Breaking News & Random Musings on Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & the View From A Writer’s Window
New watch face! The planet spins, creating the impression you're flying above it. I am such a nerd.
Several people asked where to get it for themselves, so here’s the link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.thema.wear.watch.spacetraveler
In honor of Eren's impending (irresistible) adventure, I give you a classic Eren moment from RELATIVITY.
How fun is he to write? All the fun is the answer.
I was so jealous of the people who grabbed a spot beneath totality; the videos were incredible. I’m definitely visiting my old residence of Colorado Springs in 21 years when the next one comes around!
Here’s a couple of my favorite pictures from the eclipse (though there were so many).
Credit:
Image 1: Joshua Intini (https://twitter.com/Intini_WX/status/1777428414560932136)
Image 2: Erik Kuna (https://twitter.com/SuperclusterHQ/status/1777504797890854927)
Image 3: Peter Forister (https://twitter.com/forecaster25/status/1777434179136819497)
Image 4: NASA (ISS) (https://twitter.com/Space_Station/status/1777822160087818714)
Mr. Jennsen took me out to a lovely dinner this weekend to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Starshine's publication and the start of this crazy book journey. (You can read all about that HERE, if you missed it in the newsletter).
The many wonderful thoughts you all shared about my books and the ways they've impacted you absolutely bowled me over - my heart is full. I truly have the best readers in the multiverse. Thank you all so much!
Welcome to the future of spaceflight, everyone! This week, in its third test flight, Starship made it to space, oribiting the planet for around 40 minutes before heading home. No, it didn’t make it all the way to a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, but that’s what testing is for, and it traveled so much farther, for so much longer, than ever before. I was a little twitchy after the second explosive test, but I’m now very optimistic for the future of this spacecraft and what it means for our journey to the moon, then onward to Mars and throughout the solar system.
Now enjoy these absolutely stunning photos of the flight:
Season 1 of Babylon 5 has held up remarkably well,* and far better than I expected! The last time I rewatched - quite a few years ago - I remember thinking it looked and felt horribly dated, so I believe the remaster has made a ton of subtle improvements that create a much more watchable experience from a visual perspective.
These recent remasters (Farscape and The Abyss, along with B5) don't make the product look like a "new" show, but they do enough so that (except when heavy special effects are in use) you don't notice that it's an "old" show. Then, it's all about the story and characters.
And my goodness, this story. JMS really did know where he was going from the very beginning; that wasn't just PR puffed up after the fact to make the show seem more important.
Now, onward to Season 2, where shit gets real - but it's okay, because "Captain Sunshine" is on the job! (#MrJennsen's nickname for Sheridan.)
*It held up far better than Farscape Season 1, I'm afraid, which took 3/4 of the season for the script and the actors to get their feet under them and figure out what they were making here. Mind you, once they did, it quickly became a wonderful, delightfully weird and unexpectedly heartfelt show. Ben Browder and Claudia Black are even more amazing than I remembered, and...but this is a B5 post, not a Farscape one!
For the first time in 52 years, an American craft has landed on the moon. And for the first time EVER, it's a private, commercial craft. The company is Intuitive Machines, and the craft is Odysseus.
It was a "spicy" landing, in the words of IM's CEO. As the target landing time neared, they realized that its laser rangefinders weren't working properly. So they implemented a workaround to get the required altitude and velocity data, pressing into service an experimental NASA instrument aboard Odysseus called NDL ("Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing)."
The team delayed the planned touchdown by two hours to make the fix, which required them to beam a software patch to Odysseus from mission control in Houston. That is a heroic effort and an incredible achievement by the engineers at IM.
Now, Odysseus IS somewhat...sideways. See the pic for the adorable reenactment IM performed at the press conference yesterday. But slightly off-kilter or not, the craft is very much alive and doing science. It's solar panels are exposed and drawing power, virtually all of its payloads are accessible, and nothing got crushed. IM expects the craft to operate for several days before it loses that precious sunlight needed to power it.
This mission was part of a NASA initiative called the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, or CLPS, in which the space agency is paying private companies to deliver science experiments and other cargo to the lunar surface. (The failed Astrobotic Peregrine mission last month was the first CLPS mission, and there are I think 7 more scheduled over the next 18 months.)
Odysseur landed at the lunar south pole, which is about to be the hottest real estate in space, for one reason: water!
