A symposium, in San Diego. It looks interesting — I may go. Could be an opportunity for book sales and signings.
Category Archives: Space
Ender’s Game Weightless Effects
I wouldn’t call these “insane lengths.” Insane lengths would have been building their own large-volume sound stage in orbit.
Mad Men
Ed Driscoll has some thoughts on 1968, the Year That Sucked, at least until almost the end. I remember waking up to my clock radio, announcing the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
And yes, for those who watched, last night’s episode was (predictably?) depressing.
The Frontier
Ross Douthat wonders what happened to it:
Go back and read the science fiction of the 1940s and ’50s, and you’ll be struck by the vaulting confidence that this expansion would continue upward and outward, and that a new age of exploration was just waiting to be born.
Today that confidence has vanished. Our Mars rovers are impressive and our billionaires keep pouring money into private spaceflight, but neither project captures the public’s imagination, and the very term “Space Age” seems antique. The Kepler 62 discovery might have earned more headlines at a less horrific moment, but it would have fallen out of the news soon enough.
It’s possible that we’re less interested in space travel because we feel that it’s a luxury good at a time when we have bigger problems here on Earth. But it’s also possible that we’ve gradually turned inward, to our smartphone screens and Facebook profiles, because we know that spaceflight isn’t going to get us to another world anytime soon.
Actually, if the latter is the case, “we” are too pessimistic, because we’re paying too much attention to NASA’s dysfunction, and not enough to what’s happening in the real world of spaceflight. I do think that the billionaires are capturing peoples’ attention, and as real things start to happen, they’ll do so much more.
Antares
Well, they had a nominal liftoff through first-stage separation. And they just separated the fairing (which has been a problem for OSC recently). Stage two has ignited.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, it’s in orbit. Looks like everything went by the book. Congratulations to the OSC team.
The High Frontier
I just got an announcement from the Space Studies Institute:
At Space Access 2013 SSI President Gary Hudson announced the release of Gerard K. O’Neill’s classic The High Frontier as an exclusive Amazon Kindle ebook.
Today we have another announcement: From Saturday April 20th to Tuesday April 23rd, the Kindle edition of The High Frontier is absolutely free. Just open the Kindle app on your iOS, Android, Windows PC or Mac and type High Frontier in the Kindle store, or get your free Kindle edition directly from the Amazon.com website.
The High Frontier was a milestone in the work to make the dream of Space Settlement real for everyone. So many lives were changed by this book. Now a new digital generation can learn the needs, the goals and the potentials that Professor O’Neill made so clearly understandable.
With The High Frontier Kindle edition you get the full original artwork by Don Davis, the cover art of the 1988 second edition by Pat Rawlings (in full color on supported devices), full text searching and the bonus chapter “The View from 1988” that Dr. O’Neill added to the SSI second edition.*
Already own a copy of The High Frontier? Go ahead and get your Kindle version for free today and save your print version for special times.
Have friends who have never read The High Frontier? Pass this email along… and tell them to pass it along too!
Yes, proceeds from sales of The High Frontier Kindle edition at its regular price of $6.99 do add up to help the important research and projects of The Space Studies Institute and the free promotion does not, but we think that getting The High Frontier out there in the hands of a new generation is worth it. Don’t you?
Of course if you do think that supporting the work of SSI and promotions like this one are a good thing for the cause, we would welcome your your membership or donation. There is a simple PayPal link at SSI.ORG that you can use to show your support at any time.
Remember, this is a limited time free offer. Saturday April 20th to Tuesday April 23rd only.** After that, the retail price is back in effect. So get your FREE copy of The High Frontier Kindle edition today!
That book significantly altered the trajectory of my life when I was in college.
SF On TV
Michael Stracynski explains why most of it is awful.
A Space Hacker Workshop
I’m busy preparing my presentation for this afternoon at Space Access, but Ed Wright is announcing a space hacker workshop up at Ames Research Center in Mountain View on May 4-5 for people who want to learn how to build cubesats that can fly suborbitally on XCOR’s Lynx.
[Update Friday morning]
I originally wrote this post in Phoenix last Saturday, but didn’t actually publish it until yesterday, in case it had anyone scratching their heads.
A Battery Breakthrough?
Let’s hope this pans out. Among other things, it would solve Boeing’s problem. In fact, it might make electric airplanes possible, let alone cars. And some obvious space applications.
Crowdfunding Space
Jeff Foust has a piece up on the topic over at The Space Review.