It's Origin and Purpose is Still a Mystery

I've linked to this in the past, but it is worth linking again since it came up in my feeds: A massive look at 2001: A Space Odyssey (including the script) at Cinephile.

Deep in the Red

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day takes a familiar telescopic sight (Messier 20, The Trifid Nebula) and pushes our view into the infrared. There's a lot more out there than our naked eye can see!

Only Occasionally the Dark Side

There really is no dark side of the Moon. At least, not all the time. Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows the lunar farside, of which we can only see glimpses as the Moon "nods" in orbit around us. Another image from the hard-working (and mostly forgotten by us) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Bubbles

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows expanding shells of gas around young stars in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. Oh, for a sight of those southern skies on a dark isolated island in the Pacific!

Approaching Aeolis Mons

Two years on from this entry, today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows the progress of Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity on the journey to "Mount Sharp" (Aeolis Mons).

Brace for Impact

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Brace for impact, we're on a collision course.

Layers

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day peers (with the help of X-rays and infrared) into the heart of NGC 6357.

Neigh

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows a elusive (for my skies) object in the nebula found in and around Orion: The Horsehead Nebula.

Foxes Have Dens and Birds Have Nests

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows NGC 2264, a diffuse nebula in the constellation of Monoceros. The area is popularly known as the Fox Fur, Unicorn and Christmas Tree Nebula.

Little Prince

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day combines modern photographic techniques with a classic story.

Specters

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows a glory (heiligenschein) as seen from the window of a airplane.

Pathways

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a short video tracing the path of the Sun over the course of a year.

Godel Escher Bach

If you feed a infinite number of monkeys all of the music of Bach would they be able to reproduce works that you couldn't distinguish from the real thing?

The Weight of the Nation

You ever notice how the "kit" carried by a soldier never seems to shrink?

Newer Waves

An interesting article on Stanislaw Lem and, by extension, the "New Wave". Do certain segments of Genre embrace the New Wave as wrongly as other segments of Genre are accused of embracing the Golden Age? Perhaps both sides need to look beyond these "singularity points" in our reading?

And in other news, a bit from one film version of Solaris. Bruegel, Tarkovsky, Bach.

Quality Issues

A shrinking budget, an aging and shrinking workforce, management issues and inattention probably aren't a good things when your product is a launch vehicle.

First Mission

The first crewed mission for NASA's Orion sounds interesting and finally gets us away from Low Earth Orbit, but why does it always seem to me that the planned date keeps creeping into the future?

Rebirth

A lost satellite has started transmitting again after decades of silence.

Beep Beep

Have we detected alien civilizations? The jury hasn't been chosen and been seated, let alone decided. Walk with caution.

Extended Family View

Another view of actual and proposed vehicles. That's quite a collection!

Twenty-First Century Vehicles

Depictions of crewed vehicles in our current century. Some flight-proven, some under testing or completely hypothetical.

Touring the Solar System

A poster depicting all of the robotic explorers of our Solar System.

Sketches

A sketch (colored magic marker?) by Robert McCall of a lunar colony. I recall a bunch of these appearing in a magazine (newspaper Sunday supplement?) in the 1970's.

Geysers

David Hardy takes us to Enceladus. A plume in the foreground, Saturn dominates the sky.

Amalthea

Michael Carroll depicts the Galileo orbiter on approach to Jupiter, passing the small "potato moon" of Amalthea.

Return Journey

Artwork by Pat Rawlings showing private and government space stations in orbit around the Moon and a Earth-bound shuttle heading home.

Entry Interface

Uncredited art from 1968 showing the Apollo Command Module re-entering the atomosphere.

Dream Mighty Things

The SLS, Blue Glenn and now the ever-growing SpaceX family.

What's Up in the Solar System?

What's up in the solar system in terms of robotic exploration for October? (More than a few days behind in my posting, like much of my life right now.)

Quest for the Homeworld

An article talking about E.C. Tubb and his most famous series: Dumarest of Terra. Stretching well over thirty (relatively thin) books, short on character, long on fantastic ideas, the series contributed to GDW's SF-RPG Traveller.

BEAM Me Up

A nice view of the expandable BEAM module currently undergoing tests on the International Space Station.

Durable Good

Here is a venerable ("old ass" give me a break) Commodore 64 that has been in use for over twenty-five years.

Now that is a durable good (says the man who still has a slide rule collection).

Wait! No dust cover on the keyboard? What?

Olaf Stapledon 02

Olaf Stapledon 01

Green Thoughts

Freeman Dyson reviews a couple of books and manages to spin that into an essay about our future. Long may he "just" review books.

Oblique Tools

Can a tool for musicians be of use to a critic of food? Apparently, yes.

Also worth reading for the description of what happens in a restaurant when the critic is recognized.

Polymath

A wide-ranging interview with Freeman Dyson. Good to see he's as lively as ever.

