23 May 2026, Writing - part xxxx422 The Novel, Antiquity and Technology, Worldview, Created, Communications
Announcement: I
still need a new publisher. However, I’ve taken the step to republish my
previously published novels. I’m starting with Centurion, and
we’ll see from there. Since previously published novels have little
chance of publication in the market (unless they are huge best sellers), I
might as well get those older novels back out. I’m going through Amazon
Publishing, and I’ll pass the information on to you.
Introduction: I wrote the
novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21st novel
and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that
included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other
general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the
metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the
way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire
novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.
I’m using this novel as
an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel
published. I’ll keep you informed along the way.
Today’s Blog: To see the steps in
the publication process, visit my writing websites http://www.sisteroflight.com/.
The four plus two basic
rules I employ when writing:
1. Don’t confuse your readers.
2. Entertain your readers.
3. Ground your readers in the writing.
4. Don’t show (or tell) everything.
4a. Show what can be
seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage of the novel.
5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.
6. The initial scene is the most important scene.
These are the steps I use to write a novel
including the five discrete parts of a novel:
1. Design the initial scene
2. Develop a theme statement
(initial setting, protagonist, protagonist’s helper or antagonist, action
statement)
a. Research as required
b. Develop the initial
setting
c. Develop the characters
d. Identify the telic flaw
(internal and external)
3. Write the initial scene
(identify the output: implied setting, implied characters, implied action
movement)
4. Write the next scene(s)
to the climax (rising action)
5. Write the climax scene
6. Write the falling action
scene(s)
7. Write the dénouement
scene
I finished writing my 31st novel,
working title, Cassandra, potential title Cassandra:
Enchantment and the Warriors. The theme statement is: Deirdre and
Sorcha are redirected to French finishing school where they discover difficult
mysteries, people, and events.
I finished writing my 34th novel
(actually my 32nd completed novel), Seoirse,
potential title Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment. The
theme statement is: Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at
Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately,
Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.
Here is the cover
proposal for the third edition of Centurion:
|
Cover Proposal |
The most important scene
in any novel is the initial scene, but eventually, you have to move to the
rising action. I am continuing to write on my 30th novel,
working title Red Sonja. I finished my 29th novel,
working title Detective. I finished writing number 31,
working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior. I just
finished my 32nd novel and 33rd novel: Rose:
Enchantment and the Flower, and Seoirse: Enchantment and the
Assignment.
How to begin a novel. Number one thought,
we need an entertaining idea. I usually encapsulate such an idea with a
theme statement. Since I’m writing a new novel, we need a new theme
statement. Here is an initial cut.
For novel 30: Red Sonja, a Soviet spy,
infiltrates the X-plane programs at Edwards AFB as a test pilot’s
administrative clerk, learns about freedom, and is redeemed.
For Novel 32: Shiggy Tash finds a lost girl
in the isolated Scottish safe house her organization gives her for her latest
assignment: Rose Craigie has nothing, is alone, and needs someone or something
to rescue and acknowledge her as a human being.
For novel 33, Book girl:
Siobhàn Shaw is Morven McLean’s savior—they are both attending Kilgraston
School in Scotland when Morven loses everything, her wealth, position, and
friends, and Siobhàn Shaw is the only one left to befriend and help her
discover the one thing that might save Morven’s family and existence.
For novel 34: Seoirse is assigned to
be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses
and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.
For novel 35: Eoghan, a Scottish National
Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem in Loch Lomond and
The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and accidentally
releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires
a new life and perhaps love.
Here
is the scene development outline:
1.
Scene input (comes from the previous scene output or is an initial scene)
2.
Write the scene setting (place, time, stuff, and characters)
3.
Imagine the output, creative elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and
develop the tension and release.
4.
Write the scene using the output and creative elements to build the tension.
5.
Write the release
6.
Write the kicker
Today: Let me tell you a little about writing. Writing
isn’t so much a hobby, a career, or a pastime. Writing is a habit and an
obsession. We who love to write love to write.
I want to start with these definitions as
a premise for writing.
1. Write to entertain
2. Write using the
common outline for a novel
3. Develop a telic flaw,
a protagonist, an antagonist, and plan to resolve the telic flaw.
4. Start with an initial
scene.
5. Develop and define a
modern protagonist: you get a telic flaw, a potential protagonist’s helper, and
a potential initial scene from the development.
6. Write to reveal the
protagonist.
And here is the scene:
1. Scene input (comes from the previous
scene output or is an initial scene)
2. Write the scene setting (place, time,
stuff, and characters)
3. Imagine the output, creative elements,
plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and develop the tension and release.
4. Write the scene using the output and
creative elements to build the tension.
5. Write the release
6. Write the kicker
I’m going to move into a more technical
subject this time. I’ve addressed this
subject before, but I haven’t in a while, and most of the time, I’ve looked at
it in the context of other writing ideas.
This is the subject of technology.
Why is technology important? The most critical point, in my mind, is
accuracy from the standpoint of the time and place of the novels we write. I’d say, technology is perhaps the most
important compared to history. Why is
that?
The obvious answer for the modern era is
the change of technology. If you write a
novel set in the 1990, and every character has an iPhone, you have done a great
harm to your technology and the historical and technical accuracy of your
novel. The iPhone was first introduced
in 2007. There are a lot of these traps
especially for the young and inexperienced who didn’t live through these
times. In other words, to a person who
spent their entire life with an iPhone (or other, so called, smart phone), the
idea of not having one is almost impossible to imagine. Likewise, the aircraft was invented in
1903. If you have an heavier than air
aircraft in your novel before about 1910, you are breaking an historical
fact. Now, you could be like some of the
creepy and silly movies and novels written in the modern era that have all
kinds of impossible historical technological anomalies. For example, one of the latest Sherlock Holmes
movies in the last ten years has an aircraft in the late 1890s or so. Now, it could be late Sherlock in about 1920,
but it’s hard to tell with the way movies are produced, and who can tell what
time they are really in. In any case,
these types of craziness defy reality and technology, but it gets worse. These are easy examples from the centuries of
knowledge and documentation. What about
the very early times in history and prehistory?
This is something I’d like to explain and
explore. My real expertise is in early
languages, cultures, and societies especially those that are early
Mediterranean and early British. These
are some of the times I’ve written about and that I use in my writing. Plus, I translate Anglo-Saxon and Athenian
Greek. These are both dead languages so
they aren’t going anywhere.
Here's my plan. I’m going to start with early technological
history like the seven basic machines and other major technologies and apply
them to writing about history. We’ll investigate
foods, cooking, warfare, agriculture, horses, husbandry (farming and animals),
crops, furniture, architecture, and so on.
The point is to begin to understand the past and past technology so we
can write historically correct and enlightening novels. In addition, we will eventually move to the
modern eras and then to science fiction.
Science fiction is all about predicting and extrapolating
technology. We’ll make a sweeping study
of technology such that we can write realistic and historically correct
fiction.
I looked at technology in a way that most
historians don’t. In terms of cause and
effect. Most historians see history as
just events, but they are all based in cause and effect. We as writers understand this about fiction
well, that is if we are successful writers.
A novel moves forward by cause and effect—they are not simply events or
elements in isolation. They are all
connected by the telic flaw and telic flaw resolution. This means novels don’t follow the historical
model, but rather a technological model.
What’s that mean?
