"I suppose I'd rather die as a hero than as a meal."

Torrell: Well, I could kill you. But you strike me as the type of man who, despite being weak and cowardly on the outside, harbours a strength of character he doesn't even know he has.

Dr. Rodney McKay: I'm sorry - was there a compliment in there?

Living in Vancouver is a bit of an SF geek's dream, because so many science fiction series have been shot in and around the area. X-Files, Highlander, Andromeda, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Flash Gordon - one could probably create one of those strange drinking games that would have people take a drink every time they identify a piece of local scenery in an episode.

If someone is playing that game, then the Stargate franchise has probably led to a few advanced cases of alcoholism, given the amount of location shooting that they've done here. Stargate Atlantis pays tribute to its real location by the inclusion of a unique character, that of Rodney McKay, the ascerbic Canadian scientist, brilliantly performed by Canadian actor David Hewlett.

McKay was originally introduced as a foil for Samantha Carter in Stargate SG-1, acting as someone who was (in theory) as smart as her and as such was able to suggest alternatives, or more often to shoot holes in her solutions. Sadly, he was usually proven wrong. In addition, he had a sort of smarmy sexual interest in Carter, which was completely unreciprocated.

However, as the resident genius on the Atlantis mission, the character of McKay has developed in a fashion unique to television science fiction characters of his stamp: he has, however slowly and reluctantly, become a hero. It is as if Lost in Space's Dr. Smith had developed into the saviour of the Robinson expedition instead of regressing from the cold saboteur of the first episode into a mincing, shrieking coward that seemed to be the cause of every problem that the crew faced.

I admire the writers' decision to develop McKay's character in the fashion that they have. TV science fiction is packed with heroic figures, but their heroics are a given: really, how much of a surprise is it to have the starship captain of your choice save the day? As a group, they're accomplished figures: scientists and diplomats, lovers and warriors, blessed with audacity, brilliance, cunning and determination.

McKay, on the other hand, is frightened and horrified by the situations in which he finds himself, without the training or the inclination to seize the moment and save the day. Nonetheless, he does just that on more than one occasion, and his reluctant heroics are accompanied by the sort of reactions that any ordinary person would likely have under those circumstances: he sweats, he hyperventilates, he stammers, and even passes out in one episode.

The only criticism I have of the manner in which McKay has been developed is that, after all that he's been through, you'd expect that he'd be getting a little bit more used to it by now! That aside, full points to the Atlantis writers, and I look forward to seeing how the new Rodney's relationship with Samantha Carter will develop now that she's been put in command of the Atlantis mission.

- Sid

"A normal, routine flight".

It is difficult to think of a science fiction author who has had more of an impact on the real world than Sir Arthur C. Clarke. His early work with radar during WWII, his proposal of the geosynchronous communications satellite, his television appearances as a commentator, the movie adaptations of his work, and of course his countless stories, essays, novels and books, all combine to make him a cultural icon. 

 A large portion of Clarke's work occupies a sort of near-future niche: the Space Odyssey books, A Fall of Moondust, The Fountains of Paradise, The Hammer Of God, the Rama novels, and, to a lesser extent, Imperial Earth. Clarke has never attempted to create a unified history of the future, as have authors like Larry Niven, Robert A. Heinlein, or a host of other. However, the future as Clarke portrays it in those books demonstrates a logical, consistent, considered evaluation of how life in space might actually be lived.  

2001 is a perfect example of this: Heywood Floyd's trip to the Moon is, as it says in the narrative, "a normal, routine flight". That being said, let's look at Mr. Floyd's trip. 

He boards a booster-assisted spaceplane that takes him to Space Station One, where he transfers to a zero-g shuttle that takes him to the Moon. The boosters for the spaceplane are independent craft that fly back to Florida to be refueled and used again. 

Interestingly enough, in the course of the trip Floyd logs on with his Newspad and downloads a selection of current papers to read, clicking on thumbnail-sized images to select the pages he wants. Because Clarke is English, it is of course unlikely that Heywood would be looking at porn, but other than that it's pretty close to what most people do now with their laptops when they travel - not a bad guess for 1968. But I digress...

