Let's Get Off This Rock Already!
An Author's Adventures in Space Travel, Science Fiction, and Worlds Beyond
Harry Turtledove is a big fish in a small pond. He may not be widely known outside of alternate history circles, but within them everybody knows his name, and has probably read some of his work. Dust jackets have proclaimed him the "Master of Alternate History" for about three decades now. He was my personal... Continue Reading →
We all have our bad days at work. Sometimes you have to deal with an abrasive, domineering boss. Sometimes you're tasked with meeting impossibly high quotas, despite unclear instructions and faulty equipment. And sometimes, all those things are going on at once, and you happen to be working in the control room of Chernobyl Reactor... Continue Reading →
Nuclear power has had a long and complex history in outer space. Starting in the 1960s, both the US and USSR deployed full-on fission reactors aboard Earth-observing satellites; more recently, high-profile probes---Cassini, Curiosity, New Horizons---have all used safer but far less powerful radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which extract energy from the waste heat of decaying... Continue Reading →
For today's post, we will turn our attention to Earth---not an unprecedented topic for this blog, despite the overall focus on space. In particular I would like to discuss one of the wackier technological ideas of the Cold War, where the United States researched ways to turn its nuclear arsenal into a tool for economic... Continue Reading →
