Tag Archives: space

Kaboom! (Project Argus; 3-26-1959)

This is what happens when you let scientists play with toys.

Apparently, last summer, the Air Force detonated three atomic bombs high above the South Atlantic… just to see what would happen!

That's actually a little too glib.  Dr. N.C. Cristofilos, of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, has always wanted to trace the lines of magnetic force that girdle the Earth.  After Sputnik launched in October 1957, he has been hung up on the idea of using satellites to measure the path of charged particles along those lines.  But Dr. Cristofilos was not content to collect data of the natural environment for, as he confided to me, "The creation of artificial effects under controlled conditions is more interesting, as the initial conditions are known and therefore physical quantities can be measured under completely diferent conditions from those which the natural phenomena allow."

Which, translated into layman's speech, means, "We need to detonate three atomic bombs high above the South Atlantic and see what happens!"

The Air Force love their toys, too, and the whole project went from concept to completion in about half a year.  They apparently wanted to get the experiment done lest some pesky nuclear test ban treaty come into being unexpectedly (they needn't have worried). 

In fact, I think the Air Force moved a bit too quickly for a project designed for purely scientific research.  I have heard rumors (without detailing the source for fear of leaking classified information) that the real project aim was to see if, by detonating nukes high in the atmosphere, they might create an artificial barrier against enemy missiles, or at least light them up in flight for easier interception.

I can't tell you if that's the case (I doubt it), but we do have a host of scientific data available.  You see, Explorer IV was launched last summer specifically to observe the effects of Project Argus (as the tests were called).  Of course, they didn't tell the press last July.  I'm frankly amazed that we're being told the truth at all.  Perhaps the whole thing was about to leak, and the government wanted to control the release.

So what did Explorer IV see?  The Argus blasts created their own auroral light along the magnetic lines nearest the bursts.  Electrons charged by the blasts flew along these lines to an apogee of some 4000 miles.  Essentially, the satellite was able to see Earth's magnetic field glow in the dark.  The Argus tests also enabled scientists to venture a guess as to the lifespan of a charged electron, though I haven't head anything definitive yet.

Of course, three tests in one section of the upper atmosphere hardly makes for a definitive data set.  We clearly need more airbursts!  I bet the Air Force is studying plans for several such tests over the Soviet Union, seeing how that nation covers such a large swath of territory that must be just loaded with magnetic lines of force.  I bet we could even get the Russians to pay us for the service–if we did it at night time, we'd be providing lighting for those remote Siberians who lack access to electricity.  Oh, we're such humanitarians!  We should put Edvard Teller, that philanthropist, in charge of the project after he's done using atomic bombs to blast canals (Project Plowshare).

And if your coffee tastes funny, I hear strontium-90 is good for your bones.  Why else would they absorb it preferentially over boring ol' calcium?

Oh dear.  My cynicism is showing again, isn't it?

Back to fiction in two days.  Satellite's got a snazzy new slick-sized format.  But are the stories as impressive?  Stay tuned!

(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)


This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

Where's my script?  (F&SF Part… um… Pioneer IV update!; 3-08-1959)

Isn't it frustrating when you try to tune into your favorite program and hear nothing but static? 

Sorry folks!  I'd planned to give you Part 2 of this (last) month's F&SF.  Well, the last third of the issue is taken up by a Poul Anderson novelette, and I know I won't be able to devote a whole article to just that, assuming I can even get through it.  But I don't have enough to fill an article with the remaining stories. 

Therefore, I have resolved to just give you all an extra-long column day-after-tomorrow!  It will be worth the wait, I promise.  There are some fine stories this month.  And who knows?  Maybe the Anderson story will be good.

(gasp)

All right, I can't hold my breath that long.

——–

In other news, if you've been tracking the flight of Pioneer IV, you may have heard that we finally lost communications with the plucky little probe at more than 400,000 miles away.  This isn't the fault of the ground antennas, which could probably track the vehicle much further out.  The satellite's batteries just ran out of juice.  Hopefully, when we have bigger rockets (perhaps the Air Force's Thor "Hustler"?), we can send out satellites with solar panels on board that can broadcast indefinitely.

