Tag: space exploration

Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: Weathwonderizing

Today is Thursday, October 24, 2024. This kicks off October’s final week. Just seven days remain until November is asserted. Once November kicks on, it’ll be a ride. Time change in America, election in America, Thanksgiving in America…then the December holidays in America. Sorry to give the rest of the world short attention. That’s not my intention. It’s only that I expect November to be intense in the U.S. for multiple reasons.

Peering out the window, fog twirled and swirled, stealing in and out of the scene. But brave sunshine soon burst onto the scene.

With the fog, we were creeping through the low thirties. Sunshine kicked in and managed to kick the fog out and prop up a vividly blue sky. Now we’re romping through the forties, racing toward a high in the low 60s. This is autumn for sure but winter is slanting in.

Eyeing the fog’s weave around the trees, houses, and accoutrements of modern urban life brought up Foghat. Just apparently how my brain works. Soon “Fool for the City” rose in the morning mental music stream.

But as I watched, I rejected the song. Just didn’t feel right for the moment. The fog keep shifting, slinking in and sneaking out, coiling around trees and releasing. I kept judging the visibility. Now I could see further away…ah, but it’s back in and I can only see the houses and trees directly across the street.

From that litany of thought arose “What A Wonderful World.” The 1967 recording released by Louis Armstrong was the first, and it’s hard to top. But a while back, I heard a version by Chris Botti with Mark Knopfler. It was used at the end of an episode of the television series, “Bosch.” It struck me and I went off to hear it again on the net.

Besides Armstrong and Botti’s version, Willy Nelson’s soulful rendition and Joey’s Ramone heartfelt fast paced rock version captivated me. It’s hard to go wrong with the song’s words and the sentiments, if you like that sort of thing.

It is a wonderful world. I worry about humans screwing it up. We adjust it to our needs. Sometimes we’re pretty damn cruel and arrogant. I always have mixed conclusions about us exploring other worlds for that reason. I want the technological achievement, and I want to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of what else exists beyond this planet. But I don’t want us to ruin the other places. It remains a conundrum.

Coffee has invaded my body in a benign takeover. Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue. Here’s the music, friends and neighbors. Cheers

0

The Cusp of Revolutions

I’m pretty excited this morning. Awoke in that state. I owe this excitement to a teenage woman.

I didn’t meet her, but I saw and listened to her. It was during our weekly beer meeting of the BoBs, the pretentious and silly name of our group, “Brains on Beers”. It’s actually a group of retired doctors, scientists, engineers, professors, etc, that meet to have a beer each week and talk. We mostly talk about science, technology, politics, and beer.

We also collect and donate money to buy materials to help local schools and their STEM educational programs. One of the projects we support is the southern Oregon robotics team. The teenager was with that group when four of them came to us to pitch their project for a donation.

An adult leader and three local high school students were making the pitch. Christina, the young woman that I found so inspiring. She loves science. My sense, from listening to her, is that she loves life, knowledge, and learning. Her dream is to join Space X and go into space and colonize other places. Her enthusiasm was like gulping a dozen shots of espresso at once. It was beautiful to behold.

Her comments and enthusiasm trickled into my thinking streams. Eventually, a week later, thoughts came together and bubbled up from my subconscious thinking, and I realized, we’re on a cusp of a revolution.

No, make that revolutions.

People feel and see them coming. That scares and intimidates them. Many people dislike change, or are uncomfortable with change. I’m not too good with it, myself. Processing change requires time and energy. I often feel like I lack enough of either, and just want to climb into bed and cover my head.

Yet, I could see the revolutions coming so clearly in my thoughts this morning as I contemplated my fading dreams. I saw at least another industrial revolution as we move away from fossil fuels and introduce more robotics and automation.

We’re undergoing an information revolution right now. How we acquire, process, and spread information has evolved, and that evolution is speeding up. To combat it, guerrilla warfare comprising of false information and false equivalencies have been

We’re undergoing gender revolutions, and revolutions that are overturning Business As Usual. Sexual assaults, bigotry, and prejudice are being exposed. In a sense, we needed the Trump Administration, because its existence turned on the lights, revealing the ugliness that we’ve institutionalize and accepted as normal and standard.

