My greatest concern with Golden Dome is not its technical feasibility, its geopolitical impact, or even its cost. It is that Golden Dome may prove a distraction from addressing the threats we are far more likely to face, and breed complacency in the process.
TENGs in Space
Years ago, I shared an article about triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), and I suggested I might follow up with more detail someday. Since then, I launched one on a rocket.
Space Launch Context
I am far from an Elon Musk flunky, and I don’t have the romantic view of SpaceX that some in the industry maintain, but anyone who has followed the business of space launch since SpaceX entered the business would be hard-pressed to argue that they have not been a boon; quite simply, there wasn’t a space launch business before SpaceX.
From the Earth to the Moon and ‘Round the Moon Review
Imagine that the year is 1869. Heavier-than-air powered flight is a distant fantasy for reckless dreamers and adrenaline junkies willing to throw themselves off of cliffs to test their contraptions. The American Civil War only recently ended, and the transcontinental railroad is not quite complete. Steam-powered ships are just beginning to replace sailing vessels for oceanic travel. This is the context in which Jules Verne, one of the grandfathers of science fiction, told the story of the Apollo program.
Staging: Making Rockets and Stories More Effective
Other than indulging my penchant for expounding on space-related topics, and perhaps providing you with some insight into rocketry, I bring this discussion up because it informs a way I have been slowly coming to approach writing. I, probably like a lot of new writers, was approaching the writing of my stories like a single-stage-to-orbit. When I sat down to write, I had an expectation in my head that I would sit down and craft all of the components of a story in a single pass, and that revisions were mostly just for changing around wording and cleaning up typos. Which, it turns out, is really challenging to do, because stories are complicated.
Space Matters
When I say that space has an image problem, I mean that the common conceptions of space are distorted. The typical person not only doesn't understand space, they don't understand what we do in space. That matters, because ordinary people interact with space technology on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. I don't just mean people like me, who work in the space industry. If you own a cell phone, or use a credit card, you are almost certainly interacting with space technology when you use those devices.
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