Is the US Navy preparing to conquer space? Colonizing space will require a lot of stuff, iron to build space stations, titanium to build spaceships, oxygen for us to breathe, and many other resources. Lifting all this up from the surface of the earth on rockets is simply not feasible. Thus, we will need to find these resources somewhere else. You need look no further than the moon. It has all the natural resources we need to colonize space but the question remains, how do we get them into orbit? Even on the moon, rockets are not feasible, but something else might be.

An idea emerged over a century ago called a Mass Driver. The first Mass Driver described in print was in the 1897 science fiction novel A Trip to Venus by John Munro. He called it an electric gun. It was his imaginative method of launching vehicles into outer space from the Earth's surface. Munro describes the electric gun as a series of coils energized in a timed sequence to provide the force necessary to get the spaceship into orbit.

Many SiFi authors have used these fictional devices in various ways, Arthur C. Clark, Harry Harrison, James P. Hogan and Alastair Reynolds to name a few. By far my favorite SiFi mass driver is in Robert A. Heinlein’s classic novel; The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. His plot has rebelling lunar colonists using a kilometers-long Mass Driver to bombard Earth and gain their freedom.

Putting a Mass Driver on the moon just makes sense. The moon has only 1/6th the gravity of Earth and with no atmosphere to slow things down, a Mass Driver could conceivably deliver iron-clad payloads of ore or processed resources to a lunar orbit quickly, economically and in the quantities we need. Up until now, Mass Drivers have all been just another invention of science fiction, not of science fact, but that is changing very quickly.

Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding is currently working on two of the US Navy’s new Gerald R. Ford-class carriers in a shipyard on the Virginia coastline. Started in 2008, the first of these supercarriers is scheduled to be commissioned in 2015 at the cost of over $13.5 billion.

Built on the basic footprint of the earlier Nimitz-class carriers, that is where the similarity ends. The very heart of any aircraft carrier is obviously its ability to launch planes. Aircraft carriers are floating airports with a crew of thousands. In these new ships, the Navy has abandoned the old steam catapults and gone all electric. The ship is designed around powerful electromagnetic catapults. Why do I care? I care because electromagnetic technology is one of the cornerstones to colonizing space. They are Mass Drivers.

There are many practical reasons why the Navy has developed the new electric catapults. The old steam catapults used about 1,350 psi of steam generated in the ships nuclear reactor to launch an aircraft. Steam catapults were mechanical nightmares consisting of a complicated web of hydraulics and associated high-pressure pumps, motors, and control systems. The result was a large, heavy, maintenance-intensive and dangerous system that operated without any feedback control. It inflicted sudden shocks to the aircraft it was launching which shortened their lifespan.

All that is changing with the new all electric Navy. Taking the place of the steam catapult will be the Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System, EMALS or simply EM catapult.  It uses the electromagnetic forces generated from extremely high currents to accelerate the shuttle holding the aircraft. The force thus generated provides a much smoother launch and 30% more energy to cope with today’s heavier planes. The EM catapult also has far lower space and maintenance requirements. Ancillary benefits include the ability to embed diagnostic systems and increasing the ease of maintenance with fewer personnel. Is it just me or does this sound perfect for lunching something off the surface of the moon? 

Perhaps a better example of a modern Mass Driver is the Navy’s replacement for gunpowder-style cannons, the Railgun. To fire a round, a million amp electrical current is sent through the conducting rails generating an enormous electromagnetic field. The force generated by the electromagnetic field is called the Lorentz Force. It wants to push the rails apart but when that is not possible, it pushes the payload instead. The railgun uses what is known as a sabot to encase the aerodynamic round in metal designed to withstand the tremendous forces and temperatures involved in the process. The sabot falls away after launch but not before accelerating the projectile inside to extreme high-velocity.

The electromagnetic railgun is a major weapons development program that will make explosive-based cannons a thing of the past. For decades, the Navy has been working towards arming warships with battle-ready electromagnetic railguns. This isn’t surprising considering that such a weapon has the potential to intercept missiles with an unparalleled combination of long-range accuracy and extreme velocity. Without much fanfare, in 2012 the Navy took possession of the first two prototype railguns from General Atomics and BAE Systems.

During testing of the General Atomics Blitzer railgun, rounds fired from the gun blasted right through a 1/8-inch thick steel plate located 100 meters downrange at Mach 5 (about 4,000 mph) and continued to travel more than four miles at zero elevation. The BAE Systems railgun did even better. It achieved a muzzle velocity of 5600 mph on a 23 lb payload. The escape velocity of the moon is only 5300 mph. Mission accomplished! Right?

Even at this early stage, the railgun is already capable of launching a 23 pound payload off the surface of the moon. We have our Mass Driver but getting it operational on the moon along with all the support needed to supply it with payloads… well, solving all of those problems must wait for another blogs.

Charles Lee Lesher (BS, MS) is the author of Out of the Cradle – Why We Need Space More Than Space Needs Us.  Abundant cheap electricity is a key element in getting and maintaining high human living standards around the globe. Stated another way, electricity is the foundation of modern technology. Without it, we go back to sailing ships and the horse.  Anyone who thinks for a moment that we could feed and clothe our 21st century population using 18th century technology is nuts. Everything in your world depends on electricity either directly or indirectly. The food you eat, the water you drink, the car you drive, are all possible because of electricity.  This cannot be overstated. Electricity is civilization. But where will we get it after we burn all the hydrocarbons?

You can find all of Chuck's books at http://www.writerscramp.us/

We’re All Human

I just read something horrible about Orson Scott Card. For those of you who don’t know, he’s a science-fiction writer--Ender’s Game, one of his early novels, is coming out as a movie any minute now. Writes pretty good stuff, only I have had to exercise a certain amount of tolerance because he has annoying ideas about women. But that’s nothing compared to his thoughts on homosexuality. He’s not all “kill the gays,” he just thinks we should keep sodomy laws on the books--not so we can apply them indiscriminately; that would be abusive—but so that we can hold them over the heads of homosexuals to control their behavior in public. But that’s not, he assures us, bigotry or homophobia[i]; it’s just protecting society from a threat.[ii]

It started me thinking about science-fiction and prejudice. I’ve always thought of science-fiction as the antithesis of bigotry. I took in the original Star Trek literally with my mother’s milk (ha ha, sorry, Mom). I always wanted to be Captain Kirk (sans scantily-clad space bimbos)[iii], but I identified with Spock, the logical, isolated, unaffected half-alien who didn’t belong to either species.

By the time I was seven or eight and had watched every episode roughly a dozen times, I took for granted that big, scary, human-eating rocks are mothers trying to protect their children, and race is a reflection in a mirror (don’t pretend you don’t know what episodes I’m talking about) and communication is everything, and sometimes it’s the logical, isolated, unemotional alien who provides the empathic mind-meld that makes communication possible.

It’s probably because I identify with Spock that I write about characters like actor Emma Sloan[iv] who, in the words of her flamboyant agent Reggie: Was a child holo star, biggest box office draw in history (he’s prone to hyperbole). She does three plays a year, and when she’s not working, she’s studying fencing or dance or rock-climbing or some dumb-fool-thing any stunt double could do for her. She makes every B holo a cult favorite, every blockbuster a classic, every villain a hero, every bit part a starring role, and when she commits to a project, she is one-hundred-percent committed.

 But after spending nearly every day of her life pretending to be other people [v], she winds up implanted with a gengineered symbiotic organism that replaces her skin. Now not only can’t she wrap herself in the roles of other people, she can’t even convincingly play Emma Sloan, assuming she has ever known who that is. She can navigate by sonar. She begins tasting things with her fingers. She can make herself bulletproof or pull her body apart and put it back together in new shapes. It all sounds great except that it makes her an alien even to herself.[vi]

Can you write sympathetically about aliens without recognizing your own alienation, and how can a science-fiction writer recognize his own alienation and still be a bigot? Or is bigotry our defense against excommunication from whatever community we look to for our sense of belonging? My point is that science-fiction, above all other genres, has the power to replace bigotry as our armor against rejection. Whoops, I’ve descended to platitudes, but I guess as long as I’m talking about dropping our armor, that brings me around to Symbiont again.

The symbiotic skins have to occasionally stop and merge with each other. It’s their way of exchanging information—new skills, new shape-changes, new immunities, or just to re-affirm their individual connections to a larger organism. The merge can also be used by a particularly charismatic individual to impose control over the thoughts and feelings of the rest. Now that I think about it, that sounds like some kind of metaphor for the way our communities influence our prejudices etc. Metaphors. Pfbbblt. There you are, innocently writing along, and some jerk accuses you of themes or metaphors or something equally noxious.[vii]  It’s is a bitch of a complication for Emma because she’s supposed to catch the escaped symbionts who were implanted before her, and  instead, every time she gets near them, she wants to sit down for a nice merge that will expose her to the same shade of bonkers that infected them.

So maybe I’m naïve. Okay, I know I’m naïve. Science-fiction isn’t above the human condition, and writers aren’t moral supermen—I mean super-persons—but the new Star Trek is out at the local theater in 3D, so there’s still a place where, as Kirk said in The Undiscovered Country, “Spock, we’re all human.”                 

[i]  Many persons of “conservative ideology” object to “name-calling” when they are characterized as bigots or homophobes. But a person who steals is a thief. A person who murders is a murderer. A person who lies is a liar.

[ii] There’s more. You can read his full opinion here: http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html He includes an apologia explaining that he was writing to an audience (Mormons) who shared his beliefs and that therefore his arguments were not homophobic or an example of bigotry.

[iii] I just made a joke about scantily-clad space bimbos. Please don’t take away my feminist card. The show was ahead of its time in terms of sexism and racism, but there was only so far they could go in a culture where the idea of a woman on the bridge was scandalous enough, let alone that she was black. At least she wore a nice, respectable  mini-skirt and go-go boots. Otherwise, we might have thought she was a bimbo.

[iv] Symbiont: http://www.amazon.com/Symbiont-ebook/dp/B00APORBNU/

[v] My favorite throw-away detail—Emma once played triplets in The Parent Trap

[vi] I know, I know, it sounds like a character from X-men, but I had never read any of the X-men comics—wasn’t really aware of their existence until after I finished writing Symbiont. (shakes fist) Damn you, X-men!

[vii]Noxious primarily to high-school English students. Writers are often startled by the things critics and high-school English teachers read into their stories. Shoot, I had no idea I was that deep!

[viii] If you think you might be interested in visiting Yetfurther, there aren’t any guidebooks available yet, but you might read Strangers (www.amazon.com/Strangers-ebook/dp/B004INH7ZG/) which was set—for convenience—in Ms. McCann’s home town. Forgive the cover, and the print edition is temporarily unavailable.

Melissa McCann grew up in Murrayville, a shantytown on the shore of Lake Cyrion which lies at the feet of Cyrion City on the frontier planet Yetfurther[i]. Her husband Doug professes to be a logical systems engineer, but that is his cover identity. He actually serves in the Space Marines, spending long hours fighting alien enemies on strange worlds in pursuit of top secret objectives.

They live with their six dogs (of course they have dogs on Yetfurther; humans don’t settle anywhere without dogs), and Melissa raises sillybuggers, which are a species of moderately-sized oviparous feathered saurinoid something like a dinosaur with a beak. With Cyrion city nearby for the occasional dip into art and culture, they nevertheless prefer their hand-hewn homestead, the slop of the lake against its banks, the chirp of mudrimples under the trees, and the feathery rustle of sneakdillies descending with the dusk. Better go inside to bed. Those sneakdillies have a nasty bite.



[i] If you think you might be interested in visiting Yetfurther, there aren’t any guidebooks available yet, but you might read Strangers (www.amazon.com/Strangers-ebook/dp/B004INH7ZG/) which was set—for convenience—in Ms. McCann’s home town. Forgive the cover, and the print edition is temporarily unavailable.

In England, you don't choose a soccer team to support; it chooses you. And "it" is your home town team. You may follow a second or third favourite team, especially if your real team is largely unknown, but those are like flirtations that keep a marriage going, rather than signs that divorce is imminent or called for. When an uncle took me along to our small town's soccer ground, between the river, the gasworks and the railway junction, he initiated me into an English ritual that has continued to colonize my imagination for over 50 years. For a second-generation immigrant, it was also a foothold in the local community and the putting down of long-lasting roots.

