"More heads, more deads!"

 

You know, it was just a fluke that I decided to switch on the TV.

Karli and I were sitting on the couch, we'd been chatting, she was looking at texts on her iPad, and I idly decided to turn on our new 65 inch 4K set from LG, if for no other reason than to admire the picture. (And it is very nice.)*

As you might expect, I jumped to the Space Channel, and to my astonishment, they were broadcasting A SCIENCE FICTION SHARK MOVIE!!!!!

Ish.

Admittedly, Three Headed Shark Attack didn't qualify for recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences due to its direct-to-video release in 2015 - in case you didn't know, a film must show for seven consecutive days in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County to be considered for an Oscar - but that's not the point.  My ongoing complaint with Space's odd prediliction for shark movies is that they haven't qualified as science fiction, either.

However, the presence of a three-headed mutant garbage-eating Great White does sneak this production over the line into SF, however unfortunate that may be for the reputation of the genre at large.  As such, I have to give kudos to Space for finally, FINALLY addressing this ongoing issue in their programming.  Presumably they started with Two Headed Shark Attack, and followed up with the sequel, Five Headed Shark Attack.

And Laurie, I hope that you enjoyed all three of them.

 - Sid

* No money was received from LG for this unsolicited testimonial, although should someone there read this posting and decide to cut me a cheque, I'm good with that, too.

"I could never resist a countdown."

 

"Is this Neil Armstrong?"

Bill Potts, God Save the Queen, Doctor Who

My girlfriend Karli has been watching this year's season of Doctor Who with me, which is a wonderful thing for her to do.  I honestly feel that it's a labour of love, because Doctor Who is not always as approachable as it could be.  (Which is an odd comment to make about a mass market televison series, but it's generally agreed that Doctor Who may not be for everyone.)

The down side of this shared experience is that, due to scheduling issues caused by work, social obligations, grocery shopping, laundry, and all the other things that make up life as a couple, we're down a few episodes - the final episode of the season has already been broadcast*, and we've just recently watched Episode 9, God Save the Queen.

As you might expect from a program that's over 50 years old, there are Doctor Who scripts that rely heavily on nostalgia - in this storyline, they revisit the Ice Warriors of Mars, who made their first appearance on Doctor Who in 1967. Unfortunately, that's not enough to save the episode. This is one of those disappointing outings by the Doctor that has an intriguing premise, but which fails to follow through to an innovative and interesting conclusion.

The BBC production department versus...

I was also a bit disappointed by the BBC's set design for Mission Control at NASA. The episode begins with a NASA ground crew anxiously awaiting the video stream from a Mars probe. It's okay, but compared to something like the sets for The Martian, the BBC version comes off a poor second.

...The Martian's set designers versus...

But let's be fair, The Martian had a budget of $108M USD, compared to the £800,000 to £1M per episode** of Doctor Who, although obviously you need a lot more money to hire Matt Damon than Peter Capaldi.*** (No offense, Peter.)

On the other hand, NASA has an annual budget of $19.5 BILLION USD, and I don't know if the real thing is all that impressive.****

....the United States Government.

 Ah, but the actual NASA version is already just sitting there, no production costs involved - maybe the Doctor Who principals should have just flown over to Florida and shot a few minutes of video there, which would only have cost the BBC some equipment rentals and a couple of tickets on British Airways.  And I almost guarantee that they wouldn't need to hire extras - I'm willing to bet that there are more than a few people at NASA who would be happy to make a free cameo appearance in a Doctor Who episode.

- Sid

* And frankly, the BBC's YouTube™ channel makes absolutely no allowance for people who aren't up to date - have they not heard of PVR? Damn it, you could at least make the thumbnail frames free of spoilers!!

** Probably. I was unable to find a hard statement online regarding the Doctor Who budget, but there seems to be a general consensus of about £13M per season, give or take.

*** $25M USD for Mr. Damon's turn at Mark Watney, versus about £17,000 an episode for Mr. Capaldi's work as the Doctor.  And now you know why everyone wants to work in Hollywood.

(Actually, even with the conversion rate on the pound, that doesn't seem like a ton of money for being the last Time Lord.  By comparison, the stars on The Big Bang Theory pull in a million bucks an episode.)

**** To be fair, the Jet Propulsion Lab version looks a bit cooler (or least their photographer is clever enough to kill the room lights:

And finally, the original Saturn mission control - old school cool, but let's be honest, the gigantic screens were NOT part of the original setup:

No blade of grass.

Even this far from shore, the night stank. The sea moved lazily, its embryo waves aborted before cresting by the layer of oily residues surrounding the hull, impermeable as sheet plastic: a mixture of detergents, sewage, industrial chemicals and the microscopic cellulose fibers due to toilet paper and newsprint. There was no sound of fish breaking surface. There were no fish.  

John Brunner, The Sheep Look Up

Do you want Godzilla? Because that's how you get Godzilla.

One small problem - this isn't a bad movie. This announcement is part of a far more threatening scenario for the future than the genesis of Japan's favourite kaiju.

