50 Years Ago in Space History: 26 Nov 58

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An obscure tidbit from the space anniversary files: on November 26, 1958, the Project Mercury designation was officially approved. Project Mercury went on to place our first U.S. astronauts in space and in orbit, and paved the way for Gemini and then, of course, Apollo.

You can read more about Project Mercury at this Kennedy Space Center web page.

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Two New Space Warfare Items

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Two items of interest — and concern — with respect to national defense and space technology, up for discussion in the Space Warfare Forum. Thanks to Bill Romanos for bringing them to my attention.

First, under the heading of “Chinese Space Ambitions,” a report of more space technology being stolen from the U.S. by China.

Second, an item about missile warning, and especially the apparent failure of one of our missile warning satellites.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep the Space Warfare Forum active; the old compadres with whom I started it have moved on and don’t seem to have time or inclination to use it. But I keep hoping — and I’m reminded of what my high school English teacher, Jim Parker, wrote in my yearbook with respect to writing: “Our beach is a lonely beach, and few come to see our castles. But, on we build.”

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Progress Report: 90% Toward the Goal

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In football terms, I guess I’d be first-and-goal at the ten right now. Tonight I finished writing Chapter 17 and crossed the 90,000-word mark in my novel-in-progress. That gives me less than a week to crank out the last 10K if I’m going to make my word-count goal by the end of the month.

(Despite the fact that it’s November, I did not enroll in National Novel Writing Month. I knew there was no way I would crank out 50K in a month, so there’s no correlation between my writing progress and any NANOWRIMO standard.)

The problem right now is that I’m going to reach my word count goal without actually finishing the story. I expect when I hit 100K my characters will be deep in midst of handling ecology and equipment failures that will threaten the lunar colony, and it will take a couple of extra chapters to wrap up those threads. So I probably won’t actually finish the entire draft until the end of the year, at which point I will get to practice my blue-pencil skills on my own manuscript.

So, onward.

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Damaging Your Credibility as a Writer

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I went to a Public Relations & Marketing seminar this week in Chapel Hill, and had the pleasure of listening to a luncheon speech by Marty Clarke, author of COMMUNICATION LAND MINES. His web site is http://www.martyclarke.com/, and I highly recommend him — he’s a terrific speaker.

Marty asked whether or not we agreed that a single typographic error or misspelled word on a resume could prevent a person from getting a job interview. We all said, “Yes.” So he asked why we weren’t as careful with e-mail as we would be with a resume — with proofreading instead of just relying on the spell checker (“Spell check is your enemy,” he said), and doing whatever we can to ensure that the message we send out doesn’t inadvertently destroy our credibility.

I don’t recall the entire question exactly, but he asked something along the lines of, “How many of you have received an e-mail from someone higher up in your company and when you read it you thought, ‘How did you get to where you are if this is how you choke out a paragraph in your native language?'”

I ask the same thing sometimes with respect to some of the novel manuscripts I look at for Baen. I should ask those authors whose manuscripts are riddled with spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors if they take as little care with their resumes. Because in this case the manuscript is their resume.

Then again, sometimes a gem of a story lies hidden inside a very rough manuscript — so I have to look beyond some pretty bad writing to see if the story itself is good. But I wish those writers would take a little more care to present themselves better — that they would polish that gem so it sparkled the first time I saw it.

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Space History, 11.21: The Time Dilation Song

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This isn’t the usual “multiple of 5”-year space anniversary I usually post, but it’s too good not to include. On this date in 1975 — according to Wikipedia, the official source for everything that might be true — Queen released the album A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.

What does that have to do with space history, you ask? Because, in the fine tradition of such songs as “Rocketman” and “Major Tom,” this album included a song about space travel: “’39.” Written and sung by Brian May — the astrophysics student who stopped working on his doctorate to pursue music but eventually earned his PhD in in 2007 — the song involves the time dilation effect of traveling at near-relativistic speeds. A science fiction song by someone who knows science.

And that’s today’s space history, kids. Now, back to your regularly-scheduled browsing.

