I don’t usually toot my own horn but this time I’m going to. I was recently asked if MAKE magazine could use a few of my photos of a Halloween display that I had made a few years ago. I agreed to it of course, I mean who wouldn’t want to see their photos in a national magazine? So I signed some paperwork and waited for the issue to hit the stands. All my waiting paid off when I saw the issue on Saturday and saw my photos printed up in glorious color. My photos of glow sticks, black light, and electric arcs fit right in with the other amazing projects that are being showcased in the Halloween issue. If your looking for a way to add a little something to your garage turned haunted house or even if your just wanting to scare the crap out of a coworkers with some automated nasty in the cube farm this is the magazine to buy!
Author: John
Ecolong MP3 Player, 85 Hours of Music
This music player sports an impressive 85 hours worth of play from 3 AAA batteries. Now, only having 1 GB of storage is going to mean that you better like your music. You know, even if you did have to use something like iTunesAgent to get iTunes to play nice with the alien (read: non Apple) hardware it would be worth it if you were going backpacking. Oh yeah, it weighs 34 grams and measures 36.6×18.5x78mm so it would fit in your bag quite nicely. I wonder if I can find one of these in my neighborhood.
So You Wanna Build A Rocket?
If I’m asked what kind of book I like to read my answer is science fiction. And the style that I prefer is usually called ‘hard scifi‘. That would be stories that deal with the technological details and loads of information about far fetched star drives, energy beams, and what not. Needless to say I love reading about all the made up details that are in these stories. No wonder my top three favorite authors are Larry Niven, Robert A. Heinlein, and William Gibson. I happened across the ‘Atomic Rocket’ page today and just had to post about it.
"Another annoying fact is that realistic spacecraft propulsion systems are incredibly weak. They will take forever to push the ship to anywhere farther than, say, Luna. So SF authors try to jazz things up by postulating more powerful propulsion systems. Alas, they then run full tilt into Jon’s Law for SF authors.
Jon’s Law for SF authors is closely related to Niven’s Kzinti Lesson. It states: "Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction. It only matters how long you want to wait for maximum damage." It goes on to say: "Interesting is equal to ‘whatever keeps the readers from getting bored’".
As an example, a spacecraft with an ion drive capable of doing a meager 0.0001g of acceleration may be scientifically realistic and the exhaust is relatively harmless. However, to most of the audience it will not be interesting. "Nine months just to travel to Mars? How boring!"
The author, not wanting his book sales to go flat, hastily re-fits the hero’s spacecraft with a fusion drive. The good news is that the ship can make it to Mars in twelve days flat. The bad news is that the ship’s exhaust is putting out enough terawatts of energy to cut another ship in two, or make the spaceport look like it was hit by a tactical nuclear weapon."
How cool is that? The page is for ‘science fiction authors who wanted a little scientific accuracy’ but the heck with that, I’m going to read this from ‘cover to cover’.
[via retro thing, boingboing]
Atomic Rocketships of the Space Patrol
If you want to read a few book by my favorite masters of scifi, go on over to Amazon and flex the credit chip.
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What Science Fiction Writer Are you?
While on the subject of polls, lets see what science fiction writer you are. Apparently I’m the late Frank Herbert. Not sure I fully agree with everything he wrote but I’m sure that I have not writen as much as he did. Still, I did like Dune.
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I am:
His style is often stilted, but he created what some consider the greatest SF novel of all time. |
Take a Political Test
I’m not sure that this is all that accurate but it’s close. Go have some fun and see how you rate.
Your Score: Centrist You scored 52% Personal Liberty and 43% Economic Liberty!
A centrist believes in moderate government intervention in both personal and economic matters. They tend to be somewhat ambiguous, as they may have the oppurtunity to pick the side of any group surrounding them on any given issue. They generally believe in a moderate social safety net and what they consider to be a balanced stance on personal liberty. Centrists tend to emphasize compromise and cooperation between partisan groups.
Link: The Politics Test written by brainpolice
The Pro-Nuclear Space Movement
When you take a look at it, the quickest and most efficient way to ‘get out of the well’ and go into space is by using a rocket that has real power. Sure, the Saturn V took man to the moon but it took days to get there and was done on the barest of economy. But what if you could launch a rocket that had so much power that your ship could built like a submarine and not like a flimsy soda can? Six months to Mars? Nope, more like two weeks. Sounds like a dream doesn’t it, true science fiction. Well at one time this very idea was being worked on by some of the smartest scientists in the US. It was called ‘Project Orion‘ and the craft was to use small nuclear explosions to propel the craft into space. It’s unfortunate that the project was canceled before its time. There is still a good argument for nuclear power in space. Nuclear power in the form of radioisotope thermoelectric generators have been powering space probes and satellites for years. In fact, the two Voyager probes are still sending back data 30 years after being launched. You cant to that with regular batteries and if you tried to do that with solar cells they themselves would have to be thousands of times larger than the craft they service in order to collect enough light to make electricity. But even if you can keep the lights on you still wont get your craft there much faster than you do now. Unless you use the mighty power of the atom to give it a kick in the pants. That is exactly what the guys at Nuclear Space would like everyone to know. And before you say ‘but you will fill space with radioactivity!’ just remember that space is full of it to begin with. The site is chock full of the latest news on the state of nuclear space power and sports an active users forum. Go have a look and feel free to ask them any questions you might have about going to the stars via the power of the atom.