I am making hearts... (well, a heart, to start with! 8-)
I suppose I need to get back falling leaves before it's falling snow?
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Friday, November 29, 2019
Weirdness...
Splat out some points to the surface of a sphere. The next step is to make triangles!
Thursday, November 28, 2019
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Does it work?
Making Leaves!
I am splatting out a triangle and pushing out leaf points.
Barnards' Flying Star Planetary System
I've made an animation of Emerson and Rhoda (click to see), and a near star map (here).
Five (actually, six) planets. Barnards' Star is a 'red' dwarf, but it would actually seem yellow to our eyes, so I used yellow... None of these worlds is 'm class', but the double planet Emerson and Rhoda are super earths with deep oceans under ice. Emerson masses 2.056 Earths and Rhoda masses 1.174 Earths. They’re sort of ice midgets, super Earths with a lot of water and less dense than you might expect, but Emerson has much more water than Rhoda. I think that they are leftovers from a late collision which happened only a few billion years ago when two earlier planets blundered into each other and splashed a lot of mass into orbit around what was left of the previous version of Emerson, so they are in fairly close orbit, a little closer than the Moon to Earth, but of course with three times the mass of Earth they orbit faster, just under a week, about sixty times per local year and each planet’s day has slowed down to that.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Story Update
Nothing to report, actually. I've just been working on a planetary system for Barnards' Star, which has one known planet, Barnards' Star 'b', where 'a' is the first object, the star. I have some limits based on what the wiki tells me from scientific papers and some names from the astronomers' personal life. B might be Edward Emerson Barnard, Barnie or Ed, but probably Emerson.
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Back at the Writing Thing
I am trying to get back to writing that darn Analog story. I want to take 'footsteps into the future', and see where this gets me.
So, a few years from now there are more people in orbit, doing more things. An order of magnitude would be about twenty stations and facilities (the ISS and the current Chinese space station counting as two), less than a hundred but more than fifty people at any given time. From five hundred (roughly five hundred people have been to orbit and back so far) to five thousand people having ever been in space implies a high rotation, most of them being rich tourists but a lot of them also being working astronauts. Five hundred over the course of a year is just ten a week, though, still far less than the high volume heavy lift on demand capacity we can expect from the comedy team of Bezos and Musk...
So, a few years from now there are more people in orbit, doing more things. An order of magnitude would be about twenty stations and facilities (the ISS and the current Chinese space station counting as two), less than a hundred but more than fifty people at any given time. From five hundred (roughly five hundred people have been to orbit and back so far) to five thousand people having ever been in space implies a high rotation, most of them being rich tourists but a lot of them also being working astronauts. Five hundred over the course of a year is just ten a week, though, still far less than the high volume heavy lift on demand capacity we can expect from the comedy team of Bezos and Musk...
Sunday, November 3, 2019
3rd Day, Already Way Behind...
Sunday, 3 October 2019- So, where was I? I have a POV character who is working on building or designing habitats. As a builder, he or she is bossing the bots and as a designer, h/s is one part artist, one part urban planner and three parts materials engineer. I'm just going to decide he is a 200 year old guy; no good reason, I just am. I also want him to have his own company, one of the little independent habitat building outfits. Little is very relative, but I think I want the story problem to be the survival of this guys' company. There is a disaster, what looks like an industrial accident and things look very^2 bad for this guys' little outfit, but it was no accident at all...
Conspiracy, people getting other people killed for fun and profit, or through desperation? This actually is a murder mystery, I suppose, and I have been enjoying British Village police procedurals, so I want something of the same thing, especially since I want to explore the environment and the little society here, locals versus outsiders with money and their own outsider ways.
Conspiracy, people getting other people killed for fun and profit, or through desperation? This actually is a murder mystery, I suppose, and I have been enjoying British Village police procedurals, so I want something of the same thing, especially since I want to explore the environment and the little society here, locals versus outsiders with money and their own outsider ways.