Of course, the technological and digital revolutions are underway, as well. These are leading to social and cultural revolutions. These revolutions will cause yet greater economic and political revolutions. The great democratic revolution will itself undergo another revolution because the representative form of government, with its elections that establish a ruling class, has been outgrown. So have nation states, as we conceive of ourselves more and more as humans sharing a planet with finite resources, with a need to improve how we use those resources, and begin developing plans to seriously use exo-resources on other worlds.

That’ll launch the space revolution.

It’ll all be a bloody mess for a long time, of course. We know that economic, social, political, and regional stagnation and siloing reduce cooperation and create obstacles and roadblocks. Some like these obstacles. They even want to build walls, because they’re afraid, or they don’t want their comfort zone to change, which is wholly understandable.

But, smart people are out there. They’re perceiving these problems, and they’re conceiving solutions and new approaches.

Trust me. I heard one.

0

Feynmann and Me

I believed that the big fireball over Feynmann announced my end’s beginning.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Never is, is it? No. I didn’t know who Feynmann was, except in a general way. Despite plaques all over the ship, I absorbed that Feynmann was another science guy like Einstein, and had something to do with our mission. Feynmann and Einstein are names like Copernicus and Galileo to me, names shot at me in classes. The only real science name I know is Bill Gates, because he invented Apple. That’s just how I am, right?

This night was supposed to be one to talk about forever. Our excitement was thick as a brownie. Here we were, on another world, not the first, per se, but somewhere high on a special list. Fortune was shining on me just to put me there. I was of the opinion that Ricardo and I were on the edge of becoming a twin star, if I understood that metaphor right. We’d been as immediately absorbed with one another as PB and J. His looks to me had gone from being, “Hi, nice to see you, mate,” to, “Want to fuck?” I was trying to make my looks answer, “When and where?”

Yes, this night was one to talk about, still, but in a shitty way. We were all in Coronado’s break room, looking up at the sky and marveling as expected, when the fireball appeared, stopping all of the chin wagging and truncating lusty suggestions and happy imbibing.

“What was that?” someone asked.

“Looks like an explosion,” someone said.

“Yeah, a big fucking explosion,” said another.

Amazing that these people were supposed to be geniuses. Should that be genii or something? Does it really take doctorates to see a big fireball and guess that something exploded?

These were all voices beside and behind me. Didn’t know those folks well, and didn’t look to see who spoke. I was staring at the huge glazed marble lighting the sky. Gold, white, purple, red and black, it would have been pretty, if it wasn’t scary.

“Was that the Beagle?” someone dared.

Nobody else dared an answer until Ricardo said, “There is another ship up there. There can be other explanations.”

I almost laughed at his foolish hope. I already knew this was the end’s beginning. I mean, we’re all dying from the time we’re born, Da always said, but we’re hopeful that death will let us slip past if we don’t know the ways and means, right?

Like a software program that had done its thing and started us on another loop, everyone was released into action and speaking at once.

There was nothing I could do, I, Juancho, a simple bureaucrat. Cattle, unkinder pissants labeled crew like me, to which I gave a big, hairy,  “Fuck you,” back. They’d warned us, this was dangerous and one-way. Yeah, but, they had to say that, legally, to keep our estates from suing, right? Nobody expected us to be shat on and flushed away this fast. Still, those were the facts. If our mother ship blew and left us stranded, naught for me to do but carry on as per. I finished my drink, and ordered another while greater minds began panicking.

Yep, nothing for me but get drunk and see what Feynmann would do to me. Turned out that it had nasty plans for all of us, like a horrific science fiction version of “Ten Little Indians,” except, we were starting with thirty, right?

That made it last longer.

****

With apologies to Richard Feynman, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and the rest of the scientists, inventors and thinkers maligned by Juancho’s world view.

2

The Magellan

One of my characters surprised me by bringing up the Magellan. I didn’t know he was aware of it. I thought the characters, stories and ideas were all kept segregated in my upstairs.

