In the first volume of his Mars trilogy Red Mars, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson has the larger of Mars’ two moons, Phobos, destroyed after it had been weaponized. Which would be a tragedy IRL, since Phobos may well be a stepping stone to exploring the Red Planet. It could also give us information […]
Mars
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Will Returning to the Moon Prepare Us for Mars?
“If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we put a man on the moon?” goes the old joke. Fact is, we probably can put someone on the moon but without the threat of Russia getting there first (as was the case in the 1960s), the motivation just isn’t there anymore. Today, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Little Drone that Could
Ingenuity, “Ginny” to its friends, will never fly again. The little Mars-based helicopter-drone landed badly on its 72nd flight on Jan. 18, 2024, damaging all four of its carbon fiber wingtips and ruling out future flights. But in the three years since being released from the underbelly of its “mothership” the Mars rover Perseverance, it […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Lunar Boondoggle?
We are in the middle of another space race, according to Vice President Mike Pence, “just as we were in the 1960s.” No, not with those Sputnik-launching Ruskies this time. Today’s race is with the Chinese. In his speech to the National Space Council earlier this year, Pence cited, as evidence of China’s lunar ambitions, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Apollo Plus Fifty
“… this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon … No single space project in this period will be … more important for the long-range exploration of space.” — JFK, May 25, 1961 “I’m not that interested in space.” — JFK, Nov. […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Terraforming Mars
Say the word quickly and it doesn’t sound that difficult. We know how to warm Earth (unfortunately) so it shouldn’t take much to warm much smaller Mars. After that, it’s just a hop, skip and jump to create a breathable atmosphere, and there we have it, Earth Two. A second chance to get it right […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Music Tonight: Sunday, December 9
Louisiana is in Eureka tonight as Baton Rouge/New Orleans DIY metal act THOU rolls through the Siren’s Song. This band has an interesting personal legacy for me because even though I found one of its members to be tedious to the point of caricature during my musical days in NOLA, I still enjoyed the band […]
Posted inMusic
Let the Music Lift You
A dear and lifelong friend of mine died unexpectedly last week and, without any premeditation, he put me in the middle of a beautiful Eastern Orthodox funeral service that I saw from the church to its end at the grave, where I served as an ad hoc pallbearer. I will absolutely write more about him […]
Posted inNews
North Coast Night Lights: This Way to the Galactic Core
I found myself on a ridge line along the Kneeland Road the night of July 18, 2018, on an impulsive late-night mission to the Galactic Core. It was out there, all I needed was a stretch of road that would take me up to meet it at the horizon. We live in the Milky Way […]
Posted inNews
North Coast Night LIghts: Fernbridge Beneath the Milky Way
A photograph is not merely an impression of light, it is a combination of light and time. We don’t usually think about that as we snap our shutters in fractions of a second. Not much that we can notice changes in a fraction of a second. But when that element of time is extended a […]
Posted inNews
North Coast Night Lights: South Fork Bridge, July 2018
Built in 1910, this old railroad bridge crosses the Main Fork of the Eel River just upstream of the confluence with the South Fork Eel River. I’m not absolutely certain what to call the bridge, having seen it variously called “South Fork Bridge,” “Dyerville Train Trestle” and “Dyerville Bridge.” It is part of the old […]
Posted inNews
North Coast Night Lights: Beach Bonfire, Meteor and Milky Way
The Perseid meteor shower has come and gone, peaking last weekend on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 11 and 12. On the night of the 11th, my brother and I set out to Tepona Point, along Scenic Drive south of Trinidad, hopeful of capturing some of the terrestrial beauty of the North Coast beneath Perseid meteors […]