Today we are offering multiple and multi-lingual reviews of the James and Gregory Benford anthology – STARSHIP CENTURY. The Benfords put together an anthology that represents the proceedings of the Starship Century Symposium, a gathering […]
I believe people of all types should be able to join in geek events and have fun whether they’re sufficiently geek credentialed or not, but I wondered how one might one go about quantitatively evaluating “geekiness”
To explain to a generation born after PlayStation how we simulated Apollo reentries in 1968, using Stone Age implements and dragging our knuckles, I’ll need to go into a little detail.
A good number of PhD physicists and astronomers,…are writing marvelous stories humanizing and extrapolating from our latest understanding of real science. Through such stories, science can become exciting and inviting
There’s a new star in the sky, or rather one that’s on the order of ten thousand times brighter than it was a few days ago.
Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives could easily have been made into a Syfy Channel movie (if they’d used lower resolution cameras, thrown in a former 1980s TV star and some cornball music).
Once I’d written a set of FORTRAN programs (yes,. paper and pencil) to model an array of Apollo reentry profiles, I sat down at a punched card machine and typed them in. This device was basically a desk with a built-in typewriter keyboard
The pulp era of science fiction was filled with space ships and laser guns, death rays and jet packs, and, of course, flying cars. But for all the prescience of the science fiction greats, none […]
It sure does to me. It’s the reason I worked on Apollo. When President John F. Kennedy gave his “We choose to go to the Moon” speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas in September of 1962, […]
The Invasion by Robert Willey takes us back to the era of a war torn United States fighting the good fight. At the same time, the story also opens the reader’s mind to some of the most fantastic speculations in space travel of the period.
I’m not talking about the salt vampire of Star Trek or anything so literal. I’m talking about vampires in the sense that they fill fantasy and horror in a continuing and ubiquitous fashion despite being […]
3D printing has popped up in science fiction for ages: recall the Star Trek crew materializing food in the microwave-like “replicator” or Neal Stephenson’s “matter compilers” in The Diamond Age. The appeal of creating whatever […]
Rockets and Missiles: Past and Future by Martin Caidin is literally a blast from the past. It is a delightfully historical account of man’s progression into space – because rockets are cool.
>With limited computer resources onboard Apollo, the real “heavy lifting” had to be done on the ground, in Houston’s Mission Control Center.
Just stop for a moment and look at the picture above. It’s a picture of Earth as seen from the planet Saturn. The photo was taken by the Cassini Spacecraft yesterday. Just look at it […]
Today we are joined by science fiction legend Dr. Ben Bova. Ben has served as an editor of both Analog Science Fact & Fiction and Omni magazines. He has written over 120 books of fiction […]
Quite a few attendees are blogging this week about their experiences at the workshop. Christian Ready has compiled a list, and will continue to update it through next week. I offer it to you here […]
Guest Post by Eric Del Carlo In 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina, we broke the alphabet. Storms which brew up in the Atlantic and grind toward the Gulf of Mexico get named alphabetically. It’s a […]
The first task I was assigned in October of 1968 was to determine exactly how the onboard autopilot was supposed to operate during reentry, and that meant digging through the inner workings of the Apollo Guidance Computer itself.
Before I could develop a backup plan for the reentry of the Apollo Command Module, I had to get answers to two questions.
I just watched World War Z last week, and it was not my first zombie movie of the year. It probably will not be my last. Zombies are the new vampire. They’re everywhere in every […]
The Apollo Command Module is shaped like an oversized Hershey’s Kiss and entered Earth’s atmosphere broadside first, giving it all the aerodynamics of a misshapen rock.
Like science in your science fiction? Like stories set in space that aren’t full of errors? Like to inspire the next generation to pursue careers in science? Consider making a donation to the Launch Pad […]
I was struck by two news items this week. The first was that Justin Bieber has signed up for a trip into space. He’d like to do a concert from there. Whether or not you […]
I remember when I joined the Science Fiction Book Club back in 1963, one of the selections was Donald Keyhoe’s bestseller UFOs Are Real. I bought it and The Man in the High Castle and […]
The first manned landing on the Moon occurred in 1969. The first hand-held calculator didn’t come on the market until 1972. So we got men to the Moon using pencil and paper and a slide rule. Really!
I think this is pretty cool. A company with plans to mine asteroid, Planetary Resources, Inc., has just announced that they’re putting a telescope in space and they’re inviting the public to crowdfund it AND […]
In 1968, NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Clear Lake City, Texas was a hot and humid place, built three years earlier on a thousand acres of undeveloped cow pasture 25 miles southeast of downtown Houston, in the middle of nowhere.
So like a lot of people, I saw Star Trek Into Darkness last week. I liked the casting, the acting, many of the effects. I had problems with the storyline and a number of plot […]
This post has been removed because its content may be incorporated into a forthcoming book by the author. To find more articles by Jack Clemons, go here. Information about Jack’s new book will be […]
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