The Magellan is ‘conceived’ three hundred years from now. It existed in minds before then, though. It was only three hundred years from now that the impetus develops to create the necessary consortium of resources required for the ambitious projects. In my future worlds, greed, corporatism, and nationalism, along with war and disaster keep Humans from exploring space outside of a few Moon and Mars settlements.

A generational biosphere designed to explore beyond our solar system, Magellan is constructed in space. Part of its construction, equipment and plans is to send ships back to Earth every twenty-five years to bring materials and people back. But all trips are planned as a one way trip.

I thought of the Magellan and its mission a decade ago. As part of its loose story line, it went out there and all went well for about fifty years. Then there was no more, and it was mostly forgotten in the way that efforts are forgotten and yet remain part of history. That’s why I was surprised that one character suggests, “What if we encounter the Magellan or one of its return ships?”

Employing Mom’s tactics from my youth, I told the character I’d think about it.

I don’t know if he knows what that means.

16

Myth & Hyperbole

Walking today, I returned to the Stellar Queen in my mind.

Things changed after Her Lady disappeared from the ship’s scene. You’ll notice that I don’t say that she died or departed; I don’t know but that she was ‘gone’. Rei claimed she left the ship in secret, but what’s one person’s view, especially the view of a baker? How did he get to know Her Lady so well, the people wanted to know?

Remember, too, this was still the Integrated Age, when body and electronics were blended with marketing, security and privacy to create a web of existence. Marketing and security bees traveled the ship. Her Lady hadn’t wanted them but had agreed that it was Her People’s ship. A bare majority of its half million population wanted the bees, so they were permitted. While the bees weren’t greatly popular, they tracked people’s movements. When Her Lady disappeared, attention was naturally directed to the bees.

But Her Lady had no records, as the Security Director knew. “Her Lady was above that, too,” she said. “There are no records of her existence or movement for any time, nor any place, during her entire life aboard the Stellar Queen.”

Although many professed they shouldn’t be surprised, given who she was and her penchant for secrecy and privacy (a vote via the ship’s Galeb revealed that 77% could not pick out Her Lady’s image from a group of five), most were surprised and even outraged. Suspicions began nibbling and lurking. Perhaps the Security Director and Rei had entered a nefarious partnership and removed Her Lady to assert their own power. A majority rebutted that as absurd but the rumors persisted, especially after the turn of problems on the Queen.

First was an outbreak of killing disease, followed by the ship quarantine to manage the disease, and The Revelations. The Revelations were still being discovered when ship equipment malfunctioned. Worse of these events was the ship’s sun, Surya (named for the benevolent Hindu sun god who rode through the sky in a carriage), which suddenly became Surly Surya, rising fifteen degrees higher than planned in its first malfunction and resisting input, before finally cooling but stalling in the sky. Becoming a dull orange, it hovered over the Majestic Plan and Snow at its high noon summer position, an angry glowering ember. “The heat had been bad,” Wallander said, “but I’d rather it than this endless day with an ugly sun. It seems like a dangerous omen for us. Perhaps this is the end for the Stellar Queen.”

Nobody argued against his observation.

0

Garbage Time

“Escapists.”

Her Lady was amused.

One man held center stage in a corner of like men. He seemed like a natural actor, with a voice that traveled the room like a machine gun firing.

“They’re living on the ship, what is it called again, the Stellar Queen? Which is made to be like a small world inside.” He waved a canape. “How is that different from living on a planet?”

A fellow industrialist, he was a large, trim man who could have been a professional athlete, from his looks and mannerisms, and not a venture capitalist. He didn’t know Her Lady was the agent behind the Stellar Queen. She’d taken pains to hide her early involvement, a simple matter if one had the means and resources to create the required fronts.

“Okay, sure, they’re traveling through the galaxies,” the man, an Australian whose name she didn’t recall, began again, “but again, so are planets. They’re all up there because they can’t cope with real life. You might as well call it a cocoon or a coffin. That’s what it really is, isn’t it? A huge coffin for a hundred thousand people, masquerading as a bio ship. Tell you what, it’s ridiculous. But they’re doing us a favor. We’re better off without people so weak willed and fearful that they’re attracted to abandoning real life and living on that thing.”