Technology and development are always
evolutionary. Yes, there are times when
some inventor makes an accidental discovery, but most technological discoveries
have nothing to do with accidents—they are more akin to the Wright brothers who
made detailed experiments to end up with a flying vehicle. The complexity of their development and
experimentation give a lie to the idea of the accidental discovery. In fact, I’ll go so far as to totally refute
the idea of the accidental discovery.
Indeed, there are cases in history of this type of discovery, but the
experimenter had to be knowledgeable and able to recognize what he or she had
made and what it could do. I will assert
that even with a great accident, you aren’t going to discover a flying vehicle
or a faster than light means of travel.
You might discover a better way to make rubber but you better be an
expert in what rubber is and does. My
point is that we as authors need to fill in the holes that readers might not
fully understand so they figure out the real difficulty and power in both
technology and technology development. All
this needs to be in the background unless it is the basis of the telic
flaw. I try to present technology in my
novels as part of the fabric of the story and the novels. This is more obvious in my science fiction,
but also a strength of my more modern magic realism novels. Wait, magic realism and technology? How’s that?
I guess I need to touch on this. Back to worldview: real, reflected, and
created. That’s next.
Computing and computers comes from logic
and math. In the beginning, most
languages and cultures were base five.
Five fingers, therefore base five.
In Greek, for example, six is five plus one. In Latin, V is the symbol for five. You also have consonants filling the place of
number symbols, which causes all kinds of problem. However, you really can’t do real math until
you have null (0). Null is zero and
wasn’t invented in Western thought until really around 1000 AD. In fact, the concept of null is pretty much lost
in time. The problem is that with zero,
you can’t get anywhere until you have base ten.
With zero and base ten, you can do real math. When I write, real math, I mean you can do
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Further, you can move into fractions and
ratios. You can actually begin symbolic
math, which means algebra. From algebra,
you get to geometry, then trigonometry and proofs. I hate proofs, but proofs are the basis for
logic and logic with symbolic math gets you to calculus and advanced math. This all brings you to Boolean math and
Boolean logic—the next step is computers.
Computers really didn’t do anything very
powerfully or helpfully for quite a while.
They were used mainly for high end mathematics and marching
equations. That is until the great three
came out. The great three were the TRS-80,
Apple II, and the Commodore PET. The application
of these three computers into the marketplace caused the number of programmers
to go from the thousands to the millions in months. These early programmers didn’t intend to
build productivity programs, they wanted to make games. The number of programs and especially games increased
exponentially. At the same time, these
millions of programmers began to write their own business programs. They didn’t want to pay $500 to $1000 for a
word processor or a data base program—they just wrote their own. In the end, when you go from thousands to
millions of programmers, you get much better and more product. The end result was computers becoming the
basis for most gaming programs, the advent of the gaming systems, and the
integration of computers into business.
Before this great development of programs, businesses all viewed
personal computers as worthless for business.
After these new programmers invented the spreadsheet, better word
processors, what you see is what you get programming, fully developed data
bases, financial programs, along with games, the personal computer began to
expand from purely entertainment for the home into business and operations in
the home. We are where we are today
because of the release of programming capability through the great three. That’s why we are where we are today.
Now, imagine what would happen if every
technology was like this. We might have
the internet. Wow, we do. The internet is purely based on millions of
people developing their own websites for business, games, fun, blogs, entertainment,
and so on and so on.
If you want to develop technology, get it
into the hands of millions of creators.
This is one of the reasons the USA is number one in the world for many
technologies, and eventually will crush the rest of the world, unless the USA
government gets in the way.
The most important takeaways from the
development of the computer is that unregulated development and entertainment
development by millions results in enormous development and creativity. The results are still not at full
fruition. The end is not in sight. The potential for the government to kill the
golden goose is always there. On the
other hand, the lack of the government interaction in obvious legal and
property issues brought about by computer technology development has potential
very negative effects. For example,
cybercurrency.
The reason cybercurrency exists is only
for the purpose of committing crimes.
Cybercurrency is a secure means to pay for illegal services and
operations. In the beginning it was
mostly for child pornography and then for drugs and other illegal
products. Instead of reigning in the
problem of cybercurrency, the government is encouraging it. This would be good if the end result was the
development of technology, but sadly, it isn’t.
On the other hand, the use of cybertools to create for example, illegal
and intrusive images of people, for example, created pornography, should be
directly prevented by the government as an illegal use of a persons image. You should own the unique items and features
of your own body. That includes your
DNA, your body parts, and images of your body.
Why the government won’t protect the individual’s rights to these is an
interesting question.
Government does have a place in legally
protecting rights in the internet and computational technology. They don’t need to regulate, but they need to
protect the rights of the individual and to apply laws properly in
technology. For example, the government
needs to stop the illegal use of cybercrime that is stealing and the fraudulent
use of credit cards and other monetary implements. So, the three things I would insist the
government needs to protect is the rights and property of citizens, the illegal
use of cybercurrency, and the illegal use of the internet and technology. Instead, I’m afraid the government will place
all kinds of regulations on developers and development and continue to allow
the illegal use of products against citizens.
In any case, the most important point
about all of this is that, in the modern world, technology development comes
almost entirely from entertainment development.
Entertainment development comes exclusively through a market. There is a secondary development path, but it
tends to be dwarfed by entertainment development, and that is development through
military and exploration. I’ll write
about this, next.
Although in the past, military drove
technology, that is becoming less and less true. As I wrote, we can directly see how
entertainment driven by markets caused the greatest developments in technology from
at least the 1850s or so. During this
time, the great swap from military and exploration changed, and it was all due
to markets.
One might derive that explorations and
market began to eclipse military technological developments during the era of
the great discoverers, but in reality exploration and military technology moved
along mostly by government spending and not necessarily markets drove much of
the technological development. That’s
the only way it can work in socialist tyrannies. Wait, socialist tyrannies? Yes, until the USA and the beginning of the
great republican upheaval caused by 1776, all governments in the world were
tyrannies and socialist in nature.
Although capitalism was a nascent dream, the reality was that until the
USA, no one owned real property. The monarchy
(read tyrants) controlled and owned all property and used top down means to
control markets and economies. We know
how well that worked. You did see some nations
and places more free than others, but even today, the land especially belongs
to the state and is only loaned to the citizens. This is true in the USA today as well, that
is since I lost my supreme court case in which the USA government argued that
the property belongs to the state and not to the individual look it up it’s
Stop the Beach Renourishment vs. the Florida DEP.
In any case, until you actually had some
degree of free markets, the government was the main factor and contributor to
technology through exploration and military advancement. As I noted, this changed radically in around
1850, but really started before that.
You already saw marked changes in technology from the USA that radically
affected the world.
So, what did technological development
look like with the military and exploration?
You just need to look at ancient history to see it. Generally, these cause some degree of
stagnation because governments must bear the costs. Think back to the civil war, cartridge and
improved weapons already existed before the civil war, but the entire war was
fought mainly with muskets and musket reloading type weapons. The main reason for this stagnation is that
the government invested millions in muskets and even for the sake of improved
warfare and operations, they weren’t about to spend all that money on new
weapons and ammunition. The same is true
for exploration. The government sees no
reason to improve safety or security of anything dealing with exploration. Afterall, as NASA states tongue in cheek,
they can always get all the astronauts they want—launch vehicles cost real
money.
If you ever wondered why NASA and other
military and government agencies have high accident rates and don’t seem to
care much, chalk it up to military and exploration type technology
development. The Soviets were classics
on this field. They lost an unknown
number of astronauts and subjects because their space vehicles were not safe in
any sense. Ours were safer, but just a
bit safer. Our technology was driven by
entertainment and markets and although military and exploration tend to trail
those natural technology drivers, the military and exploration both benefitted
from them.
