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An interesting project at the South Pole, involving agriculture in a controlled (and in this case, sunless and soil-less) environment: To the moon…South Pole greenhouse model for growing freshies on other worlds

Crops of lettuce, kale, cucumber, peppers, herbs, tomatoes, cantaloupes and edible flowers comprise many of the plants grown in the climate-controlled chamber. Because the importation of soil is restricted by the Antarctic Treaty , dirt is not used to grow the plants. In fact, the closest local dirt is nearly two miles beneath the ice on which the station sits. The plants are grown in a hydroponic nutrient solution instead — no dirt needed.

For that matter, no sunlight is needed either. The growth chamber, which was built in the winter of 2004, makes its own light via 13 water-cooled, high-pressure sodium lamps. In this bright environment, it is not uncommon to find people, like the plants, dwelling happily under the intense light produced in the chamber during the dark polar winter.

Carl and I put a lot of thought into extraterrestrial agriculture while writing In the Shadow of Ares, not least because the primary setting for the book is a very large agricultural settlement. Interestingly (or perhaps not surprisingly), we came to some of the same conclusions as these researchers. Of particular note, the morale benefit to settlers in an inescapably indoor environment of having an open green space (or Greenspace, if you’ve read the book).

Posted on March 11th, 2011 under In the Shadow of Ares, Science & Engineering, Science Fiction, Settlement, Space Technology, Useful Technology, Writing. Tags: agriculture, antarctica, Economics, food, In the Shadow of Ares, mars, moon, Settlement. Comments Off

I bought a Kindle back in September as a means of test-driving the e-book version of In the Shadow of Ares, mainly because I hadn’t thought much beyond Amazon when we decided to go the electronic route. I was aware that Barnes & Noble and Borders each had their own e-readers, but Kindle seemed to be the one with the broadest reach and biggest potential market.

We ended up publishing on Barnes & Noble as well as Amazon, but even so, I hadn’t even looked at a Kindle up-close until yesterday. Turns out the Nook Color is a much more impressive platform overall than the 3G Kindle:

• The touchscreen is much easier to navigate with (especially when highlighting text or selecting a word to look up in the dictionary) than the Kindle’s “mouse box” buttons;
• Nook, like Kindle, has built-in audio capability for playing MP3s while you read, but the player on Nook is actually a proper function of the device, and not a grafted-on “experimental” feature like it is with the Kindle — a feature which, in four months, I have never gotten to work;
• Nook also has a built-in photo gallery function, which the Kindle (perhaps understandably in a grayscale device) lacks.

In short, the Nook is a little more like a tablet device than a no-frills e-reader.

On the other hand:

• Despite only being a tiny bit larger, the Nook was noticeably heavier (perhaps 25-30% heavier) than the Kindle, with the Kindle already at the upper limit of a comfortably-holdable combination of mass and shape;
• Being a backlit color display akin to those on laptops, the Nook was actually a little harder on the eyes than the Kindle with its “e-ink” display that reads more like the page of a printed book;
• Though I’m not a big fan of Kindle’s keypad, it’s still far and away preferable to tapping virtual keys on a touch screen.

You might expect that differences like this would drive Amazon to bring a color version of the Kindle, with color e-ink, to market in the near future. Mmm…maybe not:

[Bezos] noted that developing color electronic ink remains a challenge, and while he’s seen things “in the laboratory,” the prototypes are simply “not ready for prime-time production.” He also stated that these lust-worthy, mythical displays were “a long way out,” but that the Kindle would remain focused as a dedicated e-reader moving forward.

And yet, as the links at the Engadget post illustrate, there are in fact color e-ink options out there which may be further along that Bezos suggests.

With the introduction of the iPad last year, though, there may be market pressure to rapidly evolve e-readers beyond simple, dedicated e-book devices by including features like the photo galleries and MP3 player functions the Nook already offers and better, full-featured web browsers to take additional advantage of the built-in wireless internet capabilities (wi-fi and 3G). At some point, then, there may be no real distinction between e-readers and tablet computers besides the owner’s primary habit of use.

