science fiction

I watched the Star Trek (original!) episode The Enemy Within the other day.

Here’s a video (youtube of course) review of both Starship Troopers the movie, and Starship Troopers the book.

It’s long, but worth it.

The first workable proposal for a space program is apparently Wernher von Braun’s Project Mars. Project Mars is a work of fiction, but it lays out a space program that could probably take humans to Mars with the technology of 1955.

Project Mars didn’t see print until 2006, although it’s technical appendix was published as The Mars Project. in 1953.

An intelligent species (or confederation of species) might choose to use base 7 for their numeral system, no matter the exact number or nature of digits at the terminal end of their manipulative appendages.

Even entities with 8 terminal sub-appendages might use base 7.

In my post about Lester Del Rey’s 1956 sci-fi thriller Mission to the Moon, I criticized Del Rey’s cis-lunar flight orbital mechanics. Del Rey had his moon missions leaving from a polar orbit around the earth. This struck me as very odd - all real lunar and interplanetary missions have left from a more-or-less equatorial orbit, or maybe even fly directly into an interplanetary orbit. I thought Del Rey had completely misunderstood orbital mechanics, or had mis-read von Braun.

I was wrong.

I read George Orwell’s 1984 sometime during “Junior High”, which in the 1970s was what we now call “middle school”. My district, Adair County R-III, had grades 7, 8 and 9 in their own building.

The school library had a copy of 1984. I was busy reading a lot my 7th and 8th grade years, so I read it.

Previous Understanding Star Trek post

I’ve heard wise people say that there are only two plots for episodes of “Star Trek - The Next Generation”

1. Data Saves the Crew
2. The Crew Saves Data

Well, here’s a whole new take, orthogonal to that: ST-TNG is the Smurfs.

More on Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 handbook of civics and military organization.

Previous Starship Troopers post

Here’s the key to understanding the original Star Trek.