If you note, back in the day, NASA claimed
much of the technology they developed ended up in the marketplace and specially
the entertainment marketplace. I remember one of the seminal examples was the
digital watch. Yes, digital watch
technology did come from the NASA space programs but look at the result. The digital watch was just a flicker of
already developing entertainment and market based technology coming out at the
time. Perhaps the miniaturization of
these components were the result of the space program, but I suspect the space
program got much more out of the market than anything they put in. For example, why did handheld calculators
replace sliderules and other mechanical computing devices? I’m sure the space race had something to do
with it, but if you allowed the government to hold and keep that technology, no
one would ever get it. It is more likely
that the technology came out of the markets and was applied to
exploration. We see the same thing in
our time. Technology comes from the
marketplace and gets integrated into the military and exploration. Unfortunately, the technology in military and
exploratory articles is always much older than that in the market and
especially the entertainment marketplace.
There is more to this, but I should move
on and clean up the breadcrumbs. I’ll
work on that, next.
At the moment I’m focusing on the created
worldview. This is the worldview created
by an author to support a fantasy or science fiction world specifically of the imagining of the author. What I was trying to do with the information
I was writing for you is to show how technology was developed so you could
extrapolate that same technology to support a created worldview. Of course, the created worldview can also
support a fantasy worldview like Harry Potty or even Tolkien or CS Lewis. All these are created worldviews. I like to write in the reflected worldview,
but I think I might have written enough to cover that. I’m not necessarily a fan of the created
worldview for fantasy, but it is necessary for science fiction.
In science fiction, we take from the
existing world and then extrapolate our world in time and space. The best example is perhaps the port which
became the airport and then the space port and the orbital space port. This is easy because it fits within a simple
evolutionary development of technologies.
Notice, I wrote technologies. The
reason is that an orbital spaceport isn’t necessary until you have orbital
spaceships. To get to orbital
spaceships, we need suborbital spaceships, and then atmospheric aircraft and so
on.
I should mention that in the near past
there were airports that were also seaports and seaplane ports. New York LaGuardia was this kind of seaplane
and airplane port. I’m not sure the
seaplane part still exists, but it was. Technology
is an interesting thing bringing about and taking away whole features that end
up forgotten and completely unknown by future generations. I should mention that in the modern world,
many of the technological developments and creations are impossible today
mostly because of government regulation and control. Much of this regulation and control came out
in spades until governments lost control of the design of technology. What you might ask?
Modern technological design is mainly a
function of the market and entertainment.
This happened around the 1850s and is still moving on. However, as nations take control of markets
and regulate everything, the ability of the market and the nations to develop
technology begins to die. As I wrote, markets and especially
entertainment markets drive modern technology development. You might expect that governments and
especially socialist governments can turn their technology development around
from the market back to military and exploration, but there you would be
entirely wrong.
Someone once said, I think it was Margret
Thatcher, that socialism works until you run out of other peoples money and
this is especially true in the modern world.
Thecnology development is almost entirely the function of the markets in
the USA and markets driven by the USA.
This is pushed by entertainment and the market power of the free markets
around the world. The rest of the people
and nations get involved because the overall markets tend to be worldwide. Even if the markets in Europe are weak and unable
to develop new technology, their needs still tend to drive the capitalists in
the USA and other places. The result is
that even the crippled European markets can take some advantage of the
capitalist and free markets in the USA. Otherwise,
they would just be freeloaders sinking under their own socialist problems.
If the free markets of the USA dried up
tomorrow, there would be no money left in Europe or Aisia to develop any kind
of new technology even if they wanted to.
There is no money left for any military or exploration. Further, in communist and completely
socialist nations, it is common to literally starve the people to provide money
to their armed forces and other common technological drivers, but eventually,
you run out of that money too. The
Chinese starve their non-party members (99% of their population) and have for their
entire existence, but you can only keep starving the people for so long, and
then they either die or revolt—usually die.
Russia and the EU have significantly lower standards of living just to
sustain their socialist systems. They
don’t have much money to expend on technology development. All of these depend on the USA for their new
technology. This likely won’t change
unless the USA goes full on socialist or the EU, Russian, and China fail and
are forced to dismantle their crippling socialist systems.
For you technology extrapolation, I would
just assume a status quo from the current system, or you can extrapolate based
on your own future technology political basis, but don’t make the Traveler
mistake. What’s that?
I have been writing that for high velocity
technology development you require a free market driven by entertainment needs.
You might even extrapolate this although
I’m not certain that will get you anywhere new or different. On the other hand, you can’t expect high
velocity or even any real technology development from socialist or
non-entertainment based markets. What
does that mean? I’ll explain next.
I should mention the Traveler mistake
which is an interesting sidebar in technology extrapolation. Back in the late 1990s (I think that was the
time), one of the great role playing games came out with a new edition. The game was Traveler and all about space
role playing and exploration. It was a
great game, but the new development was disappointing. The writers were either silly or just too
pro-Middle East. In their extrapolation
of the future of the world, wealth, and politics, they had the Middle Eastern
nations becoming a powerful block for political and technological control. This was most likely based on the wealth of
the Middle Eastern nations as well as their control of the oil market. Today, the Middle East is still a flashpoint,
and very wealthy, but it doesn’t really and can’t ever gain control over
political or technological development.
We can easily see why.
In the first place, every nation in the
Middle East except Israel is a fascist tyranny based in racial bias and 8th
Century ideas. As I’ve explained,
without a market, any type of market, you always end up with the dark
ages. Tyrannies (read monarchies,
kingships, dictators, fascism, controlled economies, socialism, communism, and
all) can never achieve any kind of technological development because of what
they are and the fact they don’t have free markets. The problem is the lack of a free
market. You might ask, then how can
Russia, China, and Iran support so much weapon development? The answer is relatively simple. All three of these nations are dependent on
each other and all three steal western technology, mainly from the USA, but
also from our trading partners to take wholescale the technology and
incorporate it into their weapon systems.
For example, China is literally 40 years behind the West and the USA in
technology. You can see it in their
equipment and their systems. They
couldn’t make or program a modern integrated circuit if they wanted to, but
they can buy integrated circuits from the West.
They aren’t supposed to get some of best circuits, but they do, and the
West allows them to put together end game electronic, for example,
iPhones. Where do you think those
iPhones that get siphoned off their assembly lines go? They go directly into their weapon
systems.
Russia is also at least 20 years behind
the USA in technology development, but they buy from the Chinese. In the ME, the Iranians are still living in
the 8th Century, but they are directly supported by China. They build product for China and with the
help of China. They couldn’t develop a chinchilla
planter if their lives depended on it, but they can take stolen technology and
use it, and build it with parts we supplied to the Chinese. Free markets make this kind of manufacturing
espionage easy.