The craft used in 2001 are designed to occupy specific niches, and as such are completely different in their designs. The spaceplane is essentially the current Space Shuttle, but with better seating, stewardesses, and apparently less of a re-entry problem. The suggestion is that it's like an orbital 747, designed to operate for the most part within the atmosphere, but capable of limited vacuum operation. 

The zero-g shuttle is completely different. Other than the fact that it's laterally symmetrical (presumably for convenience of accelerating along its centre of gravity) it has all the aerodynamic qualities of a brick, because it will never feel the touch of air - it's purely a vacuum craft. And, like the spaceplane, it's a multi-use craft designed to perform the Earth-Moon circuit over and over again. 

The space station itself is a much more developed entity than the current ISS, although, like the ISS, it's a work in progress, as demonstrated by the bare skeleton that's visible. The station is rotating in order to use centrifugal force to create the illusion of gravity, cited in the novel as equal to the Moon's (1/6 of Earth's). As a sidebar, Clarke describes the lounge area of the station as having "a restaurant, post office...barber shop, drug store, movie theater, and a souvenir shop", making it sound pretty much like an airport concourse, as opposed to the movie version:

Any further comment would be superfluous. 

 In my previous posting, I cited some of the advantages of space stations, and I find it odd that the American space program has never made a serious effort to establish and maintain a permanent facility in orbit. I'm aware of the various difficulties involved in getting things up there, but on that basis shouldn't they be trying to make sure that everything that goes into near-Earth space stays there? 

 My younger readers - if there are any (readers, that is) - will not remember the Chicken Little experience of waiting to see where Skylab was going to impact when it lost orbital stability. Shouldn't it still be up there as part of the current Space Station, like building a home around the original log cabin? 

If I were in a position of authority at NASA, I'd be tempted to ignore the issues involved in manned missions to the Moon or Mars for some time, and just concentrate on developing an infrastructure based around three space stations: Earth, Moon, and Mars. I'd then establish a repeatable, reusable and reliable system of travel between the stations - in other words, a normal, routine flight.

- Sid

Space Station One (NASA, zero.)

A few minutes later, he caught his first glimpse of Space Station One, only a few miles away. The sunlight glinted and sparkled from the polished metal surfaces of the slowly revolving, three-hundred-yard diameter disk. Not far away, drifting in the same orbit, was a swept-back Titov-V spaceplane, and close to that an almost spherical Aries-1B, the workhorse of space, with the four stubby legs of its lunar-landing shock absorbers jutting from one side.

- Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Having finished ranting about the exchange rate as it applies to the book publishing community, back to the topic at hand: efficient strategies for the exploration of space.

In the process of researching this post, I read what I can only describe as "misguided" position statements from NASA and the US Government. ("Damn fool" is probably a better modifier than "misguided", but let's be polite.) NASA's long term plan sounds positive on the face of things: more missions to the Moon, and an eventual mission to Mars - all well and good. Sadly, the manner in which they plan to achieve these goals is, by their own admission, "Apollo on steroids".

Credit where credit is due: the Apollo missions were successful, albeit, as Terry Pratchett would say, for a given value of "successful". Yes, they successfully put a man on the Moon. If their goal had been to kill a mosquito, their equivalent response would have been to put said mosquito on a concrete wall and ram it with a car: true, the mosquito is dead, but the method relies heavily upon brute force and is not repeatable, at least not with the same car. (And after a few mosquitos, the bill for cars starts to add up, and people start asking why you're killing the mosquito in the first place, but let's not overwork the metaphor.)

Now, let's look at space exploration not from the point of view of counting coup over other countries, which was the real bottom line of the Apollo missions, but as a logical process.

The flaw in the NASA approach as used in the Apollo missions is that it was an approach designed to win a race, and as such was structured to achieve its goal quickly - which was sensible, that's how races are won. What it was not structured for was efficiency or repeatability: every time a group of astronauts did the round trip, when they were finished there was nothing usable left of their rocket, shuttle or lander - to make another trip it was necessary to build another complete spaceship.