Modern history is full of ecological disasters: Minimata, Bhopal, Love Canal, the Summitville mines, Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon, Chernobyl and Chelyabinsk, the list goes on and on, each entry with its own associated tally of deaths, birth defects, ruined ecosystems, blighted landscapes, and so on.  Fukushima had already made the list, and it seems either blind, stupid, or arrogant - perhaps all three - to decide that the resulting toxic waste is a suitable candidate for aquatic disposal.

Time and time again, science fiction has painted a future in which the accumulated sins of the industrial age have come home to roost. It can be in the background, as in The Postman, the Mad Max movies or The Road, or the focus of the story as in The Sheep Look Up, The Death of Grass, The End of the Dream, The Last Hope of Earth, or a host of other grim outcomes.

Right now, the various crimes against nature have been widely spread across the globe, and relatively small in size, like pinpricks compared to the planet itself.  However, it only takes a pinprick to pop a balloon...
 
Come to think of it, a giant lizard with atomic breath might be the best we could hope for.

- Sid

"Swedish for common sense."

At some point, we will begin to colonize the rest of our solar system.

Science fiction - and science fiction fans - just take that as a given.  How could we not?  And as such, science fiction is full of examples of Moon bases and Mars colonies and space stations and so on.

However, the finer details of the process are frequently left to the imagination.  I've been rewatching The Martian, the excellent 2015 adaptation of Andy Weir's equally excellent novel*, on Netflix™ and it occurred to me that they never really discuss where the Hab module on Mars comes from.  In the movie, it's apparently quite a solid structure, although in the novel, it's just a bubble, held in shape by air pressure (which makes the scene where the airlock blows out a bit more challenging for the abandoned astronaut Mark Watney, because the entire structure collapses).

But it takes more than air pressure to make a house a home, to misquote Walter Brennan.  It takes desks. It takes desks, and beds, tables and chairs, shelves and cabinets, and all the other bits and pieces that make up a functioning living and working space, whether it's on Mars or the Moon.

Ignoring the question of how the Ares 3 team put all this together in a couple of Martian weeks, how did all the bits and pieces get there?  We're looking at a situation where both space and weight are at a premium: every milligram matters when it comes to fuel consumption, as demonstrated by the process of demolishing the Ares 4 Mars Ascent Vehicle so that it has enough fuel to take Watney to a rendezvous with the Hermes.

So far, this sort of thing hasn't been a real problem for NASA.  The International Space Station is constructed from prefabricated modules that have been boosted into orbit and assembled** over a time span of almost 20 years, and it doesn't need furniture as such - lack of gravity makes wheeled office chairs a bit redundant.

However, as soon as we start setting up a base in any kind of a gravity well, furnishings will become an issue, and NASA will need to look at the logistics of transporting all the associated bits and pieces required to create a functioning and livable habitat to another world. It will require lightweight modular furniture, packaged so that there is no wasted space, and which can be assembled easily and quickly with a minimum of tools.

But where can they go for this sort of expertise?  Hmmm...oh, wait, I know...

- Sid

* To be honest, I feel that the novel is a bit more excellent than the movie.  It's certainly more sciency.

** Shout out to both the Canadarm and the Canadarm II.

And the winners are...

It's the 150th anniversary of Confederation*, and although it's not officially part of the celebration, Prime Minister Trudeau chose Canada Day to announce the names of the two successful candidates in the recruiting process for Canada's next astronauts, chosen from 3,772 applicants over the course of a twelve-month selection process.

This process was designed to find the people with "the right skills and character to become Canada's next astronauts", to quote the Canadian Space Agency web site.

Candidates were subjected to an exhaustive array of tests:  medical, logic, intelligence, physical fitness, strategic thinking, critical reasoning, dexterity, resourcefulness, motivation, leadership and, in the final stages of the process, robotics, health and communications, followed by a final interview with a special committee of CSA executives, industry experts, and astronauts, both former and active.

And the winners are?  Joshua Kutryk and Jennifer "Jenni" Sidey, both originally from Alberta - Kutryk from Saskatchewan and Sidey from Calgary.

Sidey has worked as a combustion scientist and a mechanical engineer.  She has two degrees in engineering, including a Ph.D. from Cambridge. Kutryk, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces, has been both a test pilot and a fighter pilot, and has degrees in mechanical engineering, space studies**, flight test engineering, and defense studies.

It's interesting to look at the stats from the start of the process.  It's not too surprising that the majority of the candidates were from Ontario and Quebec, but it's intriguing that Alberta had the third highest percentage of applications - British Columbia's population is 13% larger, but submitted almost 5% less applicants. Is there something about life on the prairies that makes people dream of space? Or something about life on the coast that makes them less eager for adventure?

The saddest statistic on this infographic is the total number of applications started versus the number completed.  I'd like to express my sympathy to the 4,021 people who started on the challenging path to space travel, but then discovered that it was a path that they could not follow. Dreamers, optimists, or just people who had one too many drinks - I feel for you during that moment that you decided that you weren't the right stuff.

My congratulations to Jennifer and Joshua for having the determination to follow their dream to success. Please remember that you're there for all of us - especially those 4,021 others.

- Sid

* Why do we not call ourselves the Confederation of Canada?  It has a nice "United Federation of Planets" sound to it.

** You can get a degree in Space Studies?   Apparently - although according to their website, it appears to be a minor.  http://catalog.erau.edu/daytona-beach/minors/space-studies/