Now, what about Europe? I hate to ruin your European fantasies, but
the Europeans haven’t invented anything technological since the Laser Disk back
in the 1980s. That was the last great hurrah
for Europe. Let me tell you a short
story about European technology. I had a
crew chief who went to support my company’s operations in Paris. He had a kidney stone and went into the
American Hospital in Paris. The American
hospital is in no way affiliated with the USA, that’s just its name. The hospital is completely part of the French
system and it’s supposed to be one of the highest caliber hospitals in
France. Many foreigners go there for
treatment because the French socialized healthcare system is so bad in regular
French hospitals. In any case, my crew
chief went to the American hospital in Paris and they placed a stint in him so
he could pass the kidney stone and that should have been the end of the story,
except he returned to the USA with a French stint inside his body that
eventually need to be removed. His USA
doctor removed it and laughed. His
quote, “We haven’t used these types of stints in 10 years.” That should tell you everything you need to
know about European healthcare. No
matter what they tell you, Europe is at least 10 years behind the USA in
healthcare. We develop new products and
eventually, the Europeans get them in their system, ten years later. Now, think about this. The highest rated hospital in Paris France is
using stints that the USA stopped using 10 years ago. I always think twice about using any medicine
or medical facilities in foreign nations—even the so called best.
In the past, I worked for the US
Military. When I was in, the US Military
was at least 10 years behind the regular US healthcare system in
technology. I have good information that
the US Military has caught up closer to the USA healthcare system. I know I’ve wandered back into healthcare
technology, but let me explain something to you. The US Military is the best in the world for
three things: trauma care, burn care, and childbirth. You might say, wow, why is that? The reason is that all three are obvious to
any physician. If you come into a
facility with a bullet wound, the care and treatment might be traumatic and
difficult, but it is obvious. Likewise
for burns and for childbirth. The
military takes care of these three on a regular basis and the care is
straightforward. Where the military has
problems is the not so obvious care. For
example cancer. In the socialized
military healthcare system, if you potentially have cancer or any other time
consuming and extensive problem, you are simply a drain o the system. Better you die than fill a bed they can use
for trauma, burns, or childbirth. The
same is true in any other socialized healthcare system. That’s why their cancer and other certain
morality rates are so low, and also why they hide the true mortality
rates. For example, before the current
administration allowed the marketplace for healthcare into the VA (Veterans
Administration) one on my relatives took six months to see a VA doctor for a
problem. When he saw the doc, the doc
said, you have stage four cancer if you had come to me six months ago, I might
have been able to save you. You see how
this works. My relative died from stage
four cancer, and the VA reported that he came to them with this cancer so they
couldn’t do anything to save him. The
fault was the VA took six months to see my relative. This is how it works in socialized medicine
in Europe. They take months to see a
patient, but they time they get to that patient most of the time, it is too
late. When they get treatment, it is ten
or more years out of the mainstream. The
system chalks up their death to their degree of cancer or other ailment, and
thus their mortality wasn’t due to the system or the healthcare, but to the stage
of the cancer or ailment they had when the system first saw them. This is part of the intentional reason that
socialized healthcare delays especially the first interaction with a doctor—you
can fix the mortality to look much better than it is, and prevent panic among
your citizens. They all know they get
terrible healthcare, but without good stats, they don’t know how bad it
is. This is why a free market and free
markets are wonderful for everything and especially for technological
development.
So, Traveler was wrong and for better or
worse, I think it killed it’s brand, but that might have just been the
roleplaying market of the time. In any
case, their technological extrapolation was wrong and they paid for it. Most players and game masters just ignored
the new edition. The technology wasn’t
that new and the storylines were stale, but I think the main reason was the cultural
extrapolation and ideas were contrary to logic and reasoning. In any case, don’t expect anything from
socialism or non-free markets and tyrannies.
The best you’ll get is the status quo.
I’ll move on to a new technology, next.
I’m not sure how to state this exactly,
but much technology isn’t developed for many areas as much as it is acquired or
integrated. Government has a lot to do
in the prevention of easy and new integration—some of that is good, but most is
really bad. How’s that work?
Let’s look at aviation. Aviation is somewhat different than other
technologies because although it came out of entertainment (yes it did, just
look at early aviation) aviation is a kind of field that has some large degree
of risk initially and without careful and good engineering. In the early days, the market took care of
most of these problems because the rich people buying aircraft didn’t continue
to buy those that were dangerous.
However, with aviation, there is always some degree of risk and you
can’t completely get rid of it. You
would think that because of this, government would help protect the builders as
well as the buyers, but that wasn’t to be.
The government placed regulations of a very onerous type on
aviation. Part of the government’s
actions were for the society, but most was to reduce the manufacturers and to
reduce production. With reduced
production and high costs, you can certainly prevent the average person from
having the ability to fly wherever and whenever they want. That was the point. Read the communist manifesto for more
data. Preventing freedom of
transportation is one of the planks. In
any case, in the modern era, the cost of certifying an aircraft is about $1
billion, that’s a billion with a b. Big
money that small manufacturers can’t achieve, so no new aircraft and very
little new technology for physical aviation, but luckily, the entertainment industry
gave us computers and computers can be used for all kinds of integration and
added capabilities in transportation.
Just look at your horrible modern automobiles. Most of them are filled with all kinds of
technology that many don’t use and that only cause more problems for the owner.
I speak of the dreaded, won’t start, and no one knows why exactly. There are other problems, but you know all
about them.
In aircraft, the electronics can’t
negatively affect the physical aircraft systems like engines and aerodynamic
surfaces, so we are safer than automobiles from the stray electron issue. However, with aircraft, you still have the
certification issue. It isn’t as bad as
the physical certification problems, but it still is a real problem. For example, aircraft electronic developers
and manufacturers, must ensure the electronic systems are stable and generally
bug free. This means you can’t use the
most modern and newest technology.
Therefore, aircraft are always lagging the rest of the industries. Same with medical technology if you didn’t
guess already.
Because of the cost of the certification
and the systems, aircraft electronic manufacturers therefore don’t want to make
many changes and they want stable packages and systems. So do the aviators, but the problem becomes
one of the market and technology. The
technology is moving along at a fast clip, but the aviation marketplace is like
a stagnant pool. To flush out the old
and bring in the new costs big bucks, but without many new aircraft, the end
result is modifications to the old with new electronics. Except the new electronics are very costly,
and the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) keeps making new regulations and
new requirements for the aircraft. In
other words, the best place would be low cost electronics to improve older
aircraft, but the end result is a continuing cascade of new and high cost
systems that require high cost modifications to be used in the aircraft. As long as the wealthy are the only ones in
the air, that isn’t a problem, but if you want your flying car, it’s a big
problem.
Further, the flag carrying aircraft, that
is the airliners are always lagging the civil aviation world by twenty years or
so. The product that costs $30k for a
small general aviation (GA) aircraft costs about $250,000 in a large
aircraft. Who needs better electronics
in the cockpit. That’s why the
electronics in the back of the aircraft are many times more up to date than
those in the cockpit. The average
General Aviation aircraft is ten times better equipped than the best
airliners. Plus many of the airliners
come from Europe or Asia. No general
aviation market, no new technology, or at least long lags in your aviation
products. That’s why Europe and Asia are
about 20 years behind the USA in aircraft electronics even in the transport
types. I could go into great detail, and
maybe I should. It could help my science
fiction readers to figure out a little about technology in spacecraft as an
extrapolation from aircraft. That’s
next.
Yes, in dangerous, risky, or areas where there
is a high potential for loss, we do need extra careful and stable engineering
and science. This is an absolute
fact. However, the government can never
and has never been able to provide this stable engineering and science. Markets can, but government cannot.
I mentioned before that we have no idea
how many people died during the Soviet Union’s expansion into space. We will likely never know because people died
and the Soviet government lied. When you
are murdering millions of your own people yearly a few who die in space of in
recovery operations don’t mean anything.