Anyway, the Russians are crowing that their Mechta made it further, but we're saying that our science was better.  But can we really trumpet our mission as a triumph without a sodium flatulence experiment?

See you on the 10th!



(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

We're Number Two! (Pioneer IV; 3-04-1959)

In any nascent endeavor, it is human nature to trumpet even the most modest of achievements.  Sure, Pioneer I didn't make it to the moon, but it went pretty high and confirmed the Van Allen Belts.  Sure, Vanguard I was the size of a grapefruit, but it taught us that the Earth is pear-shaped.

In that vein, sure, Pioneer IV, NASA's latest moon shot, may not have been entirely a success, but at least it will be the first (American) probe to sail beyond our planet's celestial companion and into solar orbit.

Launched yesterday on a Juno II, Pioneer IV is essentially an exact duplicate of the less-successful Pioneer III, with a little extra shielding around one of its charged particle detectors to better measure cosmic radiation.  In the tradition of focusing on the positive, I will note that Pioneer IV's mission is not just to take snapshots of the moon, but to duplicate the mission profile of its predecessor so as to provide a comparative data set.  This is the soul of science–the repeating and repeatability of experiments. 

As far as the trip to the moon is concerned, there have only been a couple of minor hiccoughs: one of the three scaling factor taps on one of the counters got knocked out when Pioneer IV's engines shook it a bit too roughly.  In English, a scaling factor allows scientists to convert the raw voltages, recorded when charged particles hit the spacecraft, into usable numbers.  I don't think this critically damages the instrument.  Pioneer IV's transmission also went on the fritz for about 30 seconds while the craft traversed Earth's outer radiation belt. 

While we're on the topic of problems, it looks like the little spacecraft is going to pass wide of its target, missing the surface of the moon by some 37,000 miles.  This is too far to activate the photoelectric sensors on the spacecraft, which would have been used to activate a camera–if the probe had been heavy enough include a camera!  Not a huge loss.

What will really be exciting is to finally give the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's deep space tracking network a full run through its paces.  We've never tried to monitor a spacecraft several hundred thousand miles from Earth before.  On the other hand, if the Soviets can do it, I suspect we can, too.

So there you have it.  We launched a probe that weighed sixty times less than Luna I and which missed its target by a distance ten times greater.  And we did it two months after Luna I.

A success?  You be the judge…

P.S. Following up on Discoverer I, the Air Force is claiming that they are still receiving sporadic signals from their spacecraft.  They've also confirmed that their new rocket is a Thor-Hustler, whatever that is.  The Swedish press is calling Discoverer I "The Whispering Satellite" since they can barely hear it, if at all. 

I'm still unconvinced.  Something's fishy.  I just can't tell you exactly what.

See you on March 6 with a book review!



(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

Fool's Satellite (Discoverer 1; 3-02-1959)

Something went into orbit on the 28th.  Maybe.

Normally, I herald each new space launch with strident fanfare.  After all, when Vanguard or Explorer go up, it's big news and everybody knows about it.  But the Air Force's announced launch of "Discoverer" on February 28 has that same sort of strangeness and after-the-fact quality I've come to associate with Soviet Sputnik launches.

Let's back up.

Yesterday, the Air Force announced that it had launched "Discoverer" into polar orbit from its California launching facility, Vandenberg Air Force Base.  They said it was an engineering flight designed to test what will someday be a biological sample return mission (i.e. the Air Force will send up animals, retrieve them after several days in space, and study them to determine the effects of space on living things).  Apparently, this is the second time they have tried this; the first time was on January 26 of this year, but it was reportedly unsuccessful.

Here is where the story gets a bit dicey:

1) Why was Discoverer launched into a polar orbit?  Normally, space launches are done from Cape Canaveral in Florida.  Aided by the Earth's rotation, they go out on an Easterly course over the Atlantic.  This restricts their track to a narrow range of latitudes.  A satellite in a polar orbit eventually covers the entire Earth as the planet rotates underneath the track of the probe's flight, making it better suited for mapping and reconnaissance missions.