Volko Ruhnke: COINMaster

A two-part interview with game designer and security analyst Volko Ruhnke. I'm spending too much money on this guy's titles from GMT Games. (Part 01 of the interview here.) (Part 02 of the interview here.) (And this reposted article from The Washington Post is worth a read if you haven't read it previously.)

Hide and Seek

We watched as it landed. We watched as it tried to explore. We waited and listened when contact was lost. Now, as the ESA Rosetta comet probe reaches the end of mission (and will itself terminate on the same body), comet lander Philae has been located on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

Echoes

What's this? Oh, nothing. Just the sounds of aurora from another planet.

Concept Work

A interesting look at concept art for space vehicles, equipment, bases and colonies: proposed and never made to actually flown.

Missons!

So what's happening in the solar system this month? Emily Lakdawalla brings us the news. One mission to end after a success, but 19 still active!

Forgotten Voyager of a Sideshow

Way back when, we were going back to the Moon. And then not. And then yes. And then no. And so on.

Luckily, on one of the up cycles, we launched several probes to enhance our knowledge of our neighbor, in preparation for one of those (cancelled) plans to return. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the cornerstone of the latest series of probes is still going and has had its mission extended.

So, what next. LRO? Here's a list of targets and why they are the cornerstone of this mission extension.

Maybe someday we'll return to the Moon. Maybe some day we'll realize we can afford a lot more missions than we currently have (maybe we'll reduce spending in other areas?). If so, the LRO and others will have helped to pave the way back.

This Is Me, Jack Vance

Happy birthday to one of my favorite authors, Jack Vance. Yes, you can see the chips of wood pulp throughout his writing, but very few write with his eye towards character interplay, odd costumes and customs, plots of vengeance, humor, mystery and more.

(Go look for the story of the houseboat project between Jack Vance, Poul Anderson and Frank Herbert.)

Guidance

An online version of the venerable Apollo Guidance Computer!

Vinyl Echoes

Once upon a time we listened to our audiobooks on LP records. Which means they were very abridged (well, no, they were just a few excerpts). Turning up on the internet is Arthur C. Clarke reading from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Side 01 here. Side 02 here.

Re-Enterprise

A short film about the restoration of the model used for filming the U.S.S. Enterprise in the original Star Trek series. I saw this model twice in it's pre-restoration life and would love to see what it looks like now.

Guest Star

An appearance by China Miéville in The New Yorker. A genre writer in The New Yorker? My college-era self would be boggled (given what the literary folks said then).

Listings

What, two physics-related posts in one day?

Ever wonder what a typical science-oriented government agency keeps around in terms of equipment? Now you can know, down to the Jazz drives. Yes, Jazz Drives.

Fred and Jeff and John...

...are the Three Hoarsemen.

Once upon a time, our fellow member of SF Signal was so busy that he could not work on the SF Signal Podcast. I mean, poor Patrick was working like 40 hours of overtime on top of 40 hours of work.

So, we volunteered to do a fill-in episode. Then a second. Then we launched as a separate episode at SF Signal.

Then around episode thirty-five, the retirement of the site as a ongoing project was announced.

But, wait! There's more! We're now on The Incomparable Network, which grew from just The Incomparable (a show I started listening to around the original posting of their episode eight).

We live. WE LIVE...

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

It appears that we've broken physics. Gosh dang it people, I told you to put physics further back on the shelf, so it wouldn't fall over!

One Easy Click

It always surprises me what people are surprised by. Do a little research folks, on your own. Education is a continual process.

Mapmaker, Mapmaker

There's no mention of price, but, I would really like to get a hold of one of these hand-made globes of Mars "as it should be"!

From Seven to Seventeen

Apollo 7 to Apollo 17, a montage of photographs taken during the lunar-oriented missions (wish they would expand to include Skylab and ASTP!). Fifteen minutes of awesome.

SkyCrane Touchdown

Hey, remember this? Just a mere four years ago we were treated to seeing MSL Curiosity land on Mars. Time to go to the videotape!

Meanwhile, In the Solar System

Hey, it's August. What's up for robotic explorers this month?

Clarke's Craft

With the publication of the Alastair Reynolds–Stephen Baxter collaboration of The Medusa Chronicles, itself an expansion of a story by Arthur C. Clarke, co-author Baxter looks at the spacecraft of Arthur C. Clarke.

As a side note, David S.F. Portree has recently done a multi-part article on the craft of 2001 which is worth a look: Could the Space Voyages in the Film and Novel 2001: A Space Odyssey Really Happen? Part 01 here. Part 02 here. Part 03 here.

COINing Games

A profile of CIA analyst and game designer Volko Ruhnke, who has been sparking something of a revival (at least from my limited perspective) in gaming that combines history, politics, warfare and more.

The US military (especially the Army) has the unfortunate habit of forgetting lessons learned, figuring whatever happened won't happen again. I think games like these (plus books, movies and more) help to preserve those lessons. If distributed widely enough, maybe we'll start learning not to forget?

Evolution

The evolution of an iconic fictional spaceship through the years.