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Doctor Pollux suggested while leveling an impartial wide gaze on Her Lady.

Her Lady didn’t care, so she agreed. Privately, Her Lady scoffed at the Australian’s loud pronouncement, although, she agreed with a few points he gave, except he sketched with hard edges. She would soften and blend the points because matters were broader than that. “Are you afraid that I’ll be upset?” she asked Pollux.

“I know you better,” Pollux answered. “It’s for me. I prefer a more comfortable and less noisy environment.”

Her Lady nodded. “I was tempted to engage him and ask what he’s doing with his life, and how it was so different from those going onto the Stellar Queen.” She, who had spent a natural lifetime plus the time awarded the wealthy through medical technology, thought that many on the ‘natural worlds’ as such places as Earth and the other worlds were termed, spent most of their days in garbage time.

Garbage time was the concrete expression given when a sports game must continue to progress until time is reached even though the results are clear. Garbage also refers to a team playing out its schedule even though it has no chance of advancing into any play-offs. To Her Lady, however, garbage time was also assigned to those living with purpose, passing the day via tedious routines, usually because they wanted or needed money, but failed to do anything with the monies they accrued except stay alive.

“I’m sure he lives to make money,” she said to Doctor Pollux, “and acquire power and influence to better his life.”

The conversation varied along points made in previous discussions. Priding herself as seeing a broader rainbow of existence and thinking Her Lady was being simplistic, Doctor Pollux pointed out, “As I have said before, many people would not be living like that, were they not caught up in the machines’ gears. The comfort and confidence provided by a secure and healthy home life can’t be overstated.”

“Many people do not need to exist like that, if they had greater courage and self-confidence.” Her Lady’s eyes sparkled with the engagement of one of her favorite subjects. “Most people live lives of fear and desperation, ruing their lot while never attempting to change it.”

“I don’t think it’s so easily changed,” Pollux answered. “It’s such a complex issue of nature and circumstances.”

“What, money?”

“Besides money, besides willpower and courage, or fortitude. It’s a more deeply seated personal and unique issue that must really be addressed on an individual level.”

They were sufficiently away from others that they had private space. Sipping her wine, Her Lady said, “That is why I’m building the Stellar Queen.”

Attempting to breach the other’s secretive manner, Pollux considered Her Lady more carefully. The other seemed happy, even relieved that she was making a great revelation. She’d been working with Her Lady for some time and thought she’d developed an intelligent composite of the other. Both had been inspired by the old space adventure television shows, books, movies, and computer games when they were children. Thanks to Pollux’s great-grandmother, humanity was exploring the galaxy and completing the first wave of colonization on other worlds. Pollux had always assumed that this was why Her Lady was building the Stellar Queen.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Turning away, Her Lady smiled and replied, “Yes, I know,” quickening her step and drinking her wine before Pollux could ask for more explanation.

0

Her Lady

Five foot eight inches tall, rumored to be white with short dark hair and perpetually wearing sunglasses, the woman behind the Stellar Queen was mysterious.

She was at least eight hundred years old, well-established because she’d lived on the Stellar Queen for that long. Such a long life on one ship leads to rumors….

I lived for fifty years as a child and man on the Stellar Queen, enjoying my second childhood on the ship after I initiated my Do-over, so I was always watching out for her. I was never certain I saw her. There were rumors….

Her appearance was challenging not just because she was rarely seen but also because she practiced genetic designing to shape shift, leading her appearance to often change, even becoming an animal, such as the panther that was claimed to live on the Stellar Queen, or one of the unicorns in the forest. At least, those were were the rumors….

