Author: w.steve.wilson

As I was thinking about what to write this week, I found myself sitting in my office—staring at blank walls.

Sure I have the bookcases, but nothing is hanging on the walls art-wise. I’ve been reluctant to commit to anything, considering I’m not sure what’s the right direction for a budding science fiction writer.

A few years ago, I attended Worldcon 76, the science fiction conference held that year, 2018, in San Jose. One of the presentations was on the art of Chesley Bonestell.

[Image Credit: https://www.bonestell.org/getattachment/509c3ea4-3770-4a5e-b85d-417606bc7f2f/Saturn-as-seen-from-Titan-(1).aspx]

Bonestell’s works were visionary and remarkable, considering many of his works, such as the one to the right, were produced before we’d sent any interplanetary probes or visited the Moon.

That would be a great way to set the tone for my office. Unfortunately, Bonestell’s works are not available for home exhibition. I had to move on.

Then there are the many pictures of rockets, shuttles, and satellites that I’d snapped at various museums when I was on vacation. But to be honest, I’m a lousy photographer. So could I find pictures of satellites that NASA shares, such as this image of Mariner 2?

[Image Credit: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSp8ZibPKxBjik2NicSc7Szo6D3zqDkYAvmkQ&usqp=CAU ]

But then—these are science fact rather than science fiction. Don’t get me wrong, they would inspire, but is there something else out there?

As we’ve found before, the Internet being what it is, there are lists of the best in Science Fiction art. One list is Greatest Sci-Fi Artists of All Time. The art on this site is beautiful, compelling, and tells a story when you let your imagination run wild a bit.

And—Science Fiction art has been around for a while. One collector has assembled cover art going back as early as 1908. Check it out at Classics of Science Fiction Art.

Finally, the site: Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror Art. brings together the work of many artists, and their work is fantastic.

[Image Credit: https://www.scififantasyhorror.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/mohamed-reda-sci-fi-workshop-feature.jpeg]

The final possible source of décor might be photographs and images of actual natural phenomena—planets, moons, galaxies, and nebulae. I’ve considered the famous picture of the Earth “rising” over the Moon by Apollo 8. Pair that with a photograph of Moon-rise from the International Space Station, and I might have what I need.

[Image Credit – Earthrise: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcSFOOqWlaDvmOkj7aCUbod1CPdR-5x0i7FYHYWjNvuNH-1VC5CC2UZGW7ha2orqm75ElKj7ZjEAUUA&usqp=CAc]

[Image Credit – Moonrise: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CJ3kX6suXyQ/V-4gpS47TGI/AAAAAAAA7i8/GLv0YJSYgrI8X-Bgcu4OAo4qvsTykJUlACPcB/s1600/moonrise-iss-09.JPG ]

Where did I end up? With blank walls and too many ideas. At least I’ve done some investigation and have some thoughts on what’s next—another task for the winter months ahead—a Science Fiction Rock Playlist and artwork for the walls.

What do you think? Do you have some favorites? Should I go with all Science Fiction art? Maybe a few planet and nebula pictures? How would all rocket ships or all aliens look?

[Image Credit: https://cdn.hswstatic.com/gif/Hubble-20201.jpg]

Leave a comment and let me know what you think. I’ll share the results in a future post.

Thanks for stopping by.

This week we’re going to return to the general category of fantastic science, engineering, and technology feats that I first marveled at in the post from March 29, 2021 (Obliterate The Box: Three Spectacular Feats Of Rocket Science).

But this week, we’re going interstellar.

Interstellar? You might ask. Humans aren’t traveling in the vastness of interstellar space—or are we? OK, so maybe humans aren’t, but our machines are, and that’s where we can marvel at the spectacular feats of science, engineering, and technology.

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are sailing the interstellar realm. I follow both on Twitter, and it occurred to me, beyond the novelty of space probes having Twitter accounts, that the reports give us their distances in light-seconds. For example, the Monday (10/4) tweet from @NSFVoyager2 [unofficial account] reported that Voyager 1 (@NASAVoyager [official NASA account]) is 21 hours, 24 minutes, and 49 seconds of light travel from Earth, and adding 11 miles to that—every second. Voyager 2 is a little closer at 17 hours, 45 minutes, and 33 seconds of light travel from Earth.

