Patrick Chiles's Blog, page 7
July 18, 2016
About Ohio
This week, a lot of attention will be fixed on my adopted home state of Ohio. You might have heard there’s kind of a thing going on up in Cleveland, what with Trump University Pledge Week the Republican National Convention being in town. It promises to be a bigger media circus than normal, as the […]
July 12, 2016
#Brexit…and Beyond!
It’s that time of year for Big Airshows that result in Big News of Big Money being spent in Big Aerospace. This year’s Farnborough Air Show doesn’t disappoint, with some welcome news out of the still-intact-for-now United Kingdom. Via Parabolic Arc: XCOR’s Lynx demonstrates that cats may indeed have nine lives: US manned […]
Our Pain, Your Gain
After the success of last month’s Fathers Day sale, it appears my publisher has elected to keep Perigee and Farside at the discounted price of $3.99 for an indefinite time. Even better, today is Amazon Prime Daywhich kinda makes it like shopping at WalMart – you go in for one or two things and come […]
July 5, 2016
Good to be a Gangsta
Leave the blog alone for a while, and all hell breaks loose… To absolutely no one’s surprise, the FBI officially let Hillary Clinton off the hook. Let that sink in a minute, then consider what it means for something we used to call the “rule of law.” What incentive is there for the rest of […]
June 14, 2016
Real Men Read Books…So Hurry And Get These On Sale For Dad!
My publisher (the wonderful Baen Books) is running a sale this week, just in time for Father’s Day. Starting Wednesday, Farsideand Perigee will be available through all your favorite ebook outlets for the obscenely low price of 99 cents. (Hint: Read Perigee first. It’s a SERIES.) This is a limited-time, don’t-miss chance to get Dad […]
Real Men Read Books…So Hurry and get Dad these on Sale!
My publisher (the wonderful Baen Books) is running a sale this week, just in time for Father’s Day. Starting Wednesday, Farside will be $3.99 and Perigee will be available through all your favorite ebook outlets for the obscenely low price of 99 cents. (Hint: Read Perigee first. It’s a SERIES.) This is a limited-time, don’t-miss […]
April 28, 2016
Blazing Trails
I’d like to think someone at SpaceX or NASA is reading my blog and took thelast post to heart, though I could with equal validity claim to be a fire engine or the Easter Bunny. SpaceX’s big announcement yesterday that they will be sending a Dragon capsule to Mars in (hopefully) two years clearly […]
April 22, 2016
Halfway to Nowhere
The great Robert Heinlein famously postulated that Low Earth Orbit is “halfway to anywhere,” meaning that it takes almost as much energy to take a spacecraft to its final destination (say, Mars) as it did to put that spacecraft into Earth orbit in the first place. In some cases it actually requires less energy. […]
April 21, 2016
Like a Virgin
I’d started noodling on this a couple of months ago, then things happened fast: Blue Origin made a third suborbital flight of New Shepard and lifted the curtains at their Kent, WA headquarters, while SpaceX finally landeda Falcon first stage on a barge at sea and plans to seriously step up their ops tempo. And […]
April 20, 2016
Trump Card
So The DonaldwonNew York’s Republican primary. In related news, I left somethingclosely resembling Donald Trump in the toilet this morning. My point? Both are equally undeserving of attention. But here we are. There’s a story that Trump had beenconsideringa Presidential run for some time and was finally convinced to throw his combover hat in the […]