2) Why wouldn't strictly scientific missions be done under the auspices of NASA, as the Air Force did with the Pioneer moon shots?

3) If Discoverer made it into orbit, why have independent stations been unable to pick up its telemetry on their radios? 

4) What did they use to launch it?  A capsule-return spacecraft isn't a light vehicle, and neither the Thor-Able nor the Juno II are strong enough to send one into orbit.

Now, I don't want to be visited by the fellows in gray suits for my observational acumen, but putting two and two together, I'd conclude that Discoverer must be a prototype surveillance satellite.  If I really wanted to get far out with my speculations, I'd conclude that it's a fake surveillance satellite designed to gauge the reaction of the Eastern Bloc to having a spy probe overhead.

Apparently, the Communists don't care much.  Aside from one stern protest from an East German radio station (I know–all Commies are the same), the Warsaw Pact has been conspicuously silent about Discoverer.

Maybe they know it's a fake…



(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

Vanguard does it again! (Vanguard II; 2-18-1959)

At long last, the Vanguard team has launched the satellite it had always wanted to.  Vanguard II soared into orbit atop its 3-stage launcher yesterday joining four other satellites (three American, one Soviet) around the Earth.  It is expected to orbit for the next 300 years.

The Navy and NASA have been trying for almost a year to duplicate their first success back in May 1958.  Vanguard I was ridiculed by Soviet Premier Khruschev as a "grapefruit."  Truth to tell, he wasn't far off.  The first Vanguard did little more than duplicate the work of Sputnik I.  On the other hand, the Vanguard project also entailed the building of Earth's first world-wide satellite tracking system as well as the development of the first purpose-built civilian booster.

Well, that booster finally got some good use this year.  Vanguard II is much bigger (beachball-sized) than its ancestor.  Moreover, the new satellite has been touted as the first "eye in the sky."  There are two photocells located at the tip of two optical telescopes mounted inside the probe.  Their mission for the next two weeks (the lifespan of their batteries) will be to detect reflections off of clouds in the Northern Hemisphere. 

If that doesn't sound exciting to you, how about if I tell you that this is the first step toward bonafide weather satellites?  Within a couple of years, we will have automated orbital observatories with a clear view of much of the globe at any given time.  They'll be able to spot hurricanes, cold fronts, jet streams.. you name it.  After a few years, they will accumulate enough data to revolutionize our climatology models and maybe even lead to large-scale weather control.  Aside from communications (pioneered in December with the launch of Project SCORE), weather is the prime commercial use for satellites.

Even more nifty is the tape recorder set-up they've got in Vanguard.  This allows the satellite to collect and store data for later transmission down to Earth.  As Space Age as this sounds, rumor has it that this sophisticated system is about to be superseded by an all new, digital development.  That will be an exciting story to break, when I can.

Another interesting tidbit, to me, is how the Vanguard team chose to moderate the temperature onboard the satellite.  There is no air in space, so all heat is received and transmitted away by radiation, and not by the more-efficient methods of conduction and convection, as on Earth.  Translation: it's hot in the sun and cold in the shadow, and there is no moderation by a surrounding medium.  It is important that the satellite not absorb too much heat or too little.  On the Pioneers, at least the first three, they had an alternating black and white paint scheme to address this problem. 

Vanguard, on the other hand, is coated with powdered silicon monooxide as insulation underneath the shiny aluminum picked for maximum visibility.  Inside, the satellite is gold-plated!  I assume this is to conduct heat to the silicon monoxide shell.  I wonder how much that cost. 

The only disappointment is that Vanguard II is tumbling as it spins like a wobbly top.  This is going to make interpreting the photoscanner data a challenge.  Still, it's an exciting first step.  The next few years are going to be incredible.

Back to fiction in two days.  Thanks for all the well-wishes!



(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

The first toehold (Project Mercury: 2-10-1959)

For a little over a year, both Superpowers have lobbed unmanned payloads of various (generally increasing) sizes into orbit.  But the real question in the public's mind is when either side is going to get around to sending a person into orbit.  After all, things that go beep-beep are all very well, but can a dumb robot really stand in for an independently thinking human? 