Think about that for a moment. We frequently measure things compared to the length of a football field, try to wrap our heads around the Moon being a quarter of a million miles away, or talk about Mars being at its closest to Earth at about 39 million miles. It’s hard to imagine something so far away that we need to measure that distance in how long it takes light to travel there. By comparison, light from the Sun takes about eight minutes to get to Earth. It takes that light five and a half hours to reach Pluto. That same light takes almost a whole day to get to Voyager 1.

Fantastic also that Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still doing science, sending scientists information on the interstellar plasma. The hope is that Voyager might still be doing it when it’s 50 years old in 2027. Voyager 2 may not be able to power a science instrument but may continue to transmit a weak radio signal through the middle of this decade.

One last note, the probes are expected to continue on their journeys for who knows how long, reaching the Oort Cloud in something over 300 years, close to another star in 40,000—unless one returns home before then. We know how this movie might end.

The danger was real, and it was only through Spock and Kirk’s quick thinking that Earth’s annihilation was avoided, and V GER met its creator. (OK. OK. It was a not-real Voyager 6, not one of these. But, who knows what’s out there.)

Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by.

[Disclaimer: Please accept my apologies for any ads that pop up before or after the linked videos. They do not reflect my position, nor do I endorse any of the products – it’s just a YouTube thing I can’t get around.]

A Note about the blog posts from the future [CE 2224]: In January of 2021, with Perseverance due to land on Mars the next month, NASA activated their experimental Quantum Transmitter. The transmitter was designed to communicate with Perseverance, without regard to location and at faster than light speeds—near real-time. Unfortunately, they lost the connection after the initialization routine was completed. However, as an unintended consequence, NASA connected with a specific locus in the space-time continuum located on the Moon in 2224. That locus was the storage device of the quantum computer of a popular blog site. It is from that blog site that these blog entries are extracted. I hope you enjoy a peek into our future, and hopefully, I’m not violating some temporal directive. So far, no visit from the time cops.

Guest Author: Kimber Abubakar, Communications Director, Mars Organics

Originally Posted: Monday, October 4, 2224 (Earth Standard Calendar)

The current move by the officials on Luna to subsidize organic waste processing is an affront to the cooperative and egalitarian culture the off-Earth settlements have fostered for 150 years. The current regulatory environment that has built a robust, self-sufficient, net export economy is in jeopardy.

Luna and Mars have benefited from the AI regulatory, compliance, and ethics ecosystem that a collaborative partnership between the two largest non-Earth economies built over the last 100 years. Retaining the government’s hands-off stance and minimizing the intrusion of government regulation has proven a boon to commercial enterprise across the system settlements.

Embodied in the Lunar Cities Consortium collective actions, Luna threatens to upend that partnership by introducing non-compete subsidies. Luna recyclers have convinced the Lunar Cities’ mayors that as Martian organic recyclers and Mars Organics, in particular, become competitive in pricing and services, Luna recyclers are at a competitive disadvantage. They contend that longer transport distances from the Asteroid Settlements to Luna than to Mars put them at a competitive disadvantage. The Lunar Organic Recyclers Association, itself an affront to open and fair competition, cites instances of transport companies bypassing the Luna off-loading stations and retaining their waste cargos until the following passage to Mars to capture a higher price. This argument ignores the offsetting higher fuel cost and is misleading, more a consequence of orbital mechanics—not economics.

This campaign to position themselves as disadvantaged is patently manipulative. The Association ignores the reality that Mars is farther from the largest belt facilities than Earth for almost half its orbit. The Association further ignores their practically exclusive control of the near-Earth facilities and the Luna orbital facilities, most notably the construction hub at the Pointe. It is doubtful that any transport company would find it profitable to ship wastes from the Earth-Moon sources to Mars for processing.

Mars Organics opposes this move by Luna to favor their domestic processors to the disadvantage of Martian commercial interests. If Luna continues to pursue these subsidies, Mars Organics will have no choice but to file a complaint with the InterSolar Trade Court.

For more information, please visit us at MarsOrganics.ag.Mars/WasteProcessing.

[Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual institutions or actual events is purely coincidental.]

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me a link to an NPR article about NASA looking for volunteers to live in a test habitat for a year. (NASA Wants You To Spend A Year Simulating Life On Mars, For Science). I had planned to write about that this week. But I think I’ll leave it for next week. Go ahead and read the article, and I’ll cover the topic in my next post.

Why not this week? Because—Boston Dynamics has released another robot video and Twitter lit up a bit about using these robots on the Moon. And it got me thinking about how we might use robots to prepare for human exploration and ultimately colonization of the solar system, and dare I say—the galaxy.

