Space is not simply a hole into which money that could be better used for food stamps or worker retraining is flushed. It fundamentally helps economies and the poor. The single most powerful example of this is the weather satellite. Storms that sank ships and destroyed cities are now spotted early enough for avoidance and…
A mere chunk of rock is survivable. It’s not likely to get all of us, though it could. Even if it didn’t wipe us all out, would a technic civilization ever arise again? We’ve mined most of the easily reachable resources around. Could we start over again? There are greater terrors in space that could…
There are of course the usual arguments against humans in space. But let’s start with an examination of that statement, “humans in space.” Humanity is now and has always been “in space.” The thing in the sky is a G-2 main sequence star perhaps halfway through its lifespan. Its attributes govern every second of our…
Last blog we discussed manned space flight on the theme that we humans have to directly experience things. More on that line… To anyone who has seen the Mona Lisa in person, seeing it on TV or in an art book is meaningless. The original cannot be captured, it must be experienced. Perhaps a…
“And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close, with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.” Frank Boreman Apollo 8 “Robotic exploration is to real exploration as masturbation is to glorious, loving sex.”- Anonymous Nothing is…
I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED deep space stories about star-spanning governments and alien races, ala Babylon 5 and Star Trek. In my first series, the adventures of Robert Fenaday and the genetically-engineered woman Shasti Rainhell, aboard the privateer Sidhe, I created the universe all my SF stories would be set in, much as author Larry Niven did…
On Gender A writer friend of mine turned to me after reading My Outcast State and said. “You know it would never have occurred to me to make the robot female.” I was surprised and said that it would never have occurred to me not to. The dynamics of human nature are much more…
ON THE ORIGINS OF MAAURO: the combat android built by the long gone race she calls ‘The Creators’ Hmmn, how to discuss this without generating spoilers? Well I will just have to give it a go. Maauro, like so many things, came from the failure of a prior project. I had decided to write a…