Archive for Space
Here’s a pet peeve of mine about a communications situation that comes up sometimes in certain kinds of science fiction. The situation: Some characters are on a spaceship. They need to communicate with other characters on another spaceship nearby, but the radio isn’t working. In most versions of this situation that I encounter, the two […]
I just read a 1992 piece by Niven and Pournelle, extolling the glories of capitalism, and talking about how awesome Columbus was, and suggesting that if only those evil governments like the US government would stop being so annoyingly anti-capitalistic, people would go to space in order to get rich. (Title of essay: “Where Next, […]
When I described the boardgame Terraforming Mars to someone a couple months back (I forget who, sorry), the first thing they asked was “What about atmospheric pressure?” I hadn’t thought of that question, but it seemed like an excellent question after they raised it. Presumably you would need to significantly increase atmospheric pressure to make […]
A few weeks ago, I decided to take a look at the book of The Martian. I hadn't had much...
I've seen a couple of people complain about the new Trek movies not being very scientific, which led me to...
BDan writes: The Leonids will be at their peak tonight and tomorrow, so go out and take a look (just...
What's your favorite constellation, and why? (A question asked last night while we were stargazing.)...
Went out to look for Perseids about 45 minutes ago. I had read that peak brightness would be between 9...