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Space Technology Exports and Installations

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Two space-related items today: an article in New Scientist covers the illegal export of space technology to China, and the Space Shuttle crew plans to install a new toxic gas detector on the ISS.

First, from New Scientist: China denies attempting to get US space data. The story relates how Shu Quan-Sheng, a physicist born in China but now a naturalized US citizen, pled guilty to illegally exporting space technology to China: specifically, data on space launch vehicle technology.

This piqued my interest because I was a space technology security monitor for almost 3 years in the Defense Technology Security Administration. The NS article was heavy on Chinese denials, but light on their previous shenanigans (although it did link to an article with a list of a few previous items). Yet all they had to do was Google “Cox Commission Report” and downlink the file to learn about previous activities in which China obtained launch vehicle technology from U.S. corporations.

(I cross-posted this item in the Space Warfare Forum.)

Second, a link I got from Twitter: Astronauts to Install ENose Hazardous Gas Detector. The “ENose” detector is the latest version of a detector to warn station residents of dangerous levels of toxic gases.

I was interested in this item for two reasons. First, I used a variety of vapor detectors in my assignment as a Bioenvironmental Engineer at the AF Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards AFB, and I hope — but have some doubts that — the device will perform as advertised. I don’t doubt at all that it will work: it’s a polymer film detector based on electrical conductivity, more sophisticated than the old paper-tape, photosensitive detectors and certainly easier to use than some of the more complex, chemically-intensive instruments we had. I’m more concerned with its useful life, what happens if the detector medium gets saturated, that sort of thing.

But enough geeky reminiscing.

The second reason that story interested me is that two of the main characters in my novel (my work-in-progress) are environmental engineers who are trying to keep the new lunar colony alive — and detecting hazardous vapors is a big part of that job. I’m trying to get just enough realism in the novel to make it believable, without going to the geeky extreme. Hopefully, I’ll do a better job in the novel than I did in this blog post. :rolleyes:

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85 Years Ago in Space History

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I know what you’re thinking: nobody was in space 85 years ago. You’re right.

But 85 years ago today — on November 18, 1923 — Alan Shepard was born in East Derry, New Hampshire. And a few years later, in May 1961, he became the first U.S. astronaut in space, when he flew a suborbital flight on a Mercury Redstone rocket. In January 1971 he walked on the moon as the mission commander of Apollo-14.

His official NASA biography is here. Rear Admiral Shepard died ten years ago this past July.

As I read his bio, I remembered that I’ve actually been to Derry, NH, where Shepard went to school. I traveled up there to play a Pop Warner football game when I was in middle school. A geographic coincidence, I guess.

(If I was more into coincidences of that type, I’d have sited my novel closer to one of the Apollo landing sites, instead of out-of-the-way in Mare Nubium.)

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My Science Fiction Church: ST Klingon References

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I attend North Cary Baptist Church, and I’m frequently pleased by the large proportion of genre fans in our church. (I even blogged about that in this post.)

Yesterday Pastor Mark started his sermon by explaining that the title of the book of Acts is the Greek word, “praxis,” at which our pianist remarked that Praxis is also the Klingon moon. This prompted the pastor to point out that the Bible is being (or maybe has been) translated into Klingon — is that right, Dr. Schoen? — and to give and receive from many of us the Vulcan salute. And at least one of us (that would have been me) exclaimed “success!” in Klingon.

We have a great church, and you’re welcome to visit any time.

[BREAK, BREAK]

In other news, I passed the 85,000-word mark yesterday in MARE NUBIUM, my novel about an early lunar colony. Still hoping to make 100K, if not finish outright, by the end of the month.

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Today's Space Anniversary: the Last Skylab Launch

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Thirty-five years ago today, the last manned flight of the Skylab program — Skylab-4 — launched from the Kennedy Space Center. The three crewmembers were Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson, and William Pogue, who would spend 84 days in space.

This NASA page has links to more information about the Skylab program; this Wikipedia page has details about Skylab-4.

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