MarsBlog.net

I really, really should have visited Iceland before we started writing a novel set on Mars. If Texas is like a whole other country, Iceland is like a whole other not-quite-fully-terraformed planet.

Finally back in Reykjavik after a week’s trek through the hinterlands north of Eyjafjallajokull and two weeks of camping throughout the rest of the country. I’ll have more Mars-related material over the next couple of weeks, as I sort through about 24GB of photographs and 48GB or more of HD video.

Posted on July 30th, 2010 under Meta, Miscellaneous, Space Science. Tags: Iceland, mars, moon. Comments: 2

Better later in the day than never. Regrettably, I didn’t have much time today to do any celebrating (though I took care of that at a barbecue last night, from which we could see fireworks in several directions as if it were already The Day), being busy with deck construction and such.

And since I don’t have time for anything original today, I’ll link to a post from 2006 wherein I revisit the 1976 Bicentennial exhibitions at Kennedy Space Center…which I actually visited for real just a couple days before the Bicentennial day proper.

Posted on July 4th, 2010 under Meta, Miscellaneous. Tags: 3rd century america, anniversary, bicentennial, exhibit, independence day, July 4, nasa. Comments Off

I’ll be on vacation in Iceland for most of July, so blogging will be even lighter than usual. Unless, of course, internet opportunities present themselves along the way.

Prepping for the trip and trying to get a new deck built before the building permit expires in late August have been sucking up all of my spare time for the past three months, so once those are finished, regularity should improve. Which is sorta ironic, given that there is actually quite a bit to blog about right now what with the new space policy — light blogging is certainly not due to lack of material.

Posted on July 4th, 2010 under Meta. Comments Off

In Florida today to watch the STS-131 launch, which went off without a hitch this morning.  More later, but I need a nap, and then I have to drive back to Orlando for the return flight to Denver. Video now added below (at least, one little clip – I’ll try to add more later).

Posted on April 5th, 2010 under Meta, Miscellaneous, Space Technology. Tags: launch, Shuttle, STS-131. Comments: 3

…if there’s something going on, geologically, with all these earthquakes lately. And now, a volcanic eruption in Iceland to add to the list:

Scientists are flying over southern Iceland to evaluate whether it’s safe for people to return to their homes after a volcanic eruption. Saturday night’s eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano — which is located near a glacier of the same name — shot ash and molten lava into the air and forced nearly 500 people to evacuate their homes.

The Telegraph link above has a gallery with some great pictures of the volcano and surrounding area (be sure to check out the volcanic smoke ring in image #9). Oddly enough, I just made a reservation for a hike near that area in July, and decided against the two day extension that would have taken us over the mountain pass east of the glacier (and quite near the volcano, as I understand it). Lucky choice, as it turned out.

On the other hand, Iceland is rich in geological “Oh crap!” possibilities, and just about everything we plan to see there is in some manner susceptible to sudden volcanic or tectonic cataclysm. Which of course makes it all the more enticing.

Posted on March 22nd, 2010 under Entertainment, Meta. Tags: Iceland. Comments Off

Apparently, I’m a pseudonym…who may in reality be the window-washer at Orion HQ…

As for the MarsBlog quote, it would be more worrisome if everybody in Constellation were in lock-step unanimity the same way that we see with some of the smaller organizational units that are attacking Ares I. I am sure that T.L James is entitled to his opinion, but I would like to know more about his credentials, experience, and specifically where he is coming from with his comments. I am neutral about James, but Rob Coppinger has broached the topic of T. L. James” credibility over at Flightglobal. The name is probably a pseudonym, so it will not be easy to confirm that James is telling the truth. As for his claim of “working on Orion”, we need to know what his specific job role is. Is he a structural engineer, a software guy like Metschan, or does he wash the windows? I’m not too worried about James, in any event.

Funny to discover this after spending nine hours in the office, on my day off, not washing windows.

As I’ve mentioned from time to time, I don’t discuss Orion in any detail because I don’t care to test the limits of what might get me in hot water in regards to insider information, competition sensitivity, and export control concerns. Simple as that.

Posted on February 6th, 2010 under Constellation, Meta, Orion. Tags: Constellation, nasa, Orion. Comments: 4

Yeah, I know I said I was going to be posting more frequently. Unfortunately for my vow, I got caught up in the long-delayed overhaul of People’s Press Collective for most of the past two weeks. Now that it’s nearly finished (which, websites being what they are, is a Xeno’s Paradox-based perpetual condition), I’m back again.

And ye gods, I hate it when people write blog posts promising that they’ll write more blog posts. Well, other people…

Posted on January 25th, 2010 under Meta. Tags: People's Press Collective. Comments: 1

Part of the reason that posting on MarsBlog has been so lackluster over the past year is that my other project, People’s Press Collective, has been claiming nearly all of my time outside of work. Since I live about forty minutes from downtown Denver, and end up down there for events 2-3 nights a week, it’s been awfully hard to find the time (or motivation when time is available) to blog from my trusty deskbound desktop PC at home.

For that and other reasons, I finally invested in a new HP dm3 laptop yesterday. Or maybe it’s a netbook. I’m not really clear on the distinction, and this one seems to be in a gray zone in between, having a dual-core 64-bit processor and faster bus than an obvious netbook and a slightly larger size, but similarly missing the optical drive of a laptop and a typical laptop’s voracious appetite for battery power. Oh, and it has a slick magnesium case, which makes it look much more hardy than the toy-like netbooks (or medical-equipment-like white Apples, for that matter).  

So, with any luck, this should make posting a lot easier, and thus somewhat more frequent.

While I’ve had limited time thus far to play with it (that will come in the airport this week), I have tried out some video from the HD camcorder I picked up last month, and it is truly amazing. The desktop didn’t have enough memory to view native .MT2 files without a lot of choppiness  (and since it was RDRAM, was not cost-effective to expand), but the little laptop was all set up and ready to go, with all the right codecs already installed for Media Player. If you haven’t played around with HD video, it’s incredible how much sharper and more “real” it is than what you may be used to from YouTube or online television watching. I still may need to get a new desktop at some point to process video, but for viewing it, I don’t think I could ask for much better.

Posted on December 20th, 2009 under Meta, Miscellaneous, Useful Technology. Tags: Add new tag, blogging, camcorder, HD video, laptop, marsblog, netbook, technology. Comments Off

While visiting family in Michigan over Thanksgiving, I happened to mention to my uncle that I had bought a slide scanner a couple of years ago, and that I had scanned in my grandfather’s (his father-in-law’s) old slides from the early 1960s. This led to him dropping off a box the next day, with around 300 slides he took in the mid-1950s, for me to take home and scan for him.

A number of them are of aerospace interest, as they show various then-current planes, including  a tarmac filled with C-97 Stratofreighters and a Flying Boxcar:

What I didn’t expect was this slide:

It appears to be a shot of WWII hero and actor Audie Murphy during the filming of The Guns of Fort Petticoat, a movie taglined at IMDB thus: “GOOD WOMEN…BAD WOMEN…BRAWLING WOMEN…BRAVE WOMEN! They were all soldiers in skirts! “  I cropped the slide down to about half size, but there is a boom microphone to the right and a camera in a blimp to the left (above the shoulder of the guy in the white hat).

You just never know what you’re going to find.

Posted on December 14th, 2009 under Entertainment, Meta, Miscellaneous. Comments Off