. Heinlein.

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