Tag: Rumination

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Surprise

I just listened to the latest episode of the Song Exploder podcast, which discusses Green Day’s Basket Case (https://songexploder.net/green-day). Turns out that the epochal ode to questionable mental health started out as a love song. Go listen to a few minutes right now, from 2:45 to about 5:10. Or listen to the whole thing if you want. I’ll wait…

That’s about how writing a book works for me (minus the crystal meth). Honestly, I don’t know exactly how I do it. I have an idea for a story; I read a bunch of stuff; I start typing every day: fragments, Socratic dialogues, technical notes, whatever bubbles up into my consciousness; eventually, the story begins to take shape and I move out of the journaling phase and into the real writing. And then surprises happen: ideas that sound good one day seem terrible the next; minor characters suddenly take on personalities that require a major plot thread; other threads that seemed critical lose their meaning and are cast aside. Finally, almost mysteriously, there is a book, and I can say with certainty that it ends up nowhere I might have guessed when I set out with that first idea.

I love that. The surprise is why I write. I can’t speak for others, but I would guess that even the most organized and methodical writers cherish that surprise when it happens. I hope they do.


(image: first draft of Kerouac’s On the Road, cc-by-sa-2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kerouac_ontheroad_scroll.jpg)

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Celestial movement

I’ve been meaning to write a short piece about something I noticed while watching the recent lunar eclipse, but I wanted to wait until the furor of eclipse pics died down.

Where I live, the eclipse was already under way when the Moon rose. I also have a small mountain between me and the eastern horizon, so there was a pretty big bite missing by the time I saw it. I pointed my little telescope at it, and the family took turns at the eyepiece. Every so often, I would tilt the telescope farther up to compensate for the Moon’s movement across the sky as we rotated beneath it.

Continue reading “Celestial movement”

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Existential risk

I’ve been reading about existential risk lately. This article is not immediately relevant to Mars or our future there. But it also kinda is.

The Tanis fossil site, in North Dakota, appears to be showing us creatures directly killed by the Chicxulub asteroid impact. The picture of that leg is reminder that “geologic time” includes now, just as it did for these organisms on a day that changed the world, 66 million years ago.

From the article:
“We’ve got so many details with this site that tell us what happened moment by moment, it’s almost like watching it play out in the movies. You look at the rock column, you look at the fossils there, and it brings you back to that day,” says Robert DePalma, the University of Manchester, UK, graduate student who leads the Tanis dig.

Tanis: Fossil found of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike, scientists claim
Tanis: Fossil found of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike, scientists claim

Remains are unearthed of a dinosaur that may have died on the very day a space rock hit Earth.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
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Mars optimism

A succinct and optimistic piece from Chris Carberry and Rick Zucker at Explore Mars on why a commitment to putting humans on Mars is a good idea right now.
“After over 18 months of worldwide upheaval and social isolation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, people crave optimistic, ambitious, affordable and achievable programs that can help us overcome the negativity and division that hinders us.”

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thehill.com thehill.com
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Perseverance on Mars

I took a few minutes last night to stand out in the cold and look up at Mars. That bright orange dot, right there next to the Moon: we built a robot, and we threw it at that dot, and that robot used its own wits to find the perfect landing spot, and now it sits there, ready to look for past life. On that bright orange dot, right there next to the Moon.

image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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There will come a time

“There will come a time,” said Sally, “when things will go wrong.” Her face was serious but kind. “Comms might go down. Your suit might get damaged. Your nose might itch.” Everybody smiled. And then everybody’s nose itched. “Things will go wrong,” Sally repeated, “often many things at once. It’s very easy to lose your cool when they do, and that’s guaranteed to make things worse. But if you keep calm and deal with each problem as it comes, there is always a way to make things better.”

Air: Generation Mars, Book One

Coming in October

 

image: NASA/JPL/MSSS; processing and mosaic: Olivier de Goursac (fr), 2014

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How many people?

This is an interesting paper estimating the minimum number of people required for a self-sufficient colony on Mars. Using a mathematical model to estimate work time requirements vs. work time capacity, the researchers come up with a surprisingly low number: 110.

In the forthcoming second book of the Generation Mars series, I peg the colony population at around 5000, so I think I’m good there.

Minimum Number of Settlers for Survival on Another Planet - Scientific Reports
Minimum Number of Settlers for Survival on Another Planet - Scientific Reports

What is the feasibility of survival on another planet and being self-sustaining? This question is of particular importance for the future of the space conquest and perhaps also for the future of humanity in general [1,2]. The use of in situ resources and different social organizations have been proposed [3–6,12–19] but there is still a…
Nature Nature