In designing an efficient space program, the first step has to be the creation of a logical division based on functionality. The requirements for a ship that needs to get from ground level to vacuum and zero gravity are entirely different than the requirements for a ship that needs to travel from point to point in vacuum and zero or near-zero gravity. And, logically, the requirements for a ship to make extended exploratory trips are different from both of those.

Ah, but if you posit three different types of ships, how do you go about making the transition from one to another? At this point, the fourth "need" takes us to the key to an efficient space program: the space station.

A space station (or several space stations) makes the whole process of space exploration so much simpler. It provides a convenient environment for transferring from one type of ship to another, as well as providing a work platform to build and repair the ships that only operate in vacuum. An orbital platform becomes a fuel depot, an emergency shelter, a repair garage, a ship hangar, a communications relay, a research lab, an observatory, and a just plain shirtsleeve refuge in the midst of a hostile environment. Science fiction is full of space stations, which perform all of those functions and more, because they're just so damn handy for so many reasons.

Looking at my library, I'm spoiled for choices of fictional examples of achievable space travel, but in the next post we'll see how things are viewed by the man whom I think of as the real authority in this area, the man who has arguably spent more time thinking about how space travel would really work than anyone else: Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

- Sid

But first this important (non) commercial message.

My next post was going to be about efficient space travel, but first I'd like to complain. Here we are, the Canadian dollar is at $1.07 US (apparently a high in "modern times" according to the CBC - how odd that records on the exchange rate in 1066 are unavailable), and a wide variety of stores are announcing price cuts in order to reflect this state of affairs. And yet, AND YET, trot into the book store of your choice and you will be offered the opportunity to pay 30% more than the American price on paperbacks and hardcovers of all descriptions.

The odd thing is that this is a problem unique to the publishing industry. What other product has the price printed on the item? DVD's, music CD's, software, even computers, there's a myriad of products that could have the price printed on the package, but no one else has elected to do so.

I've been waiting to see if cover prices would start to reflect the declining US dollar, but no, new books arriving on the shelves continue to show the same enormous gap in pricing. So, screw 'em - no new book purchases for a while, unless I happen to make a trip down to Seattle.

- Sid

Postscript: I went into Chapters this afternoon to kill some time and noticed that there was a polite little sign at the bottom of the escalator commenting on the above situation. This explanatory missive pointed out that there were other factors in play other than just the exchange rate, that customers offering to pay in US dollars would still be charged the Canadian price (ha, someone must have had fun with that idea, I'll admit that the thought had occurred to me already) and that the six month lead time on book publishing makes it impossible for the prices printed on books to reflect the current exchange rate.

"Thanks for shopping Canadian!"

Fair enough...let's do a little research, then.

My copy of Wasteland of Flint, printed in 2004, cost $7.99 US, $10.99 Canadian. Exchange rate: $1.37 C to the US dollar in May. If you do the math, these relative prices are almost exactly the same - the exact conversion of the US price is $10.9463 Canadian.

2005: Illium, $7.99 US, $10.99 Canadian, exchange rate $1.24 C/US$.

2006: Olympos, $7.99 US, $10.99 Canadian, exchange rate $1.13 C/US$.

2007: Meeting at Corvallis, $7.99 US, $10.99 Canadian, exchange rate $1.10 in May.
At that rate, the converted price would be exactly $8.789 Canadian.

(May is the magic month because that's the six month lead time for printing to which Chapters refers, as we sit here in November.)

In other words, Chapters would like me to believe that in spite of a 27 cent difference in the dollar's exchange rate over a four year period, the Canadian price relative to the US price hasn't changed by a cent? And we're not even looking at the rate today, which has the US dollar worth $0.92 Canadian, for a converted price per book of $7.35 Canadian.

Somebody's making money at this - and at the expense (literally) - of the consumer. I'm not sure who it is, though! Let's be fair, Chapters isn't putting the prices on the books, the American publishers are. The question becomes one of whether the wholesale price that Chapters pays for the books is based on the US price or the Canadian price. If Chapters get the US price, they're laughing all the way to the bank. If they're paying a Canadian dollar price, they're getting shafted as badly as we are. I wonder which it is...

- Sid