Artist's depiction of
Phoenix landing
Image via Wikimedia CommonsThe Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars. We watched.

My son said "this is my generation's moon landing..." That may have been hyperbolic on his part but it WAS exciting... and a bit freaky to realise that the "now" was actually "10 minutes ago" due to transmission delay.

That another spacecraft managed to get a picture of Phoenix's parachute during the descent is ragingly cool.

So why did we need a Canadian network to bring it to us? ... seems it was too uncool/geeky for US networks.

Well I'm just glad someone was carrying it.

Did you watch? What did you think?Artist's depiction of
Phoenix on Mars
Image via Wikimedia Common

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Free content can make money!

Cover of
Old Man's War
Image via WikipediaReaders here (all 6 of you?) know I read John Scalzi's blog. A while back he talked about a new book by Scott Sigler, "Infected" and gave a link to get a free PDF of the book. (That link is no longer valid by the way...)

That's nice of John, to hook his readership up that way... but he himself is no stranger to it. You could say he got his start that way (as, arguably, Cory Doctorow did as well).

So now it comes out that it's possible to get a podcast of Infected if you follow this link.

I suspect that while there will be takers, and lots, it will also drive sales of the book. Why? because I'm sure I'm not the only person who got hooked on Scalzi by reading a free (unless you wanted to donate something, which I did) copy of "Old Man's War", or on Doctorow by reading a free copy of "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". Although horror isn't my favorite subgenre of SF, the book was good and I plan to keep following the series

What about you? Do you read free books? Do you find yourself buying a copy of the book you got for free? If so, what motivates you?

(Note, I mean free as in beer here, the content is not freely licensed... in particular the image cover is used as a claimed Fair Use for review/discussion purposes)

Is Constellation just a rehash of Apollo?

Image via WikipediaNASA has proposed "Project Constellation", which aims to put men back on the moon by 2020. Part of the project are the "Orion" manned vehicle, launched by the "Ares" (in versions I and V) rocket, and using the "Altair" lunar lander.

Some have evaluated the program and see it as another big expensive project that will compete for funding with science, and also will compete with the Commercial off the shelf (COTS) initiative.

While I've been a big fan of space exploration all my life, I have my doubts about this whole thing.

Except for some semi reuse at the beginning, it sure seems like the entire thing is more or less "Apollo, but bigger and better" ... Aries I and V (which use Shuttle SRB derived first stages) launch a crew module and lander separately, a rendezvous in orbit mates those and the crew module stays in orbit around the moon while the lander lands. The descent stage is left on the moon, just like the LEM.

Why do this at all? We already know how to do this. Instead of developing new government rockets, (and make work projects) why not just pay for launch capacity from SpaceX or whoever? Or better yet, how about actually building some industrial capacity on the lunar surface? I want the transformative activity in near earth space that science fiction promised us. It's 2008, where's my lunar catapult?

What do you think? Rehash or value add?

My secret of Travel Success

ORD... looks pretty doesn't it? Psych!
Image from Wikimedia CommonsOK, this is a bit of a ramble. Like the rest of my blog posts aren't? Grin.

Some of you know that I travel a lot. I work for IBM as a consultant (a Technical Architect, to be exact, which is a fancy title for being fairly senior, and knowing a little about a lot of products in our suite and being good with whiteboards and Microsoft Visio). My travels keep me on the road all week, unless I'm in a lull, or need a day to go to the dentist or whatever.

Some of you know I read John Scalzi's blog. He's pretty amusing for an SF writer (which is saying a lot because I find most SF writers very amusing... must be the geek in me. But I digress.), and if you haven't read "Old Man's War" you're in for a treat. Well, several posts in a row from him recently have been complaining about his travel woes. Seems he keeps getting delayed or stranded in Chicago.

Here's my secret of travel success, free of charge: Don't connect through Chicago. Avoid ORD at all costs. Simple really, but effective. ORD is the source of delays everywhere else, why would someone want to go to the source? It works pretty well for me. Don't believe that hype about it being the traveler's favourite airport 9 years in a row... that's just because so many travelers spend so much time in it, they had to spruce it up.

Secondary secret? Try not to connect through ATL either.

Hope that helps. See you out there! (and stop kicking the back of my seat!)