Category Archives: Science Fiction

A Lunar Ranger and the Sea of Clouds

By | |
Comments Off on A Lunar Ranger and the Sea of Clouds

Forty five years ago today — March 21, 1965 — the lunar probe Ranger-9 launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas-Agena rocket. It was the last of the Ranger series of lunar spacecraft.


(First Ranger-9 image, showing Mare Nubium. NASA image.)

Ranger-9 took over 5800 photographs of the lunar surface before it impacted on the moon on March 24. The first photograph it took (above) was of Mare Nubium, as described below:

The first Ranger 9 image of the Moon, taken with the A camera from a distance of 2378 km. The image is centered on the Mare Nubium region of the Moon, which extends to the bottom of the image. At upper left is southeastern Oceanus Procellarum. The two craters with the central peaks at right are Alphonsus, diameter 108 km, and below it Arzachel, diameter 96 km. The crater near the center at about 8:00 is 60 km Bullialdus. The frame is approximately 1050 km across and north is at 12:30. The final impact point of Ranger 9 is in the Alphonsus crater, midway between the central peak and rim at about 1:30.

Source: Ranger-9 image page.

Mare Nubium, which dominates the lower part of that image, means “Sea of Clouds” — and friends may recall that the novel I’ve been shopping around is entitled WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS. So I particularly like this bit of space history.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Our Geeky Church, and a Little Space History

By | |
Comments Off on Our Geeky Church, and a Little Space History

Before we get into today’s space history, a “quote of the day” from last night’s small group Bible study. As we were gathering, Maria grabbed one of our STAR TREK coffee mugs for Elliott, so I mentioned that ReConStruction, the North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFic) is coming to Raleigh in August. True to the nature of our science fiction church, Elliott said, “If that’s not a church trip, I don’t know what is!”

Yes, we’re geeks. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Back to the topic at hand, an interesting launch 40 years ago in space history. On January 23, 1970, a Delta rocket out of Vandenberg AFB carried two satellites, ITOS-1 and Oscar-5.

ITOS-1 was the first prototype of the “Improved TIROS Operational System” — that is, a new and improved version of the remote sensing satellite featured in yesterday’s space history item. ITOS-1 was built “to provide improved operational infrared and visual observations of earth cloud cover for use in weather analysis and forecasting.”

Oscar-5, on the other hand, was an amateur spacecraft built by students at the University of Melbourne, Australia. It has the distinction of being the first remotely-controlled amateur micro-satellite.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

On Veterans' Day, Thank You

By | |
Comments Off on On Veterans' Day, Thank You

Last year I posted a bit about why Veterans’ Day embarrasses me, and also about the National Veterans Freedom Park that’s to be built in Cary, NC.

As much as I still feel that Veterans’ Day is for those other veterans, those “real” veterans who endured hardships and battle, in contrast to veterans like me whose brushes with danger were few and brief and who endured more inconveniences than hardships, I confess that I’ve gotten to the point that it annoys me when I hear casual disregard and even disdain for our country and our freedoms from those who never served, never considered serving, and never supported anyone who served.

Not everyone is suited to military service, or to the rigors that go along with being in a military family, and I don’t begrudge anyone’s choice to pursue some other calling than the military. But I think it’s easier for those with no military connections, and especially those who, in their heart of hearts, would do anything other than don a uniform and shoulder a weapon, to take our nation and especially the liberties we enjoy for granted.

I don’t go so far as science fiction grand master Robert A. Heinlein, who wrote in Time Enough for Love (specifically, in the “Notebooks of Lazarus Long”),

Those who refuse to support and defend a state have no claim to protection by that state. Killing an anarchist or a pacifist should not be defined as ‘murder’ in a legalistic sense. The offense against the state, if any, should be ‘Using deadly weapons inside city limits,’ or ‘Creating a traffic hazard,’ or ‘Endangering bystanders,’ or other misdemeanor.

But I do maintain that those of us who are quick to assert the rights guaranteed to us under the Constitution, and even “rights” the Founding Fathers never considered, should express some measure of gratitude to those who have sworn to defend that Constitution, and to “secure the blessings of liberty” at any cost, up to and including their lives.

So, to all who wore the uniform, those who would have worn the uniform if they could, and those who supported a uniformed Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine, or Coastguardsman — and especially to those who are serving today, at home or abroad — thank you, and may God guide and protect you.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Of X-Planes and Moon Rocks

By | |
Comments Off on Of X-Planes and Moon Rocks

Fifty years ago today — September 17, 1959 — Scott Crossfield made the first powered flight in an X-15, dropped off the wing of NASA’s B-52 flying out of Edwards AFB, CA.


(Cutaway drawing of the X-15. NASA Photo E62-7893.)

Here’s a NASA story commemorating the first flight, and a nice feature on Crossfield and his career.

And forty years ago today, the Smithsonian Institution unveiled the first lunar rock ever put on public display: brought back by Apollo-11, of course. Today I wonder if we have the national will to go back to the moon, or to go anywhere; the recent Augustine Panel noted that it’s technically feasible, but by damn it better be technically feasible by the 2020s if we did it back in the 1960s. It’s all a matter of money, and whether we see it as a cost or as an investment.