In the USA, we know the names of every astronaut who was lost in space
or spacecraft accidents. We should fully
realize that every Western world space incident was caused by government action
and inaction, and had nothing to do with safety or reason. Yes, reasoned decisions were made by the
authorities, but in every case, the government approach to space and space
programs is we can always get more astronauts, and we can always buy more space
vehicles. The ultimate problem is you
can always until the money runs out and the programs get unfunded.
Why are markets and private programs
better? In the first place, commercial
operations do not want accidents.
Companies and commercial enterprise will do anything to prevent harm to
their customers and to their equipment.
Harm to customers kills your business basis. Harm to your equipment means your business
can’t continue. Given the chance,
commerce and markets will not take a risky path, but they will take a balanced
path. The government, on the other hand,
will dictate a very costly, conservative, and technologically stable path, and
then make decisions on their own that cause great harm to their own programs
and people. Think of it like the
military.
Most accidents in the military happen
during peacetime, peacetime operations, and training. Usually during combat the accident rates go
down. The loses are more spectacular and
get more news, but human fault and mistakes cause most military accidents and
usually communication and war based planning or concepts cause many of the
problems. For example, as I noted,
communications is the most important factor during operations where aircraft,
land forces, and sea forces might be all heaving bullets, bombs, rockets, and
missiles into the air. The largest risk
is lack of communications during peacetime and wartime, and the military spends
enormous amounts to ensure their communications are safe, secure, and
available. However, on the one side, for
security, we have intentional reduction of communications driven for secure and
protected communications. These are
intended for warfare, but many times the military does not use their secure and
protected communications during peace time—they are too constricting and they
would lose too many operations. Plus,
all their security and communication protection are incompatible with civilian
systems. Add to this that outside of
their very special communications capabilities, the military then can’t afford
the high technology electronic systems the general aviation people are flying
around with every day. I can’t help
mentioning that commercial operations also delay adding the newest technology because
of cost and integration in their fleets—this is completely due to government
regulations which increase costs of adding technology with little general
benefit. What is that? Because the rest of the world is literally 20
years behind the USA in aviation technology, that disincentives airlines that
fly outside of the USA from adding basic safety features freely available to
USA general aviation. If you can only
use these safety features in the USA, why add them for aircraft used outside
the USA. The rest of the world may of
may not ever catch up. The problem is
the loss of general aviation in the USA while general aviation is nerly
complete dead in the rest of the world.
Markets drive technology, remember. If your market is dead, your technology is
dead. When the government is involved,
your technology is always delayed and always less safe. How’s that?
If you realize every pound of excess crap
you put on an aircraft is a pound of risk, you might realize what safety lights
on the floor do for you. Airliners have
safety lights on the floor due to a single accident completely unrelated to
safety lights on the floor. These safety
lights will never ever save a single human life, but they are required by
regulation on every airliner. They are a
safety risk for every aircraft that has them.
Add up all these government required safety devices and I wonder that
any company can make money. In fact,
these safety requirements are why when any human being steps on a government
owned bus in the USA, the cost to the taxpayer os over $400. The government has regulated the market out
of the public transportation and their only reason there is public
transportation is because of government subsidies to itself. What do we call nationalized government run
companies that are subsidized and make zero profit—well that’s socialism. This is why you will never see any privatized
public transportation with the current models used in the USA. The cost of the transportation is just too
much. Airlines might get there too. In Europe where public transportation is
mainly privatized, the airlines are government owned. The few that are not, are always at odds with
the government and always seeking subsidies, but government can easily regulate
anything to death.
So, how will this affect space travel and
spacecraft. There is some hope, but not
much. I’ll get to that, next.
So, how does this all affect space travel
and spacecraft? Aircraft and spacecraft
are very much alike. The critical point
is they are alike, but the more critical point is that space can kill you quicker
than the upper atmosphere, and you can’t escape it by simply descending. I’ll try to explain.
Exposure to space will kill you
quickly. There is no atmosphere, no air
pressure, no oxygen, no heat, and all.
The human body will inflate, your fluids will boil, and you will
basically explode from the inside out.
It isn’t pretty, and it’s very quick.
You would have to ask the experts from the German national socialists
(NAZIs) or the experimenters from the Cold War and WW2 about what they
discovered, but I can assure you, the typical trope from Star Bores or Star
Trek dreck of people holding their breath and scooting through space from one
airlock to another is just total tripe.
Try it and see. You will explode
and likely give yourself internal damage.
Human bodies are frail and especially frail in completely uninhabitable
environments. Think of space as
anti-lava, you touch it and you will die.
So, with the environment of space, we need
to build systems for space ships that protect humans with the expectation of
some potential failure to at least a 99% confidence level of protection. In aircraft, we do design safety of flight
items to this confidence, and for spacecraft, you need to expand the design
criteria. That’s about it. Kind of, however, I wrote about the
extraneous in aircraft, but I didn’t get much into design margins. For aircraft, we design them to a margin of
safety of 0 and a factor of safety of 1.5.
This works great for aircraft because it means you can exceed the
aircraft limits by 50% before you begin to see permanent structural
damage. In contrast, we usually build a
bridge or a house to a margin of safety or 10 and a factor at whatever the
margin gives us. In other words, we
build bridges and houses at 10 times their necessary strength—that’s new. We expect some degradation with time. We build aircraft to their necessary strength
with no margin, but a factor. The main
point is to allow movement of the air vehicle with no extra weight due to
structure. With time, we have gotten
better and better in this type of design.
The question is what will we do with spacecraft, and what will government
regulations require?
I do need to express a little about launch
and recovery. If we expect our
spacecraft to start at ground level and fly to orbit, that means, at the
moment, tree stage to orbit. All space
vehicles have been and have been expected to be three stage to orbit. In the future, this might reduce, but at the
moment, the energy density of all the fuels we know can only get us to three
stage. The Dynasoar program did picture two
or three stage to orbit with a ride to the upper atmosphere on another
aircraft. This is bring done today with Scale
Composites and Virgin Aerospace’s concepts.
They haven’t achieved orbit, but they have effectively two stage, and
their payload is extremely limited. This
is the ultimate problem for spacecraft that start on the surface or that
recover to the surface. This is why most
science fiction proposes large space vehicles with smaller ones like shuttles
flying into orbit and recovering from orbit.
The strength of materials, weight, and the energy density of all known
fuels just lead you naturally to this end.
The ultimate problem is how much strength
and how much payload. The stronger the
vehicle, the heavier it will be, and the more fuel it needs, and potentially,
the greater the number of stages, and limits on payload. It gets complicated very quickly. Government involvement will make things much
much worse. As I noted, the market does
not want to harm customers or stuff, the government can dictate from ivory
towers what they expect in spacecraft.
They will force floor lighting for shuttles that will turn you to mush
if there is any kind of breach or need for floor lighting. The extra weight may mean life of death for
you, but the government doesn’t care.
The idea is that if the market can’t provide, you didn’t need it
anyway. By the way, safety constraints
have made millions go to bed hungry and cold or too hot. It’s the government way, and the greater the
government power and socialization, the less you will get. You gotta pay dearly for that free stuff.
Luckily the government in the USA has been
moving out of the spaceflight business.
This is bad and good. It’s bad
because exploration dollars are a major means for development, and good because
entertainment dollars are the means for technology development. What’s the difference?
