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 […]
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.
In this week’s viewing: Hunter x Hunter lays on the foreshadowing, Space Brothers, of all shows, does something mindbogglingly, cringingly offensive, and more!
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
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.
Just a few housekeeping items before I get into the subject of this month’s post. I am happy to announce that my latest vampire novel came out last week and is available on Amazon.com (U.S., […]
I learned of this comic book style rendering of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot soliloquy from The Huffingtonpost. I immediately got in touch with its creator – Gavin Aung Than to ask permission to reprint […]
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 […]
I’ve gotten twenty days into the grueling forty day marathon that is Gods Will Be Watching, but never further. In the end, I feel like that says something more about me than it should: I […]
>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 […]
4:18 today, July 20th, 2013, will mark the 44th anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon landing. Forty four years ago today I sat in front of a Black and White RCA television and watched the by […]
And now, the rest of your season premieres! For those who were eagerly awaiting Symphogear G or the new Milky Holmes, I regret to inform you that they haven’t been picked up for international streaming. […]
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.
There’s a movement to boycott the upcoming movie Ender’s Game based on a popular and award-winning Orson Scott Card novel of the same name. The basis of the boycott is that Card is a Mormon […]
Full disclosure: Europa Report is currently in pay-per-view and will be in theater release in August. I was provided an online copy to view for this review by the kind folks at Magnolia Pictures publicity. Europa […]
Talking animals and floating heads. You know you want it.
It’s July 4th, the American Independence Day, as I write these words. The word “Freedom” is often heard in connection with the holiday. Essentially every permanent colony ever instituted on our planet has ended in […]
Cataclysmic Binary stars (cataclysmic variables) are star systems in which a white dwarf star and a companion star are locked in a dance of death; matter drawn from the companion can eventually cause the white […]
Before I could develop a backup plan for the reentry of the Apollo Command Module, I had to get answers to two questions.
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet #12 – Is it an act of insubordination if you refuse the orders given by your superior officer’s ghost? Or does that mech fight just count as damaging government property? […]
Friday, June 14, 2013, arrived without much fanfare. My yard gnomes were chained and securely staked in my garden, while the lazy, overweight alligators lounged at the edge of the moat with their mouths open, […]
Hunter x Hunter #84 – One of the recurring features of shōnen series is a tendency to look at characters exclusively through who they can and can’t defeat in a fight. The shōnen world can […]
I’ll start this week’s thought-provoking commentary with a statement: I like Star Trek. Mostly. I’m no Trekkie/Trekker, but I greatly enjoyed TOS and TNG. DS9 had a few good moments. I refused to watch Voyager, […]
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.
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet #10 – So the magical glowing trails from which all the fleets of Earth draw their electricity are, basically, squid dandruff. Next it will probably turn out that the lightbugs […]
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