You may remember a few months ago when the Dancing Robots entertained us (Tripping the Light Fantastic? Take a Robot as Your Wingman). The dance moves were impressive, and the routine was, of course, a joy to watch, particularly if you like ‘80s music.

The latest video, Atlas | Partners in Parkour, highlights some equally impressive acrobatics. The question bantered about Twitter was whether we should take one of these on the Artemis missions to the Moon. We could speculate about their use. Reconnaissance was mentioned. But you could also imagine moving supplies and equipment, assembling machinery, constructing habitats, maybe even search and rescue!

And that brings me back to the topic of who will be first to explore and settle extraterrestrial planets—humans or robots? In his three robot mystery novels (The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and The Robots of Dawn), Isaac Asimov addresses how we colonize other planets. The Spacer camp wants us to send robots to build a human-ready environment and then move in—comfortable, low risk, easy. The Settler camp wants new colonization to be conducted by humans—uncomfortable, dangerous, challenging. I won’t reveal the answer—no spoilers—you’ll need to read The Robots of Dawn.

But we’re already asking a similar question—why do we need to send people on the dangerous mission to explore other planets? Can’t we use robots to do it? And now that we’ve seen what the Boston Dynamics robots can do why not send them (or a version of them)?

In some respects, we’re already using robots to explore. Curiosity and Perseverance are robots conducting activities and completing tasks millions of miles away on Mars in an unbelievably hostile environment. Yes, they’re following instructions, but with no real-time human intervention. But that can’t be all we do. We need to explore and learn, and, yes, we need to understand the challenges before we go—but go, we must. Will we ever really know what another planet is like (or the Moon for that matter) until someone stands there and looks to the distant horizon and wonders what’s over there?

So, what do you say? Ready to head out to the planets and do some exploring? Should we risk people’s lives or just let the machines do it? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

In future posts, we’ll explore the next step: Colonization.

[Disclaimer: Please accept my apologies for any ads that pop up before the linked videos. They do not reflect my position, nor do I endorse any of the products – it’s just a YouTube thing I can’t get around.]

Much has been made of Sir Richard’s trip to the edge of space. Even with all the testing, the practice runs, the safety protocols, etc., it must have been a heart in the throat, white knuckle trip. The video from the cabin looked like they were having a great time, though. Of course, we didn’t see what the pilots were doing, but passengers looked like they were glad they made the trip. (In Cabin Video, about a minute in is the weightlessness part).

Thinking about that trip, I did some reading on what’s next. Mostly what I found was what’s next for Virgin Galactic and the expected comparisons to Blue Origin. Discussions of space tourism, lowering the costs of tickets, more frequent flights, and, of course, the safety of it all was the predominant material.

But there were a few that branched into sub-orbital transportation. We’re no stranger on this site to discussing suborbital transportation as we addressed this topic back in May (Breakfast in New York – Lunch in Singapore – Dinner in London). To the novice (me), it seems that the Virgin Galactic might have a workable model for small groups of passengers (or those that are reluctant to strap into a rocket).

What I learned was we’re a long way from hypersonic or suborbital transportation. Wired’s interesting article from 2018 summarizes the challenges and where we are relative to past advances in aeronautics and passenger air travel.  Check it out. (Forget supersonic, the future of super-fast flight is sub-orbital)

But what about this concept of a business that takes passengers to space, if even for a short time. Some commentators have objected to billionaires using their wealth to take other wealthy people on a joy ride. One article estimated that Jeff Bezos liquidates $1 Billion in Amazon stock per year to fund Blue Origin (Blue Origin Auctions Seat on Bezos Rocket for $28 Million). Another way of thinking about that is that $1 Billion goes to pay for materials, services, salaries, benefits, etc., for Blue Origin as an enterprise. Further, if Virgin Galactic delivers all its 700 booked flights at $250,000 each, they’ll earn $175 Million. If there’s a profit margin there, isn’t that what commerce is about, finding a product that people will buy. I know it’s not as simple as that, but it’s a conversation to have.

And as far as the joy ride part, consider how much is spent on amusement parks. One estimate has the cost of building Disney World at $6 to $7 Billion in today’s dollars. But I’ve got to tell you, that was money well spent—Disney World is a great trip.

So we can’t all go to space, but some can, and that endeavor employs people in well-paying high-tech jobs. But many of us can go to Disney World, which also supports many well-paying, high-tech jobs.

What do you think? Are the space tourism efforts ill-advised? Does your thinking change if you consider the economic benefits? Are they just souped-up (albeit expensive) amusement park rides?

