Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Public Art News: Artist Selections, Temporary Exhibits

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Last night’s meeting of the Cary Public Art Advisory Board went well. I agreed to serve on two Artist Selection Panels: one for the art to accompany the Walker Street Extension project, and another for art associated with the Symphony Bridge at Koka Booth Amphitheatre.

In related news, Cary Visual Arts’ temporary outdoor exhibit is now in place, with ten different sculptures arranged around the Town Hall campus. If you find yourself near Cary Town Hall with a few minutes to spare, stop and take a walk around; some of the pieces are magnificent.

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More From the Anti-Campaign

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Reports of the Anti-Campaign’s demise were nonexistent, but if they had existed they would have been premature (to paraphrase Mr. Twain). No, the Anti-Campaign (“Politics as Unusual”) is still plugging along at its laconic pace. The latest Anti-Candidate positions — on abortion, and the budget — have gone up on the forum thread.

As always, comments, questions, and dissenting opinions are welcome in this, the Anti-Party.

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Space-Related Troubles Policies

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Two items in one: A question about whether growing geopolitical contention with Russia will hinder NASA’s access to the ISS, and an article (sent by one of my old bosses) that considers the results of the National Security Space Independent Assessment Panel.

I posted both items in the Space Warfare Forum, and rather than repeat myself, here are the links:
– How Strained are U.S.-Russian Space Relations?
– New National Security Space Policy Coming?

And yes, new members are always welcome in the Space Warfare Forum.

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Not the El Condor Pasa Snail

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Yesterday Pastor Mark made the comment that, “It was only by perseverance that the snails reached the ark.” I turned to my lovely bride and said, “That’s why it took 120 years for Noah to build the thing.” 😉

Okay, so it’s not that funny, but it seems as if some of those animals had to come from a long way away….

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Novel Status Update

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A little progress on MARE NUBIUM, having crossed the 55,000-word threshold tonight. It’s somewhat slow going, but I’m still having fun with it. Hopefully some readers will get the chance to have fun with it, too.

[BREAK, BREAK]

In the “This Day in Space History” file, ten years ago today the Russians launched Soyuz TM-28 to the Mir space station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The spacecraft returned to earth the following February, but one of the cosmonauts stayed aboard Mir for a year. (The Mir station itself deorbited in 2001.*) See this page for more on the Soyuz TM-series spacecraft.

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*The main character in my story “The Rocket Seamstress,” a worker at Baikonur, considered what she thought of as the ignoble fate of Mir.

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Rising, as opposed to falling, stars

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Only saw one meteor last night, and it was so quick and faint it may have been my imagination — unlike the night we sat behind our house in Nebraska and so many fell and seemed so close I thought I might reach up and catch them. But last night I needed to sleep, since I’m driving to Asheville this morning.

On an up note, however, two rising stars of SF&F — who just happen to be two of my favorite people in the world — are featured in a hilarious interview: Alethea Kontis, author of Beauty & Dynamite (which I am enjoying reading), interviewed Edmund Schubert, editor of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, on topics ranging from how he came to edit IGMS to his “PenguinMan” superhero persona. It’s wonderful. Click through from one of their web sites or read it here.

And take a look at the book trailer for Beauty & Dynamite. It just went up on YouTube recently, even though the book has been out for awhile. The trailer is classy and understated — unlike Lee, who is classy and exuberant — and was produced by a certain daughter of mine.

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Space History, August 9, 1973: Soviet Launch to Mars

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Another “day in space history” tidbit: thirty-five years ago today, the Soviets launched Mars-7 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Proton rocket.

(When I was in the service, I monitored several technical exchanges between U.S. and Russian engineers getting ready to launch U.S. satellites on Proton rockets, something that would never have happened during the Cold War. And I watched the Canadian-owned [but U.S.-built] Nimiq-2 satellite get mated to a Proton rocket at Baikonur in 2002. I adapted some of what I saw during that operation into my story “The Rocket Seamstress.”)

According to www.astronautix.com, the Mars-7 probe was supposed to soft-land on Mars. As it happened,

Mars 7 reached Mars on 9 March 1974. Due to a problem in the operation of one of the onboard systems (attitude control or retro-rockets) the landing probe separated prematurely and missed the planet by 1,300 km. The early separation was probably due to a computer chip error which resulted in degradation of the systems during the trip to Mars.

Spaceflight is hard, no matter how much we’d like it to be easy.

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Today in Space History: Great Imagery Lunar Flyby

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As I’m working on MARE NUBIUM, my near-future novel of lunar colonization, I’ve run across some interesting space history items that I thought I’d post from time to time.

Today was the 40th anniversary of the launch of CORONA mission 1968-065A, a KH-4 (“Keyhole”) satellite that launched aboard a Thor rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. (I was stationed at Vandy from 1993-95, and toured one of the Thor launch pads while a student at Undergraduate Space & Missile Training.) According to the National Space Science Data Center, “The spacecraft had the best imagery to date on any KH-4 systems. Bicolor and color infrared experiments were conducted on this mission.”

A year later — and three weeks after Apollo 11 landed on the moon — the Russians launched the Zond-7 spacecraft from Tyuratam, i.e., the Baikonur Cosmodrome. (I spent three weeks at Baikonur in late 2002.) The mission flew by the moon on August 11th and took two sets of photographs, then returned to earth on August 14th.

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