We all know that the Russians plan to send someone into space–their rocket is certainly big enough for the job.  They just need to figure out how to get it safely back to Earth.  For the moment, the United States does not have a rocket strong enough to send a manned spacecraft, but we will soon.  It will probably be an adaptation of the Atlas ICBM, the most powerful missile in our arsenal.

As it turns out, our new National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been working on a manned space program since it first came into existence last October.  Just one month later, on November 26, Project Astronaut came into existence.  Apparently, they didn't like that name because when NASA Director Keith Glennan officially announced America's manned space program, he gave it the evocative and all-American name, Project Mercury.  Perhaps the next one in the series will be Project Lincoln.  Let's hope neither turns out to be an Edsel.

From all accounts, Mercury is going to be a simple, one-manned ship.  I haven't heard what it's going to look like, but it will probably have a wingless, ballistic shape.  I'm sure the Air Force would love to have a sleek spaceplane in its stable, but with the X-15 as yet untested, its big brother is probably many years off.

So now the question is who will they get to fly the thing?  Well, back in January, NASA put forth the following qualifications: age, less than 40; height, less than 5 feet 11 inches; excellent physical condition; bachelor's degree or equivalent; graduate of test pilot school; 1,500 hours flight time; and a qualified jet pilot.

Sadly, while I qualify for three (four if you push it) of the seven qualifications, I've logged all of seven hours piloting an airplane, and it wasn't a jet.  I have it on good authority, however, that NASA has gotten plenty of applicants, and they will survive just fine without me.  These applicants have just begun an arduous medical screening that will likely wash out a good number of eager would-be spacemen.

How ignominous: before vaulting off into the wild black yonder, they first have to bend over and cough for Uncle Sam, or at least his team of nurses.  I suppose the prize is well worth it, though.

We won't know who or how many astronaut candidates will be selected for a while.  I am given to understand, however, that all of the astronauts will be from the military services, which leaves hotshot civilians like Scott Crossfield out of the running.  I'm not sure why this is.  Maybe it's a security issue.

I hope you are enjoying the interplay of science fact and fiction in this column.  I think the two are so intertwined these days that it would be silly to eschew coverage of one of them.

Back on the 12th!



(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

A near miss? (Dream in flight; 1-05-1959)

For those of you waiting on tenterhooks, here is the news:

Mechta, a.k.a. Dream a.k.a. Lunik has soared past the moon.  Skimming just 4,700 miles over the surface of the Earth's celestial neighbor, Mechta has become the first artificial object to escape Earth's gravity and enter solar orbit, where it will remain for the foreseeable future. 

Already, the signals from the spacecraft are getting hard to pick up.  Nevertheless, the instruments on the Soviet probe have already returned some fascinating preliminary results.  For instance, it is now clear that, unlike the Earth, the moon has no magnetic field.  This is not unexpected–the moon is a lot less dense than the Earth and thus is unlikely to have the iron core currently believed to be required to generate a magnetic field.  Moreover, the moon is small enough that any iron it does have in its center is likely frozen solid, and it is believed that a spinning liquid iron core is necessary to generate a planetary magnetic field. 

So any space travelers heading to the moon won't be able to use their compasses.  On the other hand, I imagine that the sun and the Earth, the former moving slowly across the lunar sky over the course of two weeks, the latter hanging fixed in the heavens (at least from half of the moon), will provide perfectly adequate navigational aids.

It is expected that Mechta will also return data on solar radiation in interplanetary space, but that will take a while to reach print.

Of course, the real mystery of Mechta still has not been solved.  Western newspapers are describing the mission as an "overshoot" and a "near miss," but was Mechta even aimed at the moon?  TASS (the Soviet government news agency) certainly has not confirmed this.  On the other hand, Moscow Radio stated last night that Mechta would be taking pictures of the moon's hitherto unseen far side; this report was later retracted as erroneous.

Curiouser and curiouser!  Was there a camera on board Lunik?  There certainly was enough space for one–at least, an American-built one.  Was the probe supposed to orbit the moon?  If not, what was all that extra payload for?  And is there any connection between this flight and the unorthodox visit to the United States by Anastas Mikoyan, the U.S.S.R's number 2 political honcho?

