Book Series
Water: Generation Mars, Book Three is coming!
In anticipation of the release, I am putting Kindle editions of each of the first three books on sale in October. Each book will be available for $0.99 for one week.
Scratching the Surface – October 1-7
Air – October 8-14
Shelter – October 15-21
Available from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08P5P3986?binding=kindle_edition
OSIRIS-REx, launched in September of 2016, returns this month! On September 24, the spacecraft will drop its payload into Earth orbit and continue on to the asteroid Apophis for more work. The payload capsule, with its 8.8 ounces of the asteroid Bennu, will deorbit and land in the Utah desert later that morning.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/osiris-rex/2023/09/08/heres-how-sept-24-asteroid-sample-delivery-will-work/
Human activity on the Moon will increase dramatically in the next decade. This article provides a concise view why.
A subplot in the forthcoming book, Water, involves a cousin on Earth who’s dad gets an assignment at the south pole of the Moon, studying ice cores for a new mine.
This is interesting. A group of researchers developed an agent-based model of a Martian colony “to explore the psychological, social, technological, economic, and logistical factors that would influence the long-term viability of a human Martian settlement.”
They found that the minimum number of individuals needed to create a colony with a stable population was much smaller than one might anticipate: 22.
The population of Dawn, in my books, is around 5000. I’ve worried that this might be too small for self-sufficiency. The fact that this model suggests 22 individuals are enough for population stability (albeit with regular shipments from Earth) suggests otherwise.
The personality categorization used in the model is necessarily blunt. People are, of course, more complicated than what can be modeled in an agent-based system like this one. However, based on the characters I’ve written in Generation Mars, I think that if one were to attempt to categorize the population of Dawn in a similar way, it would lean heavily in the direction the model suggests as most likely to survive: agreeable, social, with a creative approach to life.
www.bbc.com 