ISV Venture Star

Since I missed the first 5-10 minutes of Avatar in the theater, I didn’t realize–they actually have a realistic spacecraft! Like, really! It looks real, the non-rotatey bits are in microgravity, and it doesn’t go faster than light.

I hope when there’s the inevitable space battle in one of the sequels, they keep it real. Also, prediction: Jake Sully’s brother was not killed “for the paper in his wallet,” but as part of a conspiracy to put Jake in the Avatar instead of another scientist. Or did it say that in the original movie?

Speaking of conspiracies, “ISV” is the prefix I’ve been using for the ship in a science fiction setting I’m going to realize at some point. James Cameron, are you reading my mind?

Deutscher rocketpunk

Went to an air show today. A great time. Highlight was going up in an Antonov A2, which I am told is the biggest biplane in the world.

On another awesome note, in a lower key, I have also this Book for three Euro gebought:

West German science fiction…IN SPAAAAAACE! I don’t know what’s more awesome, the car or the ship. Oh wait, clearly the ship. Single-stage to orbit rocket with wings? High rocketpunk. Car and ship are both SO MUCH 50s. Approval.

The W is not for Werner, unfortunately.

Inevitable shoutout to Rocketpunk Manifesto may be found earlier in this sentence.

Might as well be walking on the Sun

I have just learned that colonization of Venus is actually quite plausible–just not the surface. We’re talking pressurized bubbles (“aerostats”) in the upper atmosphere–a place where the pressure and temperature, not to mention gravity, are well within comfortable human norms. We are talking about a series of floating platforms, domes, and catwalks. We are talking about Cloud City. We are talking about a city made of airships.

Image found here.

Quote of the Day

“This is the Admiral. Just so there’ll be no misunderstandings later. Galactica’s seen a lot of history. Gone through a lotta battles. This will be her last. She will not fail us, if we do not fail her. If we succeed in our mission, Galactica will bring us home. If we don’t, it doesn’t matter anyway. Action stations!”

~Admiral William Adama

Just watch the beginning if you haven’t seen it in context. Speech at 2:30.

To the 6,000-years set:

Light travels 299,792,458 meters in one second, making one light-second equal to the distance of 299,792,458 meters. Multiply that by the number of seconds in a year and you get a light-year.

The scale on the above map is 10,000 light years. If the universe were 6,000 years old, nothing outside a sphere of a 6,000 ly radius–i.e., most of our galaxy and any of the 170 billion+ galaxies that have been observed–would not be visible. One of these galaxies is Andromeda, which is visible with the naked eye. If the universe were 6,000 years old, we would not be able to see the Andromeda Galaxy. This is because the light from Andromeda, having taken only 2,500,000 years to get here, is still too far away to be visible in a universe created only 6,000 years ago. The universe described in Genesis should have a cosmic horizon at 6,000 light years–a point beyond which we cannot see, because we are looking back in time to a point before time and the Universe as we know it existed. The real universe has a cosmic horizon, and it is about 13.7 billion light years away. Not six thousand. Thirteen point seven billion.

In other words, one can disprove young Earth creationism just by looking at the sky at night.

The universe is about 13.7 billion years old, give or take. Anyone who tells you otherwise believes something that is not true. Not only that, they believe something much less magnificent than the truth. Watch the video below, and have a religious experience.

Scientists still surprised by life’s abundance

Shrimp unexpectedly discovered below Antarctic ice. If we keep being so surprised by complex life living in trifling places like Antarctica, how are we going to react when that robot burrows into the oceans of Europa twenty years down the line?

Godspeed you red empress

Spirit, that magnificent explorer of Mars, has reached the end of her tether, years later than expected. She was planned to last 92 Terran days and made it 2215. Her sister sojourner Opportunity still chugs along. These are tenacious little robots. I’m proud of ‘em.

Spirit can’t motor around any more, but she will remain in place as a radio beacon and continue to send back useful information about the Red Planet, hopefully for years to come.

Fun fact: Spirit’s shelf life was increased by Martian dust devils keeping her solar panels clear, ironically, of dust. Funny how these things work.

If I ever make it to Mars in my lifetime (probably not, but a one can dream) I will be visiting this wonderful machine at the museum in Tharsis.

