I don’t care what anyone say… “Independence Day: Resurgence” looks like a bucket of fun.
Will it be great science fiction? Almost certainly not. Will the technology and the physics make a lick of sense? Almost certainly not? Brent Spiner and Jeff Goldblum? Yup.
Here is Part Two of the story of Sarah, Zane, Loff and George transporting a shipload of rich folk to Gimli, a place where regular folk just don’t get to go. If you want to catch up in advance, Part One is available HERE, and the previous story, “Mass Disappearance,” is available HERE. A couple story fragments starring this crew are available HERE and HERE.
If you like it, feel free to tell your friends, family, co-workers, random strangers, whoever. Like it, hate it or meh it, I’m interested in your thoughts via comments. In particular: do you read it in EPUB pr PDF??
I recently finished Part 4 and started in on Part 5. Part 5 will be the final portion of this yarn, and will probably be shorter than the others.
Now available: two new US Aerospace Projects titles.
US Bomber Projects #18 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #18 includes:
USBP #18 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:
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US Transport Projects #06 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #06 includes:
USTP #06 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:
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And don’t forget…
US Fighter Projects #1 and US VTOL Projects #1 are still new and still available!
A sadly tiny illustration of a “Saturn Space Laboratory” from a circa 1960 NASA brochure (promoting the organization to college students). This looks like something halfway between MOL and Skylab; three pressurized modules in a “wet lab” space station. Diameter looks to be 10 feet, same as the Titan booster; early concepts for the Saturn called for the use of the Titan first stage to be the second stage of the Saturn I, with the second stage of the Titan being the third stage of the Saturn. This may well represent a Titan I or II first stage/Saturn I second stage as a space lab.
Given the entertainingly toxic nature of the Titan II propellants, I’d guess this was an earlier Titan I-based concept.
Up for auction:
An original mid-1960s lunar rover prototype, or Local Scientific Survey Module, developed for NASA by Brown Engineering and known as the ‘Brown LSSM.’ Development of the prototype took place in 1965–1966, and it was used for lunar rover mobility tests and to conduct human factors studies and mobility evaluations. This vehicle was actually driven by the great rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and he can be seen with it in photographs. Otha Vaughan, a member of von Braun’s team, has examined the vehicle and identified it as authentic. It had been disposed of and long ago ended up in the hands of by a scrap metal dealer, who preserved it in his scrapyard. The rediscovery of this ‘lost lunar rover’ was the subject of several news stories in late October 2015.
It’s in kinda rough shape. But hey… you’ll probably be the only kid on your block with one.
And then there’s this: I’ve roughly finished another Pax Orionis yarn: “Birth of the Bomb.” It’s a greatly expanded, completely re-written version of a snippet I have previously posted and, perhaps shockingly, it’s not grimdark but rather the opposite (in a way). This one deals not with war but exploration. It’s somewhat longer than “The Deadliest Catch,” so it’ll be in two parts.
I’m currently going over it, tinkering. I need to add the Technical Diagram (a helicopter is mentioned in the story, and I’ve been tempted to draw *that,* but I’ve decided to stick with more Orion-based diagrams for the time being) and a few other bits, but I should have Part One available for Pax Orionis patrons in a week or two. So if you are interested, take a look at the Pax Orionis Patreon page.
A just-announced proposal for a $10 billion program to develop laser-propelled interstellar probes. The idea is to have a mile-wide ground-based array of lasers generate a whopping 100 gigawatts for two minutes to push tiny solar sails with a payload massing about a gram (comparable to the innards of an Iphone). In those two minutes the probe would be accelerated to 20% lightspeed, shooting past Alpha Centauri in about 20 years. It is estimated that Starshot would take 20 years to get going, so, when you factor in the time it takes for the message to get back to Earth, the first photos of A. Cent. from close-up won’t be available until 2060 or so.
The basic idea is not new. Lasers and microwaves have been suggested as “pushers” for sails for decades. Starting in the 1980s, engineers and scientists such as Robert L. Forward have suggested that advances in computer technology were such that probes could be made trivially small, meaning that it was possible to start considering power systems capable of sending probes to stars at good fractions of lightspeed.
The real trick would be developing a molecule-thick sail that won’t promptly vaporize when hit with a 100 gigawatt laser. This, to me, seems the most difficult part of the project. Next up would making a one-gram payload transmit useful data across the lightyears.
While not mentioned in the article, it seems to me that this vast laser array could, when not shooting microprobes to the stars, be used to power vastly larger launch vehicles into orbit, or perhaps “solar thermal” rockets leaving Earth orbit for, say, Mars.
So far no decent technical details, but the website for the project will supposedly eventually have tech reports.
Ron Downey’s aviation history blog, Aviation Archives, recently posted a pile of nicely high-rez photos of the McDonnell ASSETT lifting re-entry test vehicle from the mid-1960’s. If you’re interested in such things – and if you’re here, chances are good – wander on by and take a look. The rest of the blog is jam-packed full of goodies as well including documents and diagrams, mostly from McDonnell-Douglas programs like the F-4 and F-15.
At long last, SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 on a barge out at sea. Even better, this flight launched an inflatable “room” to the Space Station.
And the crowd goes *nuts.*
The whole webcast:
So, now they’ve gone and done it… they’ve proved that it is possible to land a rocket on a (relatively) cheap barge out at sea. Gonna make all the other rocket out there look kinda… dumb.
I’ve always thought the show itself was awful (especially season 2), but the spaceships in “Space 1999” were indisputably awesome, especially the Eagle Transporter. There have been a number of kits of this released over the years, now there’s a great big 1/48 version. I haven’t seen one, and can’t afford one, but it looks spiffy. Someone should buy a couple dozen through this Amazon link and send me one so I can confirm whether or not it’s spiffy.