I've said before that reading the news these days is like reading a science fiction magazine.  It wouldn't take much for an enterprising author to take today's headlines and turn them into tomorrow's stories.

Hmmm……

Speaking of which, I promise to return to covering the world of science fiction in two days.  Stay tuned!

(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

Red Moon? (The launch of Mechta; 1-03-59)

Bet on the Russians to throw us a curve.

Last month, I crowed that America had won the Space Race in 1958 with the launching of Score, the first communications satellite, and of the mildly successful Pioneer series.  Well, the Soviets apparently just wanted to give us a false feeling of security, because they have finally launched their own moon probe.  They call it "Mechta" or "Dream," while the press has affectionately (or derisively, as they drink their sour grape punch) dubbed it "Lunik."

It takes a day-and-a-half to get to the moon, so the Reds may yet suffer a Pioneer-style setback halfway there.  Nevertheless, the probe has already broken altitude records.  Moreover, the craft weighs almost 800 pounds, dwarfing anything we put up in 1958.  The U.S.S.R. clearly has a new rocket, and it's a doozy.

Interestingly, the Soviets have been rather cagy as to the exact purpose of this probe.  Is it supposed to impact the moon?  Is it supposed to enter lunar orbit, as was the intention of the American Pioneers?  Or will it just fly by?  All Moscow will say is, "The multi stage cosmic rocket has gone out according to its program on the trajectory of its movement in the direction of the moon."  The excerpt below doesn't clarify much either, though it does sound ambitious:

The Soviets have announced that Mechta is carrying a similar slew of experiments to that carried on the Air Force Pioneers.  These experiments are designed to investigate the intensity of magnetic fields around the Earth and moon, as well as the space in-between.  They include a magnetometer, a geiger counter, a scintillation counter.  There is also a micrometeorite detector on board.  One has to wonder if these instruments are any better than the ones lofted in Pioneers 0-2; while they weigh an order of magnitude more, this may well be because the Soviets are behind us in miniaturization technology.  On the other hand, it may be that the satellite is carrying a secret payload–perhaps there is another dog on board, or maybe a flea circus.

Lunik has made its mark on history already, however–literally.  I am told that the probe released a cloud of sodium gas late last night when it was about a quarter of the way to the moon.  I can think of two reasons for this.  Scientifically, it allows us to determine the effects of the space environment on clouds of sodium gas.  Politically, it proves that the Soviets actually did send a probe to the moon, their news outlets having skewed somewhat left of complete honesty in the past few decades.

So stay tuned.  By January 5th, I shall either report to you of the triumphant success of the first Soviet lunar shot or of its failure.  If the latter be the case, at least it will be in good company.

(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

America SCORES! (12-22-1958)

Unless the Soviets can pull a rabbit out of their hat, it looks like the United States will come out the winner in the Space Race for 1958.

It was only a matter of time before we finally used our Atlas rocket, the nation's first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), to launch a satellite.  With the Atlas, we can finally throw up payloads of similar weights to those launched by the Soviets with their ICBM.

The first Atlas mission, Project SCORE, was launched on December 18, 1958.  It is the heaviest payload ever to be launched by the United States into orbit—a whopping 8000 pounds' worth!  That compares favorably to the 9000 pound payload launched by the Soviet Union in May (Sputnik III).  Of course, those figures are a little less impressive when one realizes that the vast bulk of that weight actually comprises the last stage of the rocket.  Moreover, Sputnik III carried over a ton of instrumentation.  SCORE carries a bare 150 pounds of payload.

What SCORE does, however, is unprecedented.  Quite simply, it is the world's first communication's satellite.

Currently, if one wishes to send a message across the country or the world, one must either use archaic transoceanic cables or, more frequently, send the signal via some sort of radio.  The former method puts strong limits on destination (messages can only go where the cables are strung), and the latter is only as reliable as the atmosphere will allow.  Reception at remote locations is virtually impossible.  But with a satellite, one truly has the high ground.  Messages can be beamed anywhere along the satellite's line of sight, which is essentially limitless. 