All over heaven

Via @nyrath, the possibility of China building an Orion spacecraft, a behemoth powered by nuclear bombs:

The chief restraint on China would thus be world opinion, something to which the Chinese have not shown themselves particularly susceptible. This would be especially true if the Chinese sprung it as a surprise, which they very well might.
Much of the physics and engineering behind Orion is already well-known, and – given that American designers working with puny 1960-vintage computer technology saw the problems as tractable – it’s very likely that the Chinese could manage to design and build an Orion craft within a few years of deciding to. Hiding Orion-related work probably wouldn’t be very hard, either. China already has extensive space and nuclear-weapons programs, which would tend to conceal the existence of Orion-type research. And much of the necessary research and design work on Orion – involving, as it does, things like the resonance of huge steel plates and massive hydraulic shock absorbers – wouldn’t look like space-related research even to an American intelligence agency that discovered it. At least, not unless the intelligence analysts were familiar with Orion, and had the possibility in mind. And how likely is that?

Will we wake up one day to find that a 4,000-ton Chinese spacecraft has climbed to orbit from Inner Mongolia on a pillar of nuclear fireballs and is now heading to establish a base on the Moon? It wouldn’t be the first time America has had such a surprise, now would it?

For background, this classic TED talk:

Alternate history In Space

T-Rex makes his move.

Top ten fictional spacecraft

This article on the effects of the Tintin moon books got me thinking about spacecraft again, as usual. Since we make “top x” lists from ’round these parts, I thought I’d immortalize my list of the ten most awesome spaceships ever. It was going to be five with an honorable mention, but, you know, space.

Bonus points if you can guess the ship just by the quotation I use.

Number Ten:

“Somebody has to step on these roaches.”

IAV Dortmunder (Firefly)

Arrogant, domineering, dystopian. We don’t like what it does, but it does it in style. That is a city in space. It supports a population of thousands even as it patrols the spacelanes to keep the ‘verse safe from unscrupulous outlaws. I wonder what kind of society lives behind those cold green windows? I guess we’ll never know.

Number Nine:

“Ad Astra per Asperata”

Saladin (Attack Vector: Tactical)

Saladin is an al-Rafik class warship in the service of the Medinan Star Force. She maneuvers like Newton says she should, bleeds waste heat off with her radiators, and can’t hide from anybody when she lights up the torch drive. Realism in space isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I love what people come up with when they really think things through. She looks like Discovery One’s wicked twin.

Number Eight: A tie! It’s between:

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”

T-65 X-Wing (Star Wars)

and,

“Grab your gun and bring the cat in.”

Viper Mark II (Battlestar Galactica)

As much as we love both of these fine, sleek, and very similar starfighters, this ain’t no top 11 list. There can be only one. The Vipers are too cool for lasers and move with Newtonian physics. But the X-Wing is the original!

It all comes down to the pilots:

VERSUS

Advantage, Starbuck. Viper takes it.

Number Seven:

“The line must be drawn HERE!”

USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E (Star Trek: First Contact)

The as-yet final evolution of the ridiculous but iconic Enterprise design, the Enterprise-E is the baddest ass starship to bear the name. It has the grace of the Enterprise-D and the power of the Excelsior. Not just built for exploring strange new worlds, the E is a warship. And, perhaps most important of all, it’s commanded by Jean-Luc Picard and not James Tiberius Kirk.

Number Six:

“See you, space cowboy…”

Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)

Our latter-day cowboy bounty hunters cruise the solar system in this souped-up beauty. What is she? A police cruiser? A decommissioned warship? A literal “jazz messenger?” Better. Bebop is an interplanetary fishing trawler. More of this please.

One of my favorite things about Cowboy Bebop is how successfully it reflects the aesthetics and culture of the 20th century. So my heart went all a-flutter when, while snooping for pictures of the ship, I found this take on Hopper’s 1942 classic:

Best Nighthawks parody ever.

Number Five:

“What a piece of junk!”

The fastest hunk of junk in the Galaxy needs no introduction. She is the shit-awesome ship from which all other shit-awesome ships are derived. You’re all clear kid, now let’s blow this thing and go home.

Number Four:

“Brace for contact, my friend.”

Galactica (Battlestar Galactica).

I respect nostalgia, but once again I cheerfully ignore the old guard. Some might prefer I pick the one from the days when Battlestars were commanded by Canadians, not Mexicans, and when their vipers were flown by men, not people. Dirk Benedict, the original Starbuck, tried to disparage Kara Thrace as “Stardoe,” and to that I have this to say:

He wishes his balls were as big as hers.

Douchebuck aside, this Galactica is the one we’ll remember. The old girl makes the cut because she was ready to retire but still had a lifetime’s worth of fight left in her. Because she’s the workhorse and the guardian of a fleet she could rip apart for scrap. Because she can survive a direct hit by a thermonuclear weapon. Because she’s commanded by Edward James Goddamn Olmos.