For the moment we have to content ourselves with the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, due to smash into crater Cabeus-A in about three weeks to try to verify if the hydrogen concentrations detected on the moon are in the form of water ice.

I hope LCROSS finds water, and more than expected . . . but even if it doesn’t, that’s only one spot in one crater. It will take other investigations to prove whether the moon is completely devoid of water. (Why I care: The characters in my novel collect ice that’s been dredged up microgram by microgram out of the bottom of Faustini crater, and since Faustini was on the “short list” of possible LCROSS impact points [according to a graphic shown during the 11 September press conference] I think my fictional world is still plausible for now.)

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Problems in the Search for Lunar Ice

By | |
Comments Off on Problems in the Search for Lunar Ice

Last week controllers lost contact with the Indian lunar probe Chandrayaan-1, which was about to embark on a new series of observations in conjunction with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Now those radar observations won’t happen, as explained in this New Scientist article.

That sets back the search for ice in lunar craters, which will be vital to future lunar outposts. But this passage especially caught my eye:

Chandrayaan-1 flew over “a lot of little craters that looked like they had ice” and mapped 95 per cent of the polar regions before its mission ended,

according to Stewart Nozette of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. That sounds encouraging.

And provided that LCROSS — the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — doesn’t experience another in-flight emergency, we should get a closer look at the contents of one crater in just a few weeks.

But no matter what any of these probes reveal: in the world of my novel, WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS, the colonists retrieve ice from the permanently shaded floor of Faustini Crater.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Nimbus-1 Weather Satellite: From Launch to STAR TREK

By | |
Comments Off on Nimbus-1 Weather Satellite: From Launch to STAR TREK

Forty-five years ago today — August 28, 1964 — the Nimbus-1 satellite, “the first in a series of second-generation meteorological research-and-development satellites,” launched from Vandenberg AFB on a Thor-Agena rocket.


(Nimbus Satellite Diagram, from www.ucsb.edu)

According to the National Space Science Data Center,

a short second-stage burn resulted in an unplanned eccentric orbit. Otherwise, the spacecraft and its experiments operated successfully until September 22, 1964. The solar paddles became locked in position, resulting in inadequate electrical power to continue operations.

Nevertheless, Nimbus-1 produced the first nighttime cloud-cover images from space and was followed by six more satellites in the Nimbus series.

So where does STAR TREK come in? According to Memory Alpha, a diagram of Nimbus-1 in its polar orbit was part of the data accessed by the Talosians when they scanned the Enterprise‘s data banks in the original pilot episode “The Cage.”

Science fact meets science fiction … I like it.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

A Moon Launch, and the MOON Movie

By | |
Comments Off on A Moon Launch, and the MOON Movie

Forty years ago today — July 13, 1969 — three days before the U.S. launched Apollo-11, the Soviet Union launched the Luna-15 probe on a Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. According to aerospaceweb.org,

Luna 15 began its journey on 13 July 1969 as a last-minute attempt to regain national pride in the face of the pending Apollo landing. Luna 15 was a fairly sophisticated craft designed to land on the surface of the Moon and collect soil samples to be launched back to Earth. It was hoped that the soil could be returned prior to Apollo 11’s splashdown making the Soviets the first to bring lunar material back to Earth. Though the probe was successfully launched and made its way into lunar orbit, bad luck again struck the Soviet lunar program. Luna 15 had completed 52 orbits of the Moon when it attempted to make a soft landing on the surface. Unfortunately, the final retrorocket burn failed and the probe crashed in the Sea of Crises on 21 July 1969, just one day after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their historic walk on the Moon.

In contemporary space-related news, we saw the movie MOON yesterday at the Galaxy Cinema here in Cary. It was, as we’d been led to believe, impressive in its production quality — so much that at times it was easy to forget it was an independent film. The issues with the lunar setting (e.g., noise where there shouldn’t be any, the inconsistent treatment of gravity) and the lunar infrastructure and equipment (e.g., no alarm on the secret door, vehicles sturdy enough to withstand rocks landing on them) would only be problematic for geeks. (Yes, I qualify on that score.) It had a few plot holes as well, but all in all was a worthy effort and an enjoyable ninety-seven minutes.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

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

By | | ,
Comments Off on Made Word-Count Goal, Still Not Done (grumble)

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Progress Report: 90% Toward the Goal

By | | ,
1 Comment

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

My Science Fiction Church: ST Klingon References

By | | ,
Comments Off on My Science Fiction Church: ST Klingon References

I attend North Cary Baptist Church, and I’m frequently pleased by the large proportion of genre fans in our church. (I even blogged about that in this post.)

Yesterday Pastor Mark started his sermon by explaining that the title of the book of Acts is the Greek word, “praxis,” at which our pianist remarked that Praxis is also the Klingon moon. This prompted the pastor to point out that the Bible is being (or maybe has been) translated into Klingon — is that right, Dr. Schoen? — and to give and receive from many of us the Vulcan salute. And at least one of us (that would have been me) exclaimed “success!” in Klingon.

We have a great church, and you’re welcome to visit any time.

[BREAK, BREAK]

In other news, I passed the 85,000-word mark yesterday in MARE NUBIUM, my novel about an early lunar colony. Still hoping to make 100K, if not finish outright, by the end of the month.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather