"Happy birthday to you...."

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Curiousity rover on Mars - and, with apologies, a belated anniversary greeting to its older brother Opportunity, still operating after thirteen and a half years of travelling the Martian surface.  Best wishes from your organic brothers and sisters on Earth!  It's a commonly known fact that you play "Happy Birthday" for your anniversaries - I wish there was cake, too*.

 - Sid

* Candles would be a nice touch, but a bit of a challenge given the atmospheric conditions:  the Martian atmosphere is only 0.13% oxygen, as opposed to 21% here on Earth.

"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/

Counting down II.

With one week to go until Canada's 150th birthday, here's a video about the distinctive nature of our country from one of our great national icons: Dave Hadfield.

And his brother Chris.

- Sid

(My favourite part of this video is at 3:11, where we watch Canada's best known astronaut solemnly launching a thirty-five dollar model rocket.)

Y meddyg sy'n profi.

(Contributed by Chris Sumner)

When I was exploring Cardiff during my recent trip to England and Wales, I texted Sid with a couple of pictures of landmarks from Torchwood, the Doctor Who spinoff - the front entrance of the secret headquarters and also its side entrance.  (This headquarters got blown up in the Children of Earth series.)  He suggested I write a posting on his blog regarding this and the Doctor Who Experience I had yet to visit.  Sid had been bothering me a while about doing a blog posting, and a few people he knows, including my sister, have written a guest posting.  Here is mine.

Getting back to Torchwood Cardiff, I wasn’t able to jump on the ‘lift’ at the front entrance as there was some outdoor footie screen thing going on and it was in the process of being fenced off.  There were armed guards patrolling nearby as this was a few days after the Manchester bombing at the Ariana Grande concert, so I didn’t want to pull some guerilla culture move, especially since I was wearing a backpack. I then proceeded to the side entrance.  This has become a shrine to Ianto Jones, a main character of the show who died in the aforementioned Children of Earth series of Torchwood.

The next day, I decided to go to the Dr. Who Experience near the docks.  Sid had visited the London version when it was in England in 2011 so I was interested to see what was different about this version.

I arrived several minutes before the 10 AM opening time, keen to get underway.  The show started a few minutes after ten when the first group of visitors assembled.  We had a guide that was dressed in Gallifreyan garb* – minus the head (and shoulder) dress.  He explained to us the rules of engagement of the experience. This was semi-interactive as the audience was tasked to do several things throughout.

Peter Capaldi, the present Doctor, appeared on various video screens throughout the ‘show’ and he was his cantankerous self as he cajoled and insulted the audience (and our guide) into saving the universe from various threats including the Daleks. The audience had to find three crystals in the sets we passed through.  Children were the keenest to perform this task. There was a shaking floor and other special effects to make the experience more real.  We needed to fly the TARDIS as the Doctor was unable to be there himself.  It was fun to watch Mr. Capaldi in this role and it felt like I was in a mini-episode.

Once the initial show was over, in which we were not allowed to take any photographs or videos, we went into the exhibit part of the Experience.  

 

There were pieces from different points in the Doctor’s past such as the various models of the Daleks and the Cybermen as they went through their evolution.  

 

Also present were the ice warriors, the Silence and the weeping angels, the outfits of the Doctors and some of his companions, and a small section dedicated to Torchwood.  

 

If you aren’t a Doctor Who fan this experience will probably not hold your interest, but it is certainly worth the visit if you are.  

Unfortunately, the gift shop was out of medium and large T-shirt sizes for pretty much every shirt they had for sale, so I didn’t get the T-shirt, just a mug with Gallifreyan designs.

 

The most unexpected moment was when I went to the loo before I went into the ‘live action’ portion of the Experience at the beginning.  With nothing more in mind than ridding myself of hotel breakfast coffee, I rounded a corner and came face to face with an adversary of both the Doctor and humanity.  It made me jump a little and then smile. I am sure the Daleks would be the masters of earth if they only took over all the lavatories on the planet.

- Chris

Thanks very much for a great post, Chris - and some great pictures!  It looks like they've upgraded the Doctor Who Experience since my visit - sadly, my next visit to the UK won't be until next fall, and there's been talk of retiring the Experience before then.  Ah, well, as the Doctor often reminds us, nothing last forever...