Link to a great article about the mission and the landing: https://www.universetoday.com/165864/odysseus-moon-lander-is-tipped-over-but-still-sending-data/
And a fascinating article out today with a behind-the-scenes look at the people at Intuitive Machines who saved the mission over and over again: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
Read yet another article this week about new findings on an early-universe galaxy that * shouldn't exist * according to our current scientific understanding, because "something something dark matter something something." At this point, I feel like this is the state of our "understanding" of astrophysics.
We are truly babes in the woods. With blindfolds on, waving around a dime-store metal detector. We know legions more than we ever have in the history of humanity - but imagine what we can know tomorrow.
Hey, you all remember that next book I'm writing? The one with Eren in it and...that's all that really matters, right? Well, it hit its word count this week!
Where are we? Late in the first big editing pass. Is this book taking too long to write? Yes! It's not Eren's fault (how could it be). Sometimes RealLife™ is a bully. But I've got the book on the run now.
Mars helicopter Ingenuity's final resting place is named "Valinor Hills" after the Undying Lands in Lord of the Rings. I’m not crying, you’re crying!
Story: https://www.yahoo.com/news/mars-helicopter-ingenuitys-final-resting-221515958.html
Story time!
I finished "The Sunlit Man" by Brandon Sanderson yesterday. After reading a short story of his in the "Galactic Empires" anthology and enjoying it, I decided it was time at last to read one of Sanderson's books. I chose "The Sunlit Man" because it has sci-fi elements mixed in with the usual helping of fantasy.
It was good! Not 5 stars, but an entertaining read. So last night, #MrJennsen and I are chatting about it, as two book lovers do.
Me: "It's ostensibly a stand-alone novel set in his Cosmere universe, but for a while I was doubting that assertion, as the MC kept referencing previous events in the universe.
"When I got to the Author's Note, I learned that the MC was a minor character in one or more other Cosmere books, and this was a one-off tale featuring him. I guess all the references were Easter Eggs for fans of his series. So basically, it's a stand-alone novel the way Medusa Falling is a stand-alone novel."
Mr Jennsen: *nods sagely*
Then I start talking about the plot of the book.
Me: "The MC arrives on this strange, unfamiliar planet. He's only planning on staying there for a hot minute, but events conspire to trap him on the planet. He falls in with a ragtag group of rebels, and of necessity starts to help them with their cause as a way for him to get off the planet.
"But over time, he comes to care for these people and realizes their cause is a just one, so he ends up throwing all in with them in a risky plan they hope will win freedom for themselves and others."
Mr. Jennsen: *stares sagely*
Me: "What?"
Mr. Jennsen: ...
Mr. Jennsen: "...So it's Medusa Falling."
Me: ...
Me: "...Yes."
***
PS: Not really, for every detail is different. The moral of this tale? Something all writers have to internalize eventually if they want to write fearlessly: every story has already been told; it's all in how you tell it.
I regret nothing.
I mean...we love them all, don't we? (Except the ones we love to hate.) Amaranthe just wouldn't be the same without all 74 of them, right?
Two reknowned researchers, an astrobiologist and a planetary scientists, have bet a bottle of whiskey (hopefully a good one) over whether we will discover convincing evidence of *technological* life in the universe in the next 15 years: https://mindmatters.ai/2024/01/science-wager-extraterrestrials-will-be-spotted-within-15-years/
Per the two: "Our conclusion is that advanced extraterrestrial intelligent life (ETI) is either (1) extremely rare or non-existent in our galaxy or (2) these civilizations are deliberately hiding from us. No other possibility seems very likely."
I'm not at all sure that no other possibility is very likely. For instance, see Universe Today's excellent series on SEVENTEEN hypotheses of why we haven't yet detected intelligent life in the universe: https://www.universetoday.com/119727/beyond-fermis-paradox-i-a-lunchtime-conversation-enrico-fermi-and-extraterrestrial-intelligence/
Also, I'll readily concede there might not currently be many (any?) other advanced civilizations in the Milky Way, but our galaxy is a minuscule dot in the cosmos....
...which is why FTL will not be enough. We need wormholes!*
*also, I'm almost finished rewatching Farscape, and at this point it's All Wormholes, All The Time.
This is a terrific piece by Ars Technica on the innovation that created Ingenuity and what it means for the future of space exploration: "It turns out NASA’s Mars helicopter was much more revolutionary than we knew": https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/now-that-weve-flown-on-mars-what-comes-next-in-aerial-planetary-exploration/
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning new series of near- and mid-infrared images that depict 19 nearby spiral galaxies in vivid detail.