Perhaps because of that, I have long been interested in the social and political aspects of soccer. The identification with a community through the club has usually seemed a positive thing to me, especially at a level low enough for opponents to be adversaries rather than enemies, and at which you can still enjoy a drink and some banter with the other team's fans.

In my travels, I have encountered time and again the power of soccer to overcome cultural barriers and provide a source of shared enjoyment.

The great thing about soccer is its simplicity. The rules are few and simple, and you can make them fewer and simpler, or ignore them altogether, for a kick-around, for which the only equipment you need is a ball of some kind, and a couple of markers to indicate a goal. Many of the great soccer players have emerged from a poverty that made much more than that impossible. When I lived in Luanda, the capital of Angola, there was a kick-about on a patch of waste ground between blocks of flats outside my window that lasted virtually 24 hours a day, never mind the vicissitudes of weather, education or civil war. It is probably still going on. In the meantime, Angola has progressed from hopeless outsiders at every sport to a team that performed well at the World Cup in Germany (and perennial African champions at basketball).

For many years, such considerations led me to see soccer as the great equalizer, a level playing field on which merit was master and a referee provided justice that could not be bought, following rules agreed to by everyone. That, obviously, was never the whole story, but, being a fan, I was unwilling to see how deeply soccer results were conditioned by spondulix. Referees were always biased against my team, of course, but that was in the natural order of things: they were either blind or born out of wedlock; never bought. Now, having sought and examined a great deal of evidence, I can no longer believe that. What is more, corruption in soccer turns out to be as old as the game itself. However, there is a new and disquieting feature to it.

Even as recently as the latest Italian soccer scandal bar one (I live in Italy), it was about people trying to buy better treatment and better results, i.e. success, for their club. That has now become secondary. The latest scandals in Italy and around the world are about players and referees being bought by illegal betting syndicates. This is because millions of dollars can be bet on outcomes: not just who wins, but how many goals are scored in a match, the time of the first foul and other seemingly irrelevant but controllable events. The players who are bought are now doing something previously unheard-of: deliberately acting against the interests of their team, even playing to lose.

I hate this ruling-out of the equalizer so much that when it came to devising a really immoral anti-hero, I made him a corrupt international soccer official. However, we all like to believe that no-one is beyond redemption, so in "Linehan's Trip" that official witnesses atrocities which make him re-assess his whole attitude to life and decide to try to reform. In the sequel, "Linehan Saves", he goes on a mission to China, where corrupt players have been sentenced to death, and his new-found good intentions are severely tested.

Soccer, as I see it, is a microcosm of the wider world. The health of both is being severely tested at the moment. As, indeed it always is. Both face destruction, and time is running out. More than ever, we need an equalizer.

***

Author Bio

Bryan Murphy is a sceptical optimist who for some reason believes that his future will get better as the world's gets darker. He recently gave up correcting other people's broken English and now concentrates on putting together his own. He divides his time among England, Italy, the wider world and cyberspace, and welcomes visitors at: http://www.bryanmurphy.eu His latest e-book, Linehan Saves, is currently available free at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/323609 

Often what happens when writers submit work that’s rejected,  they blame the editor or the publisher. How come they were unable to recognize great writing when they saw it? they wonder. Disappointed writers will sometimes ignore the fact that their work was read and found wanting, a rejection that rests with the submitted material. Nothing personal, and certainly not the fault of the ones who passed judgment on the story or poem or article submitted.

As a retired English teacher on all levels of education, I was in a good position to discern where the true problem lay. I had quite a few students from grade six to college seniors who possessed tremendous imaginations, but falsely believed that was enough to carry them to A+ Territory. When I’d grade them with a C or a C+, they’d become downright indignant. How could I possibly do that? Why didn’t I see how clever their stories were?

Why didn’t I overlook mistakes in grammar, spelling, and punctuation?


What drives English teachers, editors, and publishers up the proverbial wall is the writer’s foolish assumption that the mechanics of writing are unimportant. “Does spelling count?” should never have been asked of me, but it was the second most popular question students wanted to know when I assigned a story for homework. The first was, “Do we have to?” Arguing in favor of a computer’s spell checker is like holding up a calculator while insisting knowledge of simple math is now passÈ.