And then there’s (Season 3 spoilers) the Adama Maneuver, which is just…you know what? Just go watch Battlestar Galactica.

Number Three:

“Oh my God! It’s full of stars!”

Discovery One (2001: A Space Odyssey)

2001 is possibly the greatest science fiction film ever made. It’s also the most realistic space movie out there–in fact, it’s pretty much the only realistic space movie out there. Discovery One is a masterpiece of design. She’s high rocketpunk, from an era when we were going to make it to Jupiter and beyond in the first year of the new millennium.

She has the basic nuclear spacecraft design: habitat area in the front, nuclear engines in the back, mast separating the two. She’s orbit-to-orbit, not for landing on a planet and probably assembled in space. The hab sphere has a centrifuge inside for artificial gravity, about equal to that of the Moon. The engine stays dormant for the duration of the film–Discovery has made her primary burn much earlier in the mission. One unrealistic detail (changed from the book): she has no heat radiators. Clarke says that Kubrick thought the audience would mistake them for wings. Odd that he was thinking of the audience on that particular decision–we are talking about a film that opens with twenty minutes of apes. Perhaps it’s so that the ship can represent a sperm cell, or a phallus, or that bone from the jump-cut, or something else vaguely related to evolution, existence, and sexual reproduction.

Honestly? I kinda see a sperm cell.

Number Two:

“Into the hands of Fate!”

Moon-Rocket (The Adventures of Tintin)

This ship is classic. It was designed in the early 50s as Hergé’s entry into the budding field of moon-trip stories. It’s a single-stage rocket powered by a nuclear motor which takes off and lands using a chemical rocket. The entire thing is designed to land on the moon and come back, flipping end-over-end before its descends. The Moon-Rocket is dated now, but back in the day it was unusually well-researched.

It’s also a magnificent indicator of the Zeitgeist. In Tintin’s world, man goes to the Moon (woman stays behind) internationally, peacefully, and from Europe. The Sprodj Atomic Research Centre builds no atomic warheads and works for no government.

Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon have the fun laughs of other Tintin albums, but these are not utopian stories. The lunar project is constantly under threat of infiltration from a sinister, unnamed foreign power. Characters are brought to their limits more than before or since. Men die. Nonetheless, there’s still a kind of plucky optimism to them that’s characteristic of Tintin’s adventures. Why else would they bring a boy, a dog, and a drunk to the Moon?

Why indeed.

Number One:

“Hang on, travelers.”

Serenity (Firefly)

Come on, what else was I going to pick? Sing it with me now:

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don’t care, I’m still free
You can’t take the sky from me…

Who doesn’t love the good ship Serenity? Haters, is who, and people who haven’t heard her tales. Which is a gorram shame. Pick up the DVDs, there are only fourteen episodes. Bottom line: nine lovable outlaws call this ship home, where they eke out a living on the borders, hiding and running from ships like the IAV Dortmunder up there at the top of the list. They’re the roaches somebody needs to step on.

Firefly is, I would say, probably the best non-literary science fiction of the decade, and the most important. It shows how powerfully sci-fi can wed the alien with the familiar, and how compelling it can be when it blazes its own trail. Firefly is not a political allegory of post-9/11 America like Battlestar, or a sandbox of hypotheticals like Trek, or even a distillation of mythology like Star Wars. It takes western archetypes, and makes of them something more. If Firefly has a political message, it’s that some people should be left alone. If Firefly has a philosophical argument, it’s that people don’t change.  That’s about it. It’s not that interested in playing the message game.

Firefly is about real people living their lives in a society that is neither like ours, nor trying to comment on ours. Their world has slavery and high-class prostitution, aristocracy and poverty. They live in gleaming cities and dusty towns, bustling dockyards and mid-bulk transports. They visit high-tech medical facilities, malls in space, folk dance festivals and the town general store. Coed war buddies tell stories about the trenches. Mudders erect statues of some kinda sumbitch or another. We meet a sadistic crime lord, a sleazy ‘businessman, see?’, witch-burning hillfolk, a sultry con woman, and one frightening, philosophical bounty hunter. Holding all of these characters and places and stories together is a rusty old ship that looks like a firefly.

People die. Stuff breaks. Our big damn heroes keep flying. If I had to pick one reason to make Serenity my number one spaceship ever, it’s that somehow, in this crazy ‘verse through which it flies, it feels like home.

That’s my list. Sound off in the comments.