If you let the government do it, they will
use evolutionary development and already existing technology to achieve
whatever goal you have—they are looking for implied safety and stability. They are 20 years behind the market. On the other hand, entertainment markets are
seeking for cost effective and revolutionary means to the end. They might use evolutionary developments, but
they will use developments and not the status quo. The status quo can’t achieve new technology
or new ideas. It’s impossible. Only markets can provide. So, if you want exploration, you will get
exploration. If you want new technology
for your exploration, you need a market.
There is more to this, and I should really mention what is happening or
not happening in the aircraft fields today.
That’s also great fodder for technology extrapolation.
You want your flying car, right? You know why you won’t get it, not for a long
time, yet? I already wrote that the
government intentionally submarined your flying car back in 1956. They made the private pilot rules and
regulations which cut everyone out of the flying car market except for the
pilots. They have been working very hard
to kill General Aviation too. Really,
the airlines have been trying to kill GA for decades. It’s backfiring on them, but what better way
for government to keep control of transportation, and the airlines to keep
their cattle cars filled with passengers.
One needs to control access, the other needs to control the market. They two together are a monopoly allowed by
the government to shut out the average person from true freedom in aviation
transportation. It will get worse, but
the current track for flying cars and specifically flying taxies will really
help prevent the flying car and the average flying person—how’s that?
Hey, we already have flying taxies—they
are called helicopters. The reason
people, except the very rich and politicians, don’t use them is cost. A helicopter costs about $1 billion to
certify, and about $5 million plus to buy.
The cost per hour is about $5000 or so.
That’s definitely the cost you will pay to have one come pick you up
from your house or business. Most folks
can’t afford $5000 bucks an hour, and unless you flew helicopters in the
military, your cost of becoming a helicopter pilot (a rotary wing pilot) would
break the bank. Let’s dive into the
technology of the flying car or flying taxi, same nevermind.
In the first place, for a flying vehicle
of any type, we require a low weight very high density high energy density and
high energy fuel. The only low weight
high energy density fuel in all the world is fossil fuels. I know you get all the propaganda from the journalists
who couldn’t tell you the difference between multiplication and division or
between fuels at all, so I’ll give you the absolute truth.
Let’s start with the low weight low energy
density, very expensive fuels. These are
the fuels made by man. Making fuels is
the opposite of burning them. You burn
them, you get lots of energy out, you make them, and it takes lots of energy
in. So, to make the very low energy
density ethanol (or any other alcohol) takes about 6 gallons of fossil fuel to
make one gallon of ethanol (or other alcohol).
Making other hydrocarbon fuels is about the same. You can’t just pull it
out of the ground, you have to put a lot of energy in to get the energy
out. The equations aren’t equal, still at
about $100 a barrel, it starts getting economically feasible to make heavy
hydrocarbon fuel (fossil fuel). It never
is economic to make alcohol based fuels.
It really never gets feasible to make plant based fuels, unless you are
burning wood. Wood has some pretty high
energy properties, but I’m not sure you want to be throwing wood into your
flying car—it’s heavy and not super energy dense. So, let’s look at hydrogen—that’s really low
weight and low energy density.
Yeah, if you want hydrogen, you have to
make it, and making it is really energy intensive. You can use electrolysis to make hydrogen,
but most electricity comes from fossil fuels, and you really want nukes if you
are making hydrogen fuel. Then once you
have it, what are you going to do with it.
Liquid hydrogen is the best, but it is very dangerous. Gaseous hydrogen is okay, but requires high
pressure containers and can be very dangerous—it’s explosive. Plus, the ultimate problem with hydrogen is
that unless you are looking at liquid hydrogen, you are talking about very low
energy density compared to the safe and stable heavy hydrocarbon (fossil
fuels).
What’s the big deal? If you have low energy density, how are you
going to keep your flying car or flying taxi in the air long enough to safely
take you wherever. Here’s the problem. For safety of flight, the FAA (Federal
Aviation Administration) requires that in good weather (VMC, visual
meterological conditions) you must be able to fly your required mission with 30
minutes of reserve fuel on the aircraft.
You fly 30 minutes to home and you need 30 minutes of reserve. The reason is the many people who died during
the development of aviation. Seems like
a good rule. To achieve this, you need
light weight and energy dense fuel.
Fossil fuels is about all she wrote to meet these requirements. In addition, helicopters get a special rule
because they technically can land vertically, but we already have helicopters
that can act as air taxis.
So, here is the problem. The next step in the technology and the
current development is electric batteries with electric motors. And here is your problem. The FAA and common sense require all the
components for an aircraft system to act at a 10 to the minus 6 (one in a
million failure state). For example, the
engine on a single engine aircraft must meet the one in a million failure rate
based on the design and testing. The
engines on a multiengine aircraft must meet the same requirement, but in
addition, the multiengine aircraft must be able to continue to fly following an
engine failure. This is possible for
most modern aircraft, but the proposed electric aircraft have very heavy
electrical motors and very heavy electrical battery systems to power them. They don’t have any reserve capability, and
they usually can’t fly with a one in a million failure of a single much less
multi-engine failures. Their power
systems are just too heavy and complex.
Now, for the engineers in my readers, how
difficult is it to make an inexpensive system that is more complex and takes
more certification complexity than current technology. That is, the complex electrical systems, fuel
(batteries), and motors required for an electrical flying vehicle. The answer is very simple—it can’t be
done. The cost of the certification must
be higher. The cost of the development
must be greater. The overall cost of the
system must be much higher—than the helicopters we already have. Now, add to that the reserve problem.
Some manufacturers have suggested or tried
backup electrical systems. For example,
back up generators both fossil fuel and other sources of energy. Back up batteries. Backup hamster wheels. How can this even work? If you add weight, you reduce safety and you
reduce fuel economy. If your energy
density is low to begin with, the answer is more power with better fuel. The answer can’t be low energy density and
more of it. So, will you ever get your
flying car? I wish, but the answer is
obvious—not with electrical flying vehicles.
In fact, electric flying vehicles without fuel cells or other high
density energy production is impossible.
However, fuel cells won’t meet the current propaganda about fossil fuels
and electricity anyway. Here’s the
question of the day, what it the fuel that powers all electric cars or
vehicles? Answer: coal and oil. Most electricity in the entire world comes
from fossil fuel. All facilities that
make energy of any kind come from fossil fuel.
For example, the windmills and solar panels are all made from fossil
fuel. You could actually get more energy
out of the windmills and solar panels by burning them. Oh well.
While the world is on this anti fossil
fuel bent, you won’t get your flying car and flying taxies will remain
helicopters. That’s the way science
works. You could always have some
breakthrough, but it will come from the entertainment market.
We get to energy in the aircraft world,
but we want to extrapolate for spacecraft.
Let’s go there, next.
How do we get into space, and how do we
get around in space? Fossil fuels are
not about space, I’ll explain. In the
first place, the best way to get to space is electrical based on nuclear
energy, and the best nuclear energy is fusion.
Currently, the best we can do is fission, and fission is great, but
fusion is unlimited energy. The problem
is that you just can’t do fission or fusion out in the open on good old planet
earth. The end results are not
good. So, we need to take the energy we
get from fission or fusion and turn it into a usable type of energy that is
safe for the people and the planet. The
best way to do this is as electricity, not for batteries or charging anything,
but for railguns to propel spacecraft into orbit.
Fossil fuels are great for use on the
planet, but the reason they aren’t as good for moving vehicles out of orbit is
the energy density and the oxidizer density.