Picture this. A writer submits a manuscript to a publisher, who delivers it to his or her editor. The editor begins reading it, encounters myriad errors of grammar and punctuation, which annoyingly repeat themselves on nearly every line. Now, tell me, who is going to tread through these verbal minefields and not become exasperated,  sometimes so exasperated the editor stops reading, rubs eyes, shakes head, and shuts down manuscript without making it past the first page or two of a novel or the first paragraph of a story or the second line of a poem.  

What does this tell us?  The fault most certainly does not rest with the editor or the publisher. A manuscript submitted without editing and proofreading sends mixed signals.  On the one hand, it says, “I want so much for you to publish my story”; and on the other hand…the one waving like a clown…”I know it’s packed with all kinds of errors, but try looking beyond them and check out how imaginative my story is!”

There is more to a story than its imaginative plot. Other story criteria must be satisfied, including foreshadowing: dropping subtle hints early on in the story, so the reader accepts the narrative’s resolution. The story’s problem must be revealed as early as possible and then developed in such a compelling way that no readers jump off the train before it stops at the final station. Add to all these necessary ingredients the avoidance of poor language usage, improper punctuation, and the use of unnecessary words.

If we want our work published, we need to do all we can on our end to facilitate acceptance. We cannot hand a neighbor, for example, a basket of rotting plums and expect that neighbor to graciously accept it. In all things, we need to put our best foot forward. We need to present to others a good impression of ourselves and the stories and poems we write and hope to see published.

As a teacher and an editor myself, I always suggest to writers the importance of owning a shelf of books that will assist them in turning out acceptable final drafts: a good dictionary, a thesaurus to use sparingly, an English handbook, and several how-to writing craft books. I would suggest even more books, but the Internet provides writers with quick access to researching required information. I also suggest to writers, regardless of how busy they are writing or holding jobs, to read voraciously. The more writers read, the more, mostly on a subconscious level, they learn how to write. Lastly, I would tell my students and those submitting work to me, be observant of what’s out there. There are millions of stories and poems all around us, just waiting to be captured and housed onto paper or monitor.  

Editors and publishers are not the enemy. They’re the good guys who are looking to fill the pages of their publication with work that will delight their readers. Make it easier for them by submitting near-perfect work. If your submission touches a nerve, makes them laugh or cry and think, they will reward your conscientiousness, your commitment to turn in work they can read through without frustration.  

And when it comes to flash fiction, everything I’ve written here is doubly applicable because of the brevity of the story. The flash must be an ice ball, packed with all that a short story demands. A flash that is written in a careless, unedited fashion will show itself to be an eyesore that much quicker! It’s a snowball, and believe me, those who pitch them at editors and publishers are snowing no one but themselves.    

Salvatore Buttaci is a retired teacher and professor whose work has appeared in The Writer, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere here and abroad.  He was the 2007 recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award.

His collection of 164 short-fiction stories, Flashing My Shorts, is available from  Amazon.com as

Book:   http://www.amazon.com/Flashing-My-Shorts-Salvatore-Buttaci/dp/0984259473/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1369920229&sr=1-1

 

Kindle E-book: http://www.amazon.com/Flashing-My-Shorts-ebook/dp/B004FN1V8S/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369920229&sr=1-1&keywords=flashing+my+shorts

Audiobook: http://www.amazon.com/Flashing-My-Shorts/dp/B00CWN22K4/ref=tmm_aud_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1369920229&sr=1-1

His follow-up flash collection, 200 Shorts, was just released and available at http://www.amazon.com/200-Shorts-ebook/dp/B004YWKI8O/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369920397&sr=1-2&keywords=200+Shorts

A new poetry chapbook What I Learned from the Spaniard and other poems was published by Middle Island Press:  http://www.amazon.com/What-Learned-Spaniard-Other-Poems/dp/B004W5859C/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369920483&sr=1-1&keywords=What+I+Learned+from+the+Spaniard

He lives with his wife Sharon in West Virginia.