- Sid

* For the uninitiated, here's a shot of ex-Doctor David Tennant modelling a vintage Gallifreyan Time Lord costume -WITH the head (and shoulder) dress.

 - Sid

Discovery.

 

The first trailer has been released for Discovery, the new Star Trek series, and I'm intrigued by the possibilities suggested by the clip, even with the brief glimpses of the main characters that we are given.

So far the show's creator's have been quite coy about the actual plotline, and the trailer doesn't provide a lot more information.  Apparently it's a single story thread - which, to be honest, may well be the wave of the future (no pun intended) for this sort of series - and it deals with a specific event from the Star Trek future.  The show takes place ten years before the original series, but after going through a wide variety of reference material, I couldn't find anything in the history of the future* for that range of time that would warrant 15 episodes. The presence of reimagined** Klingons may indicate that it deals with some aspect of the Klingon war, but let's be honest, Klingons are a fairly standard prop in the Star Trek universe, it's probably unwise to attribute too much significance to their appearance in the trailer.

Sonequa Martin-Green, fresh from being zombified*** on The Walking Dead at the end of last season, stars as Michael Burnham, first officer on the U.S.S. Discovery, with Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou of the Shenzhou.  Based on just the brief footage from the trailer, Michelle Yeoh is obviously going to be a fabulous starship captain, to the point where I'm concerned that she might overwhelm her younger co-star.   

However, I was surprised (and a little disappointed) when I realized that Yeoh isn't the captain of the titular starship.  Captain Lorca, played by veteran genre actor Jason Isaacs, will be in charge of the bridge on the Discovery, which makes it a bit puzzling that he's not featured at all in the trailer.

Isaacs tweeted that he wasn't in the trailer because (haha) he wasn't in the trailer, but tongue-in-cheek comments aside, there's been some speculation that his character may not be around for very long. (A first name would certainly make me feel more secure about the character's future.)  It would be a shame if that turned out to be the case, Isaacs is an excellent actor who is very often cast as a villain, and it would be a welcome change to see him in a (presumably) more heroic role.

That being said, there are some ways in which I wouldn't be disappointed to see Isaacs make an early departure, or perhaps be featured in flashbacks. With Captain Lorca out of the picture, we'd be left with a brash young black female first officer who is being mentored by a veteran Chinese female captain.  I think that Gene Roddenberry would have had some trouble selling that concept in the 60s, but to me it sounds exactly like the sort of future that he envisioned when he first created Star Trek.

- Sid

* I realize it sounds contradictory, but science fiction makes you comfortable with phrases like this.

**  What, again?

*** Walkered?

Dumb and dumber.

One wrong note eventually ruins the entire symphony.

Walter, Alien: Covenant

I had the day to myself on Saturday, so after taking some pictures for upcoming blog postings, I decided to go to a movie.  Having been specifically forbidden to see Wonder Woman without Karli, I checked to see if Alien: Covenant was still in circulation, and headed off to the Scotiabank Cineplex Theatre to take a look.

I didn't purchase an advance ticket because I expected there to be lots of room:  the movie's been out for over a month, reviews haven't been that brilliant, and it was a warm sunny afternoon.  To my surprise, I had some difficulty finding a seat in the almost full theatre - perhaps I wasn't the only person there who was not allowed to see Wonder Woman yet.

The Alien franchise has certainly had its ups and downs over time, and although the latest offering has been accused of franchise fatigue, I was hopeful that it would be an improvement on its predecessor, Prometheus.  Prometheus had incredible promise, but ultimately disappointed due to the lack of logic and consistency in the script.

How does the latest entry in the lineup fare by comparison?  Well, let me introduce you to the crew of the Covenant.  With no ill will toward anyone, my god, these people deserve to die.  It is difficult to think of another group in the history of cinema who have been so willing to put themselves in danger's way over and over and over again - these idiots make the teenage victims from the Friday the 13th movies look like the acme of caution and prudence.  

Covenant is a beautifully shot film, 79-year-old director Ridley Scott hasn't lost any of his deft touch with lighting and composition, and Michael Fassbender does a brilliant job as the villainous David, but the script is an endless litany of poor judgement on the part of the crew.