The achievement provides a level of clarity and detail in the new imagery that offers astronomers unprecedented insights into the structure and dynamics of this group of celestial bodies.
Read much more about these images here: https://thedebrief.org/james-webb-space-telescope-captures-amazing-new-images-of-19-distant-spiral-galaxies/. And download high res versions of your favorite galaxies from the mosaic on Webb’s Flikr page.
Who's ready to cry over another anthropomorphized space robot? * raises hand *
Ingenuity's incredible Martian mission has come to an end. It was intended as a technology "proof of concept," with a mission span of 30 days and a max of 5 test flights. Many believed the little helicopter wouldn't fly at all in the thin Martian atmosphere.
Instead, it flew 72 missions in 3 years, traversing over 11 miles and reaching as high as 79 feet in the air. It flew in treacherous terrain, dealt with a dead sensor, cleaned itself off after dust storms, operated from 48 different airfields, performed three emergency landings, and survived a frigid Martian winter. Through all that, it wormed its way into our hearts and inspired our imagination.
On January 18th, it sustained rotor damage during landing and lost contact with Perseverance and NASA. Communications were re-established the next day, and imagery revealed damage to one of its blades severe enough to render it unable to take off again.
With such an amazing performance that silenced every doubter, Ingenuity is only the first craft to fly on Mars; it will not be the last.
That'll do, Ingenuity. That'll do.
Learn more here: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/after-three-years-on-mars-nasas-ingenuity-helicopter-mission-ends
"Shoot for the moon - even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
I haven't posted about this before now, because the ultimate fate of the Peregrine spacecraft wasn't certain until yesterday. But now I can tell the story in full.
The space enthusiasts among you probably know that Peregrine successfully launched early last week, with a planned lunar landing in February. However, a propellant leak once it reached space derailed those plans. The team made a remarkable recovery, and the craft did reach lunar distance (but the moon wasn't there at the moment) and did a lot of science before sweeping back toward earth; it burned up safely in the atmosphere yesterday.
In the image below, top left is the DHL MoonBox, which held the tiny digital record of my short stories, Apogee, Solatium, Venatoris, Re/Genesis, Fractals, Chrysalis and Starlight Express, together with the writings and art of thousands of other creators, thanks to the tireless efforts of Susan Kaye Quinn (Writers on the Moon) and Samuel Peralta (Lunar Codex).
So for a time my stories soared among the stars where they belong, before returning home. And because Sam Peralta never, ever gives up (and understands the power of redundancies!), the Lunar Codex will also be flying on at least four additional lunar missions by Astrobotic and Inuitive Machines in the next year, so those stories will get to the moon soon enough!
Ad Astra, Per Aspera
Hey, it's a new year! What are you excited about in the world of science fiction this year? The theatrical release of Dune: Part Two is the 800-lb gorilla, of course (and I'm excited), but it's hardly the only game in town.
How about the 3 Body Problem show on Netflix, or new seasons of the growing number of quality scifi shows on Apple+ (For All Mankind, Foundation, Silo, Invasion and more)?
Or books (we love those)! On tap is the first book in a brand-new series from James S. A. Corey ("The Mercy of Gods"), as well as at least two new novels from Adrian Tchaikovsky (the man is prolific AF) and a new Bobiverse novel, to name just a few.
So what do you have your eye on?
On December 30, NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter for the better part of a decade, made its closest flyby of Io, the innermost moon in the Jovian system.
The spacecraft came to within 930 miles (1,500 km) of the surface of Io, a dense moon that is the fourth largest in the Solar System. Unlike a lot of moons around Jupiter and Saturn, which have surface ice or subsurface water, Io is a very dry world. It is also extremely geologically active. Io has more than 400 active volcanoes and is therefore an object of great interest to astronomers and planetary scientists.
Read more about the flyby here.
Happy 1st Book Birthday to DUALITY, the book that, among many other feats, changed our perception of the 18 books that came before it. (If you know, you know. On that note, armed with this capital-K Knowledge, have you started your reread yet?)
Were you all as exhausted as I was after finishing the epic saga that was Riven Worlds? My goodness! This is one reason why we're taking a fun little diversion with the Cosmic Shores stand-alones - everyone (you, me, the characters) needs a little break to catch their breath, lol.
