Patrick Chiles's Blog, page 3
December 20, 2019
If It’s Boeing, It Ain’t Going
It pains me to say that. I spent a lot of time in their performance engineering school in Seattle, and after every course I came home feeling like a rocket scientist. After today I wonder if their rocket scientists feel like rocket scientists: For most space launches, a rocket will take its payload all the …
November 21, 2019
Steely-Eyed Missile Men
Just a quick hit, then back to work…I’m finishing a short story for Baen’s website in advance of Frozen Orbit’s release, the deadline for which coincides with an audit trip I have to take right after Thanksgiving. So yeah, lots going on at Chiles Manor South… Last weekend I went to my first high-power rocket …
November 9, 2019
Going for Gold at Pluto
New Horizons‘ lead scientist Alan Stern describes their “Gold Standard” plan to return to Pluto: First, after an orbital tour of Pluto, a final pair of close gravity-assist flybys of Charon will free the orbiter from the Pluto system to explore the Kuiper Belt without any need for any propulsion from the orbiter. Next, using …
October 15, 2019
The Story So Far, or Lessons Learned on the Writing Life
Writing full time is a dream come true for anyone who’s finished even so much as a short story. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Now that I’ve taken the plunge, there are a few lessons I’d like to pass on. This list is by no means complete: 1. Time management …
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September 7, 2019
Coming Soon
…but not soon enough! The blog’s been dormant for awhile (okay, a long while), so you may rightly wonder what I’ve been up to. There’s this little thing, coming January 2020: Balancing work on my first “real” novel for Baen against a full-time day job and family commitments kept me incredibly busy. Something had to …
April 23, 2018
Don’t Be Evil
Google is still doing it wrong: Google ads has refused to do business with a Christian publishing house “because of the faith we express on our website,” said Concordia Publishing House CEO Bruce Kintz in a Facebook post today. “Google ads will no longer accept anything related to the cph.org domain. They stated the reason …
October 18, 2017
Life (Still) Imitating Art
Don’t mean to brag, but this news is just too much to resist: Bigelow Aerospace wants to put an inflatable space habitat in orbit around the Moon Ahem…Called it! This layout is exactly what I had in my head while writing Farside. I really hope this is for real and not just another great idea that … 
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October 17, 2017
Days of Glory
A resourceful filmmaker named Christian Stangl has animated thousands of NASA photos into a gorgeous video tribute to Apollo, well worth 7.3 minutes of your time: UPDATE! Almost forgot this compelling short by Andrew Finch. It’s amazing when you see what his team accomplished on what must have been a shoestring budget – even using actual … 
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October 13, 2017
Flyway to HEL
I was about to say this was poorly thought through, only to realize it was PERFECTLY thought through. Check out @_youhadonejob1’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/st... Advertisements
Isn’t That Special?
Woke up this morning to a couple of challenging pieces linked by Ace of Spades. First up, an Atlanta rabbi on the Question That Must Not Be Asked: Connect the dots. There is a pattern. A direction. An ugly revolution churning in this country.America has done more uplifting of humanity and promotion of freedom than any other … 
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