Saturday, November 2, 2019
November Short Story For Analog SF
Well, that’s quite a working title…
Wednesday, 30 October 2019- I am writing a short story for Analog for this year.
I need to ask the questions, and be ready to start on Friday!
I need to ask the questions, and be ready to start on Friday!
Who, what, when, where, why, and how? Who am I writing about, what are they
doing, when and where is all this happening, how does this end and why does it end
that way?
doing, when and where is all this happening, how does this end and why does it end
that way?
Or-
Who are my characters?
What is the story problem?
When and where is the story set?
How do I finish this thing and why?
My characters are ‘methusalehs’, effectively immortal humans who can and do die,
just not for a long time and not if they can possibly avoid it. There is no reason why
they can’t live forever but death by murder or accident or suicide (self-murder) is
possible.
just not for a long time and not if they can possibly avoid it. There is no reason why
they can’t live forever but death by murder or accident or suicide (self-murder) is
possible.
The story problem is something interesting and worth the readers’ attention and time.
What?
What?
The story is set several centuries in the future, out in the dyson swarm of the
developing solar system. The Wild Trojans? The Earth Cloud? Most people are now
living off of Earth.
developing solar system. The Wild Trojans? The Earth Cloud? Most people are now
living off of Earth.
How do I end this story and why? That very much depends on the what…
(I can edit this on my phone so I can work on it at work, on break)
Thursday, 31 October 2019- I need to start tomorrow! So I need to get a plan ready
tonight. I wrote a webpage to calculate GWP and SE over time. I want to use SE
over time to calculate the cost of producing space stuff, goods in spaaace! Like
durable goods, powersats, habitats, ships and highly automated factories.
tonight. I wrote a webpage to calculate GWP and SE over time. I want to use SE
over time to calculate the cost of producing space stuff, goods in spaaace! Like
durable goods, powersats, habitats, ships and highly automated factories.
Saturday, 2 November 2019- Already two almost days behind tonight! 8-(
So, where am I? I owe myself two days worth of words on a story which I’m not
even done planning, but away we go, donma? 8-P
even done planning, but away we go, donma? 8-P
I am going to go with a 200 year old methuselah living in the ‘Earth Cloud’ of
habitats in orbit between the Earth and the Moon. Earth is still the center of the
solar system, but now a lot of people can and do live off of it; in fact, ‘land’,
habitat hectares, is cheaper than real land on Earth, although many people do
still prefer the mother of mankind for some reason… I have a population of 45.6
billion, a six-fold increase over 2019, but we can probably afford habitat space
for about 30 billion more. Well, ~75 trillion m^2, or ~75 million km^2, half of
the land area of Earth. I’m not sure how many people would be employed off of
Earth, but this represents about a hundred thousand O’Neill cylinders, which
would be fifty a decade at a rate doubling every decade for a hundred years.
Mind-boggling but definitely doable. If a thousand people are employed to build
each habitat that’d be fifty thousand to start with growing to fifty million in 2219,
about one tenth of a percent of nearly fifty billion.
habitats in orbit between the Earth and the Moon. Earth is still the center of the
solar system, but now a lot of people can and do live off of it; in fact, ‘land’,
habitat hectares, is cheaper than real land on Earth, although many people do
still prefer the mother of mankind for some reason… I have a population of 45.6
billion, a six-fold increase over 2019, but we can probably afford habitat space
for about 30 billion more. Well, ~75 trillion m^2, or ~75 million km^2, half of
the land area of Earth. I’m not sure how many people would be employed off of
Earth, but this represents about a hundred thousand O’Neill cylinders, which
would be fifty a decade at a rate doubling every decade for a hundred years.
Mind-boggling but definitely doable. If a thousand people are employed to build
each habitat that’d be fifty thousand to start with growing to fifty million in 2219,
about one tenth of a percent of nearly fifty billion.
My POV character probably is involved in this, just because it makes much more
sense to concentrate on something into which I have already sunk so much energy and thought.
sense to concentrate on something into which I have already sunk so much energy and thought.
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