"Mysterious alien planet?  Do we need to worry about alien organisms or viruses?  Should we wear isolation suits?  Nope!  Jackets and earflap hats it is!"

Good plan.

"Let's not land too close to the distress signal!  Eight kilometers away will let us have have a good long hike!" 

Gosh, yes, sixteen kilometer round trip - why would you want to stay close to your sole means of return to the mother ship? 

"Look, it's some kind of puffball!  I'm going to get as close as possible and poke it with my bare finger!  Hey, little black spores!!"

My god, man, I wouldn't want to do that on Earth, let alone in an alien biosphere!

 "Ledward's spitting up blood - let's not quarantine him! No, wait, I'll quarantine him with another crew member after I've aspirated his blood!"

Because really, why would you wear anything other than rubber gloves to examine someone who is mysteriously sick on an alien planet?  Oh, and three words: non slip flooring.  Look into it.

"I'm going to call the mothership and scream incoherently at my husband!  Then get a gun and shoot randomly at the alien until the lander explodes!"

And...done.

"The rest of the crew has created a defensive circle to watch for an alien thing that's roaming the darkness - I'll just stand outside of it and try to contact the ship."

What are the odds of anything bad happening because of that?

"I'm just going to go off all on my own to get cleaned up.  I'll go as far as possible, take off my sidearm, and wash my wounds with my back to the door."

Absolutely do that.  Smart move.

"Hey, I wonder what's moving around in this big organic egg thing?  I'll just take a closer look."

Sure, lean right in there.  Stick your head in. After all, the weird marooned android says that it's safe, what could possibly go wrong?

"Let's split up and look for the captain!"

Sign me up.

In An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, ex-astronaut Chris Hadfield describes the rigourous training process that NASA employs to ensure that its astronauts are prepared to intelligently deal with any eventuality without panicking: equipment failure, a fire on the ISS, the death of one of the team members, or any contingency that could imperil the mission.  Apparently this sort of training does not survive into the next century - nor, apparently, do many of the astronauts.

- Sid

P.S. And one more thing: damn it, it's Aurigae, not Origae - look it up. Please try to at least get the names of the constellations right. 

"Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright."

I never really thought that I'd be the lucky person who won the Omaze Doctor Who Breakfast draw, not really.  My luck in the area of draws and prizes has always been non-existent, and it's hard to imagine that it would suddenly change now.

Regardless, I found myself surprisingly disappointed when I read that Tony. B. from Toronto had been selected as the winner of the grand prize:  breakfast in London with seven Doctors.  However, I have absolutely no ill will toward Tony.  Not only is he Canadian, but he looks like an old school fan like myself, someone who will fully appreciate his opportunity to meet with the full range of Doctors.  As such, from one fan to another, I'd like to say congratulations, Tony, and I hope you have a great time - make us look good.

All that being said, if you're reading this and you don't have anyone to take with you for the breakfast, I would be happy to pay my own way to London.  Just sayin'.

- Sid

"Food 2.0"

Food tastes better than Soylent.

Jessa Gamble, How Healthy is Soylent? - The Atlantic

An ad for Soylent Drink appeared on my Twitter™ feed this morning, and I confess that my mouth hung open in surprise for a moment.  Was this a spoof?  Part of a subversive marketing campaign for a movie remake?

As far as I can tell, they're completely serious - there's nothing in their FAQ to indicate that they're aware of the dystopian 1973 Charlton Heston film, there's a very earnest Wikipedia™ entry regarding the creation and development of the product, and its relative benefits as a food alternative are the topic of unsmiling discussion in the media.

On the other hand, I see that they don't offer it in green.

- Sid

"Did you wish really REALLY hard?"

The Doctor Who breakfast draw is now closed.  Finger crossing ensues.

- Sid

Fallout 4: You had to be there.

Well, yes, this is in fact a picture of my Fallout 4 character standing beside a pile of dead people in their underwear.  And well, yes, yes again, I killed them in the game, and, yes, I took their clothing and then I stacked up all the bodies.  But really, you have to understand how the game works...

 

Okay, I got nothing, it's weird. But, honestly, it made sense at the time.

- Sid