Posted on January 22nd, 2011 under Entertainment, Useful Technology. Tags: e-reader, In the Shadow of Ares, iPad, kindle, Nook, technology. Comments Off

I’ll be on 850KNUS here in Denver on Sunday, talking about In the Shadow of Ares with my PPC co-blogger Ross “Rossputin” Kaminsky.

The show is on from 5 PM to 8 PM on 710 AM KNUS in Denver and 1460 AM KZNT in Colorado Springs. I will be on between 7:00 and 7:30PM. For those outside the Denver area, you can listen to the show online by clicking HERE.

Science fiction fans might want to tune in a little earlier, as one of Ross’ other guests this weekend is SF author and Tea Party figure Andrew Ian Dodge.

Posted on December 18th, 2010 under Entertainment, In the Shadow of Ares, Meta, Science Fiction, Writing. Tags: In the Shadow of Ares. Comments Off

“In the Shadow of Ares” (formerly known around here as “Labyrinth of Night”) is now available for download at Amazon.com:

In 2029, the third exploration mission to Mars vanishes without a trace. Two decades later, the success of human settlement of Mars and the life of a young girl hinge on the secret of what happened to the Ares III mission.

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Twenty years later, Mars is a growing outpost of humanity, and 14-year-old settler Amber Jacobsen is a minor interplanetary celebrity – ‘the First Kid on Mars’.  Pioneering Mars is hard, unglamorous work, though, and Amber secretly wishes she were just an ordinary girl living on Earth.

When her family’s homestead is destroyed in an apparent accident, the Jacobsens relocate to an independent settlement located on the northern fringes of Noctis Labyrinthus, a vast and largely unexplored canyonland.  Their new home promises new opportunities, and Amber looks forward to being just another member of the community. Instead, the other settlers dismiss her as a burdensome child and refuse to accept her as the responsible young adult she has become.

In order to prove the value of her unique knowledge and perspective, Amber vows to uncover the fate of the Ares III mission, whose loss had largely been forgotten in the rush of the Martian settlement boom.  But this seemingly harmless challenge thrusts her into a deadly conflict: those who know the truth will kill to keep it hidden, while those who destroyed her family’s homestead would use the secret to secure their dominance over all of Mars.

In solving the mystery, Amber could destroy everything the Martian settlers have worked to create.

It’s priced at an affordable $6.99, and would make a wonderful Christmas present for the science fiction reader or young adult on your shopping list. Especially if you’re buying them a Kindle or they already own one (remember, you can also download the free Kindle app for various electronic platforms if you/they don’t have a Kindle reader).

While I’m going to be occupied for much of the weekend with writing a business plan and attending Christmas parties, I do expect to get the blog at AresProject.com up and running again in the next few days. We will use that forum to discuss the book, the backstory, etc.

Posted on December 10th, 2010 under Economics, Entertainment, In the Shadow of Ares, politics, Science Fiction, Settlement, Space Commerce, Writing. Tags: Amber Jacobsen, Ares Project, ebook, In the Shadow of Ares, In the Shadow of Ares, kindle. Comments: 7

Small change in plans: in order to avoid confusion with the twenty-odd other science fiction books set on Mars which use the same name, the book previously known as Labyrinth of Night will now be titled In the Shadow of Ares.

And yes, I’m still struggling to get it ready for Kindle. Almost there…

UPDATE: formatted and uploaded now. Turned out to be a pretty painless process, much to my surprise. Just haggling over what price to set, and then we can publish it.

And before anyone asks, no, the title does not have anything to do with Constellation. Sad to say, we actually had the book half-written and most of the backstory laid out well before NASA applied the name Ares to Mike Griffin’s misbegotten launch vehicles. After I catch up on a few things, I intend this weekend to revamp the book’s website so that we can start giving out tidbits of the backstory and how we came to write the book.

Here’s the cover art:

Bonus points to anyone who guesses where the image is from…

Posted on December 8th, 2010 under Entertainment, In the Shadow of Ares, Science Fiction. Tags: Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, In the Shadow of Ares, In the Shadow of Ares, kindle, novel. Comments Off