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Thanks for stopping by.

Blue Origin Update July 26 – A quick update was in order with the launch of Blue Origin’s first passenger-carrying rocket. Certainly, a different way to get to space than Virgin Galactic’s and others can debate if both or either of these trips got the passengers to space or not. Regardless, the Blue Origin launch puts one more private firm in the business of reusable boosters. Say what you will about taking wealthy passengers on joy rides to space (see my comments above). Still, his endeavor should be expected to add to the industry’s abilities in developing hardware, software, and processes needed to make reusable boosters safe and cost-effective.

[Disclaimer: Please accept my apologies for any ads that pop up before the linked videos. They do not reflect my position, nor do I endorse any of the products – it’s just a YouTube thing I can’t get around.]

A Note about the blog posts from the future [CE 2224]: In January of 2021, with Perseverance due to land on Mars the next month, NASA activated their experimental Quantum Transmitter. The transmitter was designed to communicate with Perseverance, without regard to location and at faster than light speeds—near real-time. Unfortunately, they lost the connection after the initialization routine was completed. However, as an unintended consequence, NASA connected with a specific locus in the space-time continuum located on the Moon in 2224. That locus was the storage device of the quantum computer of a popular blog site. It is from that blog site that these blog entries are extracted. I hope you enjoy a peek into our future, and hopefully, I’m not violating some temporal directive. So far, no visit from the time cops.

Guest Author: Yosef Slor, Director of Crop Development, Luna Agricultural Research Cooperative

Originally Posted: Monday, June 28, 2224 (Earth Standard Calendar)

It is my great pleasure to introduce the latest new fruit developed by the Luna Agricultural Research Cooperative: The StrawBanany.

The StrawBanany is a vine-grown fruit the size of a large apple, approximately eight centimeters in diameter, with the flavor of strawberries and bananas. The geneticist preserved the strawberry form, and we hope restaurants and customers will appreciate the dark red color and large fruit size that will enhance their displays and dishes.

The Cooperative developed the new fruit using engineered strawberry cuttings imported from the Volcani Institute-Agricultural Research Organization in Israel. The Volcani Institute has a centuries-long history of introducing new fruits and vegetables to the commercial and retail markets, and the Cooperative is grateful for its participation in bringing this new fruit to market.

The Cooperative has been carefully engineering the new fruit in Sector 5B of the Plinius hydroponic farming chamber. Over several years, genetic engineers have increased the fruit size, developed a fruiting protocol that does not require pollinators, and enhanced the root structure to optimize the efficient uptake of nutrients from the hydroponic fluids.

One of the harder inscriptions on the base fruit’s genome was coding for the metabolic processes that produce the distinct banana aroma generated by isoamyl acetate. This organic compound has the propensity of masking other flavors and aromas and making everything taste like bananas. The engineers were able to modulate the new fruit’s production of isoamyl acetate and retain the distinct taste of the strawberry. It’s a popular combination we hope our customers find enjoyable in a single fruit.

As an unexpected byproduct of engineering the flavor, the engineers found they could significantly increase the nutritional value of the fruit. For those who look for healthy nutrition and great taste, each StrawBanany fruit is a complete breakfast. All in all, a single fruit for breakfast comes in at 500 calories and provides 25 grams of healthy fat, a healthy dose of omega-3 fatty acids, 56 grams of total carbohydrates, 10 grams of fiber, 6 grams of sugar, and 24 grams of protein. Eat it right off the vine, or throw it in a blender—you don’t even need to add water.

We hope the public will enjoy our new fruit. It should begin appearing at public dining halls, restaurants and available for purchase in the next several weeks. We expect year-round production depending on demand.

Enjoy and stay healthy. For more information, please visit LunaAgricultural.ag.luna/StrawBanany.

[Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual institutions or actual events is purely coincidental.]

First, I’ll confess I am not an expert in orbital mechanics by any stretch of the imagination—not even close. I don’t purport to be one, nor have I ever played one on television.  So what follows is an amateur’s attempt to consider what it might take to get to Mars quickly.

I do, though, appreciate the simplicity of some of the equations that describe the mechanics of motion in our typical, everyday, non-relativistic (i.e., no Einstein in today’s post) universe. For example, in high school physics, I remember that the distance traveled from a standing stop is one-half the acceleration times the time squared (d = ½ a t2), where d equals the distance traveled, which equals the distance traveled acceleration and t equals the time.