The Stellar Queen was her baby, along with Doctor Jharun Pollux, great-granddaughter of Doctor Jerol Pollux. Doctor Jerol Pollux was the famous discoverer of the dark elements. The elder Doctor Pollux, a funny point to write, was but twenty-four when she made her discoveries a hundred years before her great-granddaughter’s birth. Jharun Pollux and Her Lady were said to be contemporaries in their youth, and struck up a relationship from that era. ‘That era’ was when space exploration and colonization began blossoming, thanks to the dark elements of the elder doctor’s findings, but it was almost three hundred years later that the two women began collaborating on the Stellar Queen’s design and construction.

Most critically for the Stellar Queen, Doctor Pollux incorporated power generators using asteridium, chiridium, and lumenirium. Asteridium was the black element most commonly used in starships for propulsion but Pollux used it with a small lumenirium core to create the artificial sun that graced the Stellar Queen’s bio-dome, rising in the east, and setting in the west.

Chiridium was the more interesting choice for the ship’s power. Chiridium, named for chi, after the life force, is rarer, more difficult to mine and control. Myths related to its name and Doctor Jerol Pollux’s comments about it, can never be put down. As a dark element, some say it’s a dark life force. Both Doctors Pollux laughed about that, but with its AI ship overseer, many inhabitants and visitors thought the Stellar Queen was alive. Majorities of people recounted stories and gave interviews stating that something different was felt as soon as you boarded the ship.

Her Lady never made comments about it that anyone ever recorded. As odd and intriguing as her eight hundred year life aboard the Stellar Queen was, her disappearance without notice when she left was equally intriguing. She only told Rei the baker, famous for his goods from Trudy’s Valley, that she was leaving.

Being the only source, naturally, more rumors arose. One rumor was that one of her shapeshifting processes was disrupted, rendering her a monster that couldn’t be fixed, and that she still lived in secret on the Queen. Others claimed that she had never existed, that she had not created the Stellar Queen, but that it created her because the woman who had begun the project had died before it launched. More quietly, it was suggested that perhaps it wasn’t correct to think of the Stellar Queen as two separate entities, but that they were one, yet another project of the great Doctor Jerol Pollux, and her great-granddaughter.

Imagination can be a wild, untamed creature.

0

Homage to the Stellar Queen

Two miles and 43 minutes, the coffee shop walk allows a surfeit of thinking. Today, with summer starting in the northern hemisphere, I thought of the Stellar Queen.

She’s old. I haven’t thought of her in a while. She’s so ancient in my relative life, that her original Word Perfect, PowerPoint and Paint files reside on five and a quarter floppy disks. They were transferred to three and a half inch disks, and then to a hard drive when I bought a tower Dell, in 1999.

The Stellar Queen was my first foray into science fiction. Orson Scott Card told how he liked drawing maps to stimulate his creativity. I designed cars as a child and planned to be an architect (or a rock star) so I took up designing the Stellar Queen on computer.

She was originally built by a patron of the arts who traveled the galaxies. The Lady (never named, and very mysterious) lives in an estate along the edge between the Central Plain and the Northern Mountains. A bio-dome hybrid class ship, the Queen’s bio portion is sixty-seven miles long by fourteen miles wide. Thinking in threes, she had three cities, three towns and three villages, three major climate zones (with many micro climes), and three rivers that flowed down into the Starry Sea, on the ship’s ‘northwestern’ side. One small town, Half Moon Bay, came to be on the Starry Sea, was based upon Half Moon Bay, California, where I resided for a while. The Queen featured a sun that rose in the ship’s east and set in the west, over the sea. It wasn’t a big sea, just large enough for waves, pleasure craft and some fishing. Just big enough for romance.

Three centers, for government & ship operations, markets, and education, were established, along with three wineries, three breweries, three ranches…et cetera. I began many stories about her. Murder on the Stellar Queen, Death Boards the Stellar Queen, Treason on the Stellar Queen, and so on. None were finished nor submitted. I still have them, though, in notebooks, in boxes, in the garage.

I still smile, thinking about the Stellar Queen, and I easily board her. Half Moon Bay on the Queen is a pleasant place to be, to sip wine or beer and contemplate the ocean and sunshine, marvel about traveling the galaxies, and think about the first day of summer in another year.

Time to go write like crazy.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