M. Thomas Apple's Blog, page 4

Boeing Starliner delayed. They should delay again.

A contractor for Nasa urged the space agency to conduct more safety checks before the highly-anticipated first launch of its Starliner rocket – which is set to take off as soon as next week – “before something catastrophic happens”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nasa-contractor-boeing-starliner-launch-b2542947.html

It was supposed to launch last week, but someone spotted a valve problem — *minutes* before the countdown procedure was about to start.

They’d better check for door plugs while they’re at it.

Boeing does not give a rat’s ass about whoever uses their products. They‘re only interest in paying dividends to stockholders. And of course paying the CEO’s ridiculously high salary.

NASA is trusting the future of space travel to people like Musk and companies like Boeing. Using taxpayer money to reward greed and incompetence.

We can do better than this.

As George Carlin said…

Are you a leader or a follower?

“Lead, follow, or get out of the way!”

I obstruct.

Nuclear power on the Moon. Gee, no problem…

The South Pole, where power plants are likely to be constructed (without human help…)

“The truth is that nuclear is the only option to power a moonbase,” says Simon Middleburgh from the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University in Wales.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240417-the-nuclear-reactors-that-could-power-moon-bases

So far there are two major consortiums that have plans for moon bases:

The Artemis Accords, with 36 countries (the US, Japan, South Korea, UAE, India, etc.)

The countries that don’t like the US, the UK, and Canada (China, Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt, Ajerbaijan)

OK, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, granted.

But there is no doubting the political ramifications of two competing groups of astronauts (cosmonauts, taikonauts) on the Moon.

And just wait until they get to Mars.

Imagine what might happen. (I did!)

“May you live in interesting times…”

Winner of “Best Short Story – Sports”! 🥇

My short story “Two Strikes Against” was selected as the Winner in the inaugural Next Generation Short Story Awards! (Official list to be available next week.)

It will be published in an anthology later this year. (Not sure if an ebook will be available.)

Basically it’s a story about a Japanese baseball player on Mars, with a twist. It got rejected a couple of years ago by several scifi magazines, so I figured why not try the sports category.

Especially since there was no scifi category.

Just grateful and thankful for the award. I hope you all get a chance to read the story!

(FWIW “Marsball” is mentioned by characters in an early chapter of Bringer of Light. In fact, I was going to call the story that. Very glad that I didn’t in the end!)

Can I answer “all of the above”?

What public figure do you disagree with the most?

Actually, I would say Marjorie Greene. She is vicious, spiteful, bigoted, homophobic, racist, stupid, and mean-spirited even against members of her own party. It must be a lot of fun to live in her constituency. They might as well ring their towns with “keep out” signs. I’d agree with that.

When Google Gets it Wrong

Technology is becoming marvellously intuitive. After booking a holiday with friends, we were surprised to discover Google had already added the dates…

When Google Gets it Wrong

Google Maps initially listed our house with the correct address but also my family name —- because it thought it was a company.

It took them half a year after I complained about privacy violations to take the name off…

And they also took off the address!

And there is an abandoned house repurposed as an arts and crafts society event place that has the same address as us!

Annoying.

Not the arts and crafts society folk. They’re pretty cool.

Yet another Gen Z vague question?

What was the last live performance you saw?

Last live performance of what?

I saw a baseball game last September. That was live. Does that count?

Oh. Do you mean “live” in the Japanese sense, i.e., a live performance by a musical artist?

As in a live concert?

At a club?

Or just that the musicians were alive and actually wrote their own music and played their own instruments rather than danced around and lip-synced?

Yes. I am a snarky Gen-Xer. Wave the flannel.

(FWIW I think the last live musical performance I’ve seen was in a Japanese club in Osaka around 2000 or 2001, and before that in mid-1999 in a club somewhere in Boston. It’s hard to get out when you have a family and need to actually go to work in the morning.)

Venus used to have as much water as Earth. What happened?

Over time, that water has nearly all been lost. Figuring out how, when and why Venus lost its water helps planetary scientists like me understand what makes a planet habitable — or what can make a habitable planet transform into an uninhabitable world.

https://theconversation.com/venus-is-losing-water-faster-than-previously-thought-heres-what-that-could-mean-for-the-early-planets-habitability-229342

The process in which Venus lost most of its water is called “hydrodynamic escape.” When Venus got too hot, the hydrogen in its atmosphere left. (The linked article explains this using a metaphor of having too many blankets on your bed.)

However, Venus is still losing hydrogen, even though there is too little of it for hydrodynamic escape to work. So, logically, there must be another process at work: “HCO⁺ dissociative recombination,” in which individually positively charged atoms of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen in the atmosphere react with negatively charged electrons. The process was first examined on Mars, and based on a reexamination of results from previous missions (Pioneer Venus 1 and Pioneer Venus 2), the same research group thinks it’s time to try it on Venus…perhaps a first step to seeing whether Venus had life at some point.

Short story short listed!

One of my SciFi short stories has been shortlisted for an award (newly created category).

More details when they are available!

(FWIW I referenced the short story in the beginning of Bringer of Light, when Overseer Martin Velasquez asks about the results of a “Marshall” game. Worldbuilding…)

More quotes and quotes about quotes

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

I don’t think I “live my life” by a quote (too busy surviving), but I do think a lot about:

“Keep on keeping on.”

“Keep on trucking.”

“何とかなる (nantoka naru – “it’ll work out”)

“Das lassen sein (let it be)”

But also oddly:

“Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!”