So, what does this have to do with getting to Mars? Well, I thought I’d share a simplistic view of how to get there in a hurry. The equation tells us that even for vast distances, we can get there in a hurry if we can constantly accelerate. Imagine 0 to 60 in 4 seconds in a car—what if you kept going? You can get a sense of just how fast you’d be going in a relatively short period.

But before we go there, we might pause to consider that current plans to get to Mars involve journeys of seven to nine months or longer. This trip uses a tremendous amount of thrust to accelerate a space vehicle and get it started on its way. Then the spacecraft coasts for months. When it arrives at the Red Planet, it again expends fuel to slow down and either enter orbit or land. This is how Perseverance traveled to Mars, as did the array of landers and orbiters that are currently operating on and around Mars.

The question becomes, how would the journey to Mars change if we could continually accelerate for the whole trip. Those of you who are science fiction fans are likely familiar with The Expanse series. In that universe, the Epstein Drive provided constant acceleration. (Here’s some fan fiction: https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Epstein Drive.) If you watch the series, it appears to be 1 g (one Earth-normal gravity) since they walk around the ships normally.

That technology doesn’t exist—yet. Are we getting close, though, to constant acceleration at a lower level? That’s hard to say. But what if we could accelerate a ship at just 1/1000 of the force of gravity?

In that instance, and assuming we traveled to Mars when it was at its closest, the trip could be on the order of a couple of months. If we could accelerate at 1/100, it would be weeks. (Rocket scientists are very welcome to correct my math and assumptions.) Imagine a trip to Mars in a month. Colonization might seem more realistic. Return trips to Earth for a visit by Martians might be feasible. Maybe—a vacation at Olympus Mons or Utopia Planitia.

Regardless, as space technologies advance and we find new and different ways to build and move spacecraft, getting to and from Mars quickly might not stay a science fiction fantasy. In our lifetime, we just might see quick trips to our neighbor.

Let me know what you think? Would you go on a cruise to Phobos and Deimos with a stop at Jezero Crater to visit where NASA searches for past life on Mars? It might be fun.

Thanks for stopping by.

[Disclaimer: Please accept my apologies for any ads that pop up before the linked videos. They do not reflect my position, nor do I endorse any of the products – it’s just a YouTube thing I can’t get around.]

With the possibly inexorable move away from fossil fuels, we’ve been looking at various methods of transportation that will need to be different when they go electric. In April, we looked at high-speed rail and hyperloop, both electric-powered, as possible replacements to air travel (Riding High-Speed Rail or Shooting through a Hyperloop Tube). During June, we’ve looked at Formula I Racing (Drivers – Start Your Motors…) and electric airplanes (Electric Planes – the Future of Air Travel? …).

But what about rockets? The immense power of modern rockets is a thing to behold (Saturn V). I’ve watched any number of launches by SpaceX, Rocket Labs, ULA, etc., and am constantly amazed that science and engineering have harnessed such forces. I can’t wait for the first launch of the Space Launch System vehicle being assembled in Florida for the Artemis 1 mission.

Smaller rockets and thrusters using different technologies, but operating on the same Newtonian principles, move spacecraft once they are in orbit. And rockets propel probes, landers, and now a helicopter, millions, if not billions, of miles across the solar system to orbit planets and asteroids and land on Mars and the Moon, for example.

How much of this could be and will be replaced by electric rockets?

As it stands now, no electric-based technology exists that would lift heavy payloads off the Earth and into orbit. However, hundreds of probes and satellites are currently using electric thrusters to maintain positions and maneuver. Electric thrusters have been in operation since the 1970s, and NASA is looking at options for using nuclear electric engines to send astronauts to Mars (Nuclear Propulsion Could Help Get Humans to Mars Faster).

One advantage of nuclear electrical propulsion is the ability to propel the spaceship under constant thrust. Chemical rockets like the videos above use all their fuel in a relatively short time but get the spacecraft moving at the high speeds needed to escape the Earth’s gravity and get to where they’re going. Electric propulsion puts out less thrust but can run for a longer time. This could shorten the travel times by quite a bit.

Imagine getting to Mars in a few months or even days. Think of an immense spaceliner, like an ocean liner, which stays in space and travels back and forth between Earth, the Moon, Mars.

Would you go for a visit?

Next week we’ll look at some of the transit times and do a little retrospective on how these questions have been addressed in fiction. Stay tuned.

[Disclaimer: Please accept my apologies for any ads that pop up before the linked videos. They do not reflect my position, nor do I endorse any of the products – it’s just a YouTube thing I can’t get around.]