… with Microsoft Paint.
Jul 222015
Jul 222015
This got lost in all the excitement over New Horizons/Pluto a week ago. But July 15 was the 50th anniversary of the Mariner 4 probe’s flyby of the planet Mars. Not only was this the first flyby of Mars, this was the *end* of “Mars.” prior to Mariner 4, people could at least imagine that the atmosphere, while thin, could support life, that there would be some amount of liquid water on Mars, perhaps even vegetation and canals. But Mariner 4 showed that Mars had an atmosphere not 1/4 as thick as Earth’s, but more like 1/150th as thick, that there was no possibility of liquid water (and little enough frozen water), and no vegetation or canals. More than a few science fiction authors of the day were a bit disappointed.
Jul 172015
Flying over Pluto…
And the best view we’re going to get of the moon Nix:
As an aside… I noticed when I went to add this image to the blog post that it was dated August, 2012. Almost certainly just a flub. But prepare for the conspiracy theories…
Jul 152015
The closest-pass images are starting to come in.
The tiny moon Hydra:
Charon:
And Pluto in closeup:
And this:
Views of Pluto Through the Years
Jul 142015
I have a number of ideas for different tales to go into Pax Orionis, including standard third person narratives, bits of memoirs, articles, interviews, technical descriptions, etc. Some of them I’ve started poking away at. Because why not, below are the opening paragraphs of four such yarns. Some I have little more than what’s here, others are good long chunks. None are done. The titles are just placeholders for the moment,
Jul 142015
Telemetry is coming in from New Horizons. Everything is nominal; seems Cthulhu didn’t eat it at closest approach.
Jul 142015
Jul 142015
New Horizons has gone past Pluto. Before closest approach, it radioed home one last photo; it then went into “can’t talk now, busy sciencing” mode for several hours, where the onboard computer went into full-time data gathering and recording mode. Won’t hear from it again until 8:34 PM eastern time, at which time a “ping” should be heard if the craft survived.
So, this *might* be the very last photo of Pluto… or it might be the last photo before the Really Good Photos start pouring in early tomorrow.
Jul 132015
Some might question why this mission to Pluto is so interesting to so many. I think I have it figured out: not only is this the first time humanity will have a good look at this entire planetary system… this is also the *last* new world of any magnitude most of us will probably live to see explored up close. Sure, there’s lesser known Eris, which is smaller than Pluto by a few kilometers, but substantially more massive… but last I’ve heard there are no real plans to send a craft there. And it’s something like twice as far from the sun as Pluto, so barring new propulsion systems, it will take twice as long to get there… call it 18 years. Couple that with the time required to actually design, build and launch the probe… New Horizons started design work in 1990, not launching until 2006. So if that process was duplicated starting today, “New Horizons Eris” would launch in 2031 and would flyby Eris in 2049. Assuming it didn’t get cancelled, the booster didn’t fail or the transmitter went wonky.
It’s safe to assume that most reading this here blog will be good and dead the next time a human craft explores anywhere *really* new that’s bigger than an asteroid.
So… this is it, this is the end.
NASA Coverage Schedule for New Horizons Pluto Flyby
Jul 132015
Avast amount of work was put into space-based weaponry during the SDI days, but the bulk of that work has remained tucked behind security classification. Artwork was released publicly from time to time, but with rare exceptions that artwork was pretty clearly either not based on actual engineering design work, or was stripped of important features.
In all my digging I’ve found a grand total of *one* illustration of a space based railgun that I’m fairly confident represents a serious design effort. Sadly dimensions were lacking… but the design included a nuclear reactor and radiator system was was very likely an SP-100. While the SP-100 system itself appears to have been in constant flux, scaling the whole assembly from the size of the radiators leads to something I’d estimate accurate in scale within +/- 15%.
For a future USSP release, I decided to include this railgun as I included the Zenith Star laser in issue #1. The easiest way to make good 2D diagrams for something this complex is to make a 3D CAD model based on the sketch, including the SP-100. I didn’t know how big the railgun was supposed to be; I didn’t try to scale it until I had it largely put together with the SP-100 in place. And boy, is it *not* small:
The shuttle is of course to scale.
Several details lead me to think that this General Electric concept is on the up-and-up:
1) It includes the SP-100. This was often (not always) left off of images for public consumption.
2) It includes *very* large planar array radar for targeting warheads thousands of kilometers away, something I’ve *never* seen elsewhere, but which is pretty obviously important.
3) It has a fairly substantial, though unclear, storage for LOX and LH2 hidden behind a thermal shield/radiator. Note: the nuclear reactor was to keep the system running for years while awaiting The Day, and for running systems like computers and radar and such. But the power needed for the railgun was vastly more than the SP-100 could provide; the LOX/LH2 would run a turbogenerator to crank out the megawatts needed to make the gun go bang.
4) It doesn’t look “sci-fi cool” so much as it looks like a “great big thing built in space.”
Launching this monster would have been a hell of a chore. Presumably it would go up in pieces atop an ALS booster, and there assembled by a human crew launched via shuttle.