Without an atmosphere which is about 21% oxygen, you don’t have an
oxidizer for your combustion. You gotta
have an oxidizer and liquid oxygen is about the best available. It’s relatively stable for an oxidizer and
combines well with liquid hydrogen to produce a mass with acceleration, which
is how you move space vehicles in the atmosphere and outside the
atmosphere. Remember Newtonian
mechanics: every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. Well that’s kind of true. Here’s how it really works: F=ma. Force equals mass times acceleration. I need force to move and steer a spacecraft. The best way to make force is to make an
explosion that produces a propellant: oxygen in combustion with hydrogen makes
water, and at high enough a temperature produces a plasma. You actually could take water, a nicely heavy
molecule and accelerate it through a nuclear reactor core to produce an
acceleration, but that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves.
The best way to produce an accelerative
force independent of anything else is to carry your fuel (liquid hydrogen) and
your oxidizer (liquid oxygen), and burn them together to produce your
force. This is pretty easily projected
and newer technology is figuring out better ways for this all the time. I worked with a company using a Vapack system
of liquid gas and liquid oxidizer that required no complex machinery for
combustion. This worked great in the
atmosphere and should be good outside the atmosphere. You use the vapor pressure of the fuel and
the reducing pressure as the missile ascends for the pressure at the nozzle. As I wrote, it works great.
So, to get out of the atmosphere, the best
way we know how to do is a railgun. In
my science fiction novels, I use hydrogen scavenge with nuclear combustion
outside of the atmosphere. That’s
outside of current concepts and technology, but a great extrapolation. That allows for single stage shuttle
operations out of the atmosphere and back into the atmosphere. The reality for right now is the
railgun. With a railgun, you will need propellent
and oxidizer for control outside the atmosphere. What exactly is a railgun?
You see this as an idea in science fiction
from the early days. With a railgun, you
produce and build an electric charge which then is used to excite
electromagnetic propulsion through a rail with an increasing acceleration. Theoretically, you could achieve light speeds
with this technique, all we need is to achieve escape and orbital velocity
which is much lower. You can move a lot
of stuff to orbit this way. It’s safe,
secure, and reproducible. Also
theoretically, you could do this without extra means of control, but I wouldn’t
try it that way.
If you want to get to orbit, they best way
is with nuclear reactors and electricity powered railguns. That’s how I’d do it. We are moving in the current mode of liquid hydrogen
and oxygen, which is well known, but keeps us in the space stone age.
I wrote about this before, to get to orbit
requires three stages. The shuttle used three
stages of two solid fuel and one liquid hydrogen/oxygen stage. This is about the best the world has ever
done for getting to orbit using fueled systems.
This is the best you can theoretically do when carrying your own fuel without
some other means to kick you into orbit.
That’s why the railgun makes so much sense.
Once you get to orbit, everything gets
more complex and yet easier. The problem
is fuel, or actually mass. You must have
mass for F=ma to work. Yes, electrons
are mass, but low mass, so electron based systems like solar sails or electron
firing reactors are iffy. They have
potential, but the best means of mass is to skim hydrogen from planets. This is also iffy with current
technology. I use it extensively in my
science fiction novels because I’m writing about 7,000 to 10,000 or so years in
the future. However, the problem once in
orbit is mass. You must get mass to
propel your spacecraft. In addition, you
have the eternal problem about accelerated mass.
If you remember, in space, there is
nothing to stop electrons or mass at all.
These particles at high velocities, and we are talking about near light
speeds especially for electrons and other nuclear particles. Everything is good until one of these
particles hits your spaceship—then all hell breaks lose. Imagine something small hitting your
spacecraft near light speed and imagine it hitting you. Nothing can stop it—nothing in the universe,
and we are proposing spacecraft that speed through the universe at near light
speeds. That means the propellent will
be at near light speeds. This is not a
positive mix for anything or anyone outside the atmosphere. Now, you are safe on the planets—you have the
atmosphere to protect you—funny that, but out in space, no one can hear you
scream. Ha ha.
The best way to handle this at the moment
is to ignore it in science fiction. Can
you imagine if every shot of a laser or a plasma cannon required an
environmental impact study by the government.
This is why perhaps space travel will not ever be possible. Once the government gets involved, no one is
really safe. In any case, perhaps we
should continue with space weapons and military actions in space. That’s next.
About weapons. We live in an atmosphere with gravity. We are used to bullets and bombs which fall
to earth and which slow due to gravity and atmospheric viscosity. Now, imagine a place with neither gravity nor
atmosphere. Further, imagine large and
small particles moving at very extreme speeds.
Let’s look at atmospheric effects on particles.
Stuff can move at pretty high velocities
in the atmosphere, but that takes a lot of energy to get to high
velocities. For example, I can
accelerate a bullet to supersonic speeds using gun cotton or gun powder. Since kinetic energy equals 1/2mv2, the more
the velocity, the better. I can get
rockets and missiles to hypersonic speeds with rocket power, but at around Mach
7, I have a little problem. At Mach 7, oxygen interacts with about anything and
begins to burn up your rocket or missile.
This is the little truth that shut down the dynasoar program back in the
1960s. The plan was to accelerate to
orbital escape velocity at about Mach 20 and drive the X-15, or follow-on into
orbit. The problem was that Mach 7 was
the limit. There are potentially other
options, but not then. So, we have a
self-correcting atmospheric limit, which is very nice. The limit is Mach 7 and if we get anything
going that fast, it will pretty quickly burn up. Space doesn’t have any atmosphere. There are no limits. Things don’t hit Mach 7 and burn up—they just
keep accelerating and moving until they hit something. Now, these particles are dependent on fuel
and propulsion, but once they get going, they aren’t stopping until they hit
something, and then 1/2mv2 becomes F=ma with deceleration. At high speeds, the forces are
devastating. Contemplate this. Let’s say we had a space battle around earth
that lasted a couple of weeks. We know
that less than about 10% of shots find their targets in warfare. That means 90% of the projectiles and
particles will be flying through the solar system and then outside it
forever. If they don’t hit anything they
could be flying through the solar system and deep space forever and ever—until
it hits something. The force will be
something else. Not the greatest gift
for your intra or intersteller neighbors—if they survive. Now imagine beam weapons like lasers and
photon torpedoes. The movies all show
the laser beams dissipating and such, but in the real world, nothing dissipates
in space. That’s impossible. The beams and photon torpedoes will just keep
going on forever. That won’t necessarily
bother you, but it will cause great harm to whatever it hits however millions
of years hence. Not an appealing thought. So, what to do? Mostly, we ignore these very bad effects and
that’s that. At some point, we won’t be
able to do this. You can’t ignore things
that will potentially kill you.
So, here is the problem. Space warfare, unless some new really new
stuff gets discovered will result in super high energy particles and electrons
or other particles both large and small, but all high energy (fast) in
space. They will move along until they
hit something and will most likely destroy it.
If you are thinking we could just blow up the space debris, forget about
it. Remember 1/2mv2. The mass isn’t as important as the velocity
or the decelerations. If I were to
accelerate a bullet to Mach 20 and then blow it up, I now have a bunch of
particles moving at Mach 20. Not good,
and we are writing about stuff moving much faster than Mach 20 and much larger
than bullets. Now, just so you know,
Mach is the speed of sound and I should be defining it by temperature, so it
isn’t a constant in the atmosphere. It’s
just that most people understand the speed of sound at about 660 knots at sea
level standard conditions 15 degrees C.
Mach 20 is pretty fast.