Developed jointly by the Air Force and veteran communications company, RCA, SCORE has the ability both to broadcast messages as they are beamed to it from ground stations and to store received messages and transmit them later.  Seeing how it was an Air Force mission, there were probably plenty of classified messages sent and re-transmitted, but the one everybody got to know about was this one, recorded by President Eisenhower the day after launch:

"This is the President of the United States speaking.  Through the marvels of scientific advance, my voice is coming to you from a satellite circling in outer space.  My message is a simple one: Through this unique means I convey to you and to all mankind, America's wish for peace on Earth and goodwill toward men everywhere."

Once again, science fiction has become fact.  Arthur C. Clarke predicted communications satellites in the '40s, and here we are at the dawn of a new era. 

If that era comes.  It must be cynically pointed out that this launch had a second purpose—to show the Soviets that we, too, have the ability to send a nuclear bomb 6,000 miles across the globe.  While this represents a technological achievement and another example of science fiction become fact, I somehow can't be as excited about this development.  It is yet another reminder that, thus far, the exploration of space has been primarily a military endeavor, and our plowshares are barely modified swords.

(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

Oops, Part 4 (12-08-1958)

Well, at least we're consistent.

The past few months, the newspapers have run headline after headline describing America's failures in trying to shoot the Moon.  The Air Force had the first at-bat with its three Pioneers.  #0 blew up so early that it wasn't even dignified with a name.  #1 limped about halfway to the Moon before falling back down.  #2's performance was somewhere in the middle.

If you believe the papers (and/or the Vice President), all of these flights were successes.  After all, any launch, even one that doesn't meet its goals, is a learning experience.  Sarcasm aside, Pioneers I and II were not total washes–they sent back a lot of good data on the Earth's magnetic field and the radiation trapped therein.  Moreover, they went a lot higher than any of our previous probes, certainly higher than anything the Russians have sent up.

The day before yesterday (Dec. 6, 1958) was the Army's chance to step up to the plate.  If hitting the Moon is a Home Run, I'd say they hit a double.  Pioneer III, a teeny 13-pounder launched on a Juno II made it out about 67,000 miles before falling back to Earth.

As always, I collected as many papers as I could and kept my ears glued to the radio.  Early editions simply announced the launch, but it was clear pretty quickly that something had gone wrong.  Apparently, Pioneer's rocket ran out of fuel about four seconds early, which sent the probe off at too low an angle.  Even though Pioneer III left Earth with more speed than Pioneer I, its journey was only half as high.  38 hours after launch, the poor little probe was ashes in the ionosphere. 

Silver lining: A good 22 hours of data was collected from the probe, and it is already adding to our knowledge regarding the two (count them: two!) radiation belts girdling the Earth.  As a matter of fact, those belts are the only phenomenon Pioneer III could report on.  Unlike Pioneers 0-II, which had a whole suite of experiments including even a TV camera, Pioneer III had just one experiment: a pair of Geiger-Muller tubes for counting the cosmic radiation particles hitting the spacecraft.  I am not sure why Pioneer III was such a simple probe.  It may be that the Army got the assignment in a hurry and had to rush things.  It might also be that the Army's Juno II doesn't have the enough strength to lift anything heavier.

In any event, this isn't the last we'll be hearing from the Army.  Pioneer IV will be up sometime soon, though Major General John Medaris, head of the Army's rocket development center in Alabama, had no firm dates for the press.

"See me after Christmas," he told the television people.

Get a load of that puss.  That looks more like a toothache than a booster failure. 

Here's an interesting question: The Space Race has been marked by more failures than successes.  Did anyone ever write a science fiction story that predicted this level of teething pain in a space program?  It seems to me that space vehicles in fiction simply work.  If they don't work perfectly, they have maintenance issues like those that afflict an automobile or perhaps a naval vessel.  This goes back to my previous comments regarding the focus of science fiction on the pilot rather than the large and necessary logistical tail. 

It's a pity we don't see more stories incorporating launch failures.  They could be an exciting dramatic device.

(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.