Space warfare no matter how you look at it,
seems very dangerous and long lived as a danger. Beams and photon torpedoes won’t make life
any better. It will make things much
worse. Now, how about space
communications and transporter beams.
Love to explain that next.
Science is really great stuff, and then
there is fantasy. What does fantasy and
science have to do with each other.
Really, nothing, however, we are somehow conditioned by fantasy video to
imagine that science can do everything.
Science can’t break the laws of nature and the universe. Don’t like gravity and the resulting
difficulty of achieving orbit? Well, you
could just ignore it. That is
effectively what Star Bores and Star Trek Drek do. Don’t like the rules of orbital mechanics or
the problems of space, why worry, just ignore them or make them how you want
them to be. The problem isn’t science,
it’s the minds of the unwashed and uneducated.
I don’t ever expect to see an accurate movie about space or science in
my lifetime. I don’t think the viewing
public have the knowledge or the ability to understand any of it.
The problem is that writers don’t really
have this advantage. I do want to
mention just how inept and stupid movies have become. I was watching the mission impossible last
one of two flicks. It’s funny how they
get this really old looking guy to look kind of young for the flick—that’s part
of the magic (literally). Second, the
fact that kind of good looking young women are attracted to him, and he isn’t
wealthy or really connected is funny. What is love in the movies about, a convict
death cult with stupid women and silly men?
Smells that way to me. The real problem
with the flick is the deus ex machina (god machines) that result in all kind of
unbelievable and impossible results and situations. It’s like all the movies I
really hate (99%) of them where the good guys are being attacked with automatic
weapons and never get hit, and the poor bad guys are getting killed with a
single shot from a single fire automatic with a low fire rate. In the first place, single bullets rarely
stop a human being, and they don’t just die.
They make a lot of noise and take a while to expire. At the fastest about five to ten minutes at
the slowest hours. The lack of realism
in movies is just horrible to me. I can’t
watch stupid. So back to the impossible
impossible. The bad guy is some kind of
AI (artificial intelligence). I already explained why you can’t have AI today and
likely in at least a thousand years.
Plus, the point of AI is a new boogieman. The politicians and crazies just haven’t
figured out how to make mint with the concept yet. When they do, everything and nothing will be
AI.
In any case, I want to see real science on
the big and little screen. For now, I’d
rather watch anime—it’s more believable.
Okay, about communications and transporters. The reason I put them together is they follow
the same rules for spacecraft. The same
concepts about large particles affect small particles except this. Light waves, which are communications and
transporters both follow the laws of the universe, and one of the main laws of
the universe is the speed of light.
Speed of light is a concept many authors
and most movies completely ignore. You
can conclude that humanity has just turned transportation in the wide universe
into the levels of movement over the globe, but you shouldn’t. The reason you shouldn’t is that the
distances are immense and the speeds don’t make much difference. When you realize that the distance from earth
to the closest star is five light years away, and that if you traveled at the
speed of light, it would take you five years to get there. Now, getting to the speed of light means you
must accelerate at about 1 gravity (g) for almost a year 354 days to approach
the speed of light. It is theoretically
impossible to get to the speed of light or to exceed it. Therefore, you must accelerate at 1g for
almost a year, travel for more than four years and then decelerate for about a
year to arrive at your destination in about six of seven years or so. The solar system is much smaller, but transiting
it isn’t much easier than getting to the closest star (next to ours). It takes about two years to get from earth to
Mars, and Mars is pretty close. It takes
three days to get to the moon, and we are talking about very high velocities.
Unfortunately, it really is impossible to
ignore the speed of light for anything about space. I tried to cover some of this in the
spacecraft part, but I think this brings it out even more. So, just traveling the distance is tough, but
what about fuel and energy use. This is
an even greater problem. Remember
F=ma? I need some mass to move at some
acceleration to accelerate my spacecraft.
What I carry doesn’t matter much and the acceleration is a great
compensating point. In other words, I
could accelerate a small mass to move something very large like a ship, the
acceleration is the most important point, but you must have something to
accelerate, plus the weapons issue will plague you. All that stuff you accelerate into the void
might come back to strike the next ship on the same or a similar path. Too bad for you—if it hits you. You will be bad dead.
The usual conjecture by writers of science
fiction is the use of water or hydrogen for propulsion. Both are lightweight, but remember, the
acceleration can fix some of the issues.
Unfortunately, hydrogen atoms or water molecules at near light speeds
are dangers to anything in their path.
Perhaps shields or other protection can prevent disasters, but even
steel can’t really stop these high speed particles. We can hope they aren’t in large amounts or
super high velocities. This is the way science
fiction works, we provide some idea to resolve or solve the problem—or we
ignore it. Ignore or not realize is
usually the result. Raise your hand if
you ever thought about weapons use in space being suce a hazard. Nah, no one has, and I certainly haven’t
brought it up. That’s just to complex
and obvious a problem to work into an regular novel. The novel would likely have to be all about
this issue. That would be depressing—in my
opinion.
So, I guess I’ll touch on transporters for
just a moment. You will never get your
transporters—this is a science fact beyond facts. The reason is to turn anything to electrons
or let’s just say particles, means I have to take it all apart piece by piece
and then send it through the aether and then put it all back together. Think about this, to what level must I take
you apart? How about just the big
parts? I could cut off your arms and legs
and head and just ship them through the mail.
Oh I guess that’s too high a level, but it is easier to cut off your
arms and legs and ship them and then put them back together. To say, then I’m dead. Yes, for a while your are dead, but aren’t
you dead if I take you apart at a lower level?
Let’s say I take you apart at the cellular level. I take all one trillion or so of your cells apart
and then ship them in boxes. Whoops, you
are dead. Look, it doesn’t matter the level
I take you apart at, whatever the level, you are dead. One is just sloppier than the others. So, do you get it. I have to kill you in just the first step of
transporting you. Bad idea. Eventually, I have to put you back together. Now, you know you are made of a trillion
cells. Cells aren’t low enough of a
level to transport you, so I need to get lower.
To get to any level worth transporting, I basically have to take all the
data from your body and everything in it—including the stuff I’m not so sure
about like your memories and soul. What
If I forget your soul—well, don’t worry, you are dead from the first step
anyway. We don’t have the ability to put
all that data required for a single body, mind, and soul into a computer. It is unlikely that all the computers in the
world don’t have enough memory to save a single body. The body is dead, but whatever. Do you see the problem with transporting anything? Yeah, this is a problem and not one science
can figure out. Perhaps in the future,
some technology will be able to fix this problem, but I don’t think so. You can’t imagine a solution, which doesn’t
mean there isn’t a solution possible, but it is unimaginable in any world of
real science. The reason the transporter
was invented in fiction, specifically Star Trek Drek was to reduce the cost and
time for using the Shuttle from the Enterprise.
It’s a cool fiction, but not really possible in any sense. Look, until I mentioned it, I bet you never
thought about the problem of weapons use in space. Just because you didn’t know, doesn’t mean it
isn’t a problem. I’ll move on to some
more technology likely communications, next.
There’s more.
I want to write another book based on Rose
and Seoirse, and the topic will be the raising of Ceridwen—at least that’s my
plan. Before I get to that, I want to write another novel about
dependency as a theme. We shall see.
More
tomorrow.
For
more information, you can visit my author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel
websites:
http://www.ancientlight.com/
http://www.aegyptnovel.com/
http://www.centurionnovel.com
http://www.thesecondmission.com/
http://www.theendofhonor.com/
http://www.thefoxshonor.com
http://www.aseasonofhonor.com
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