For Your Reading Pleasure

[ew72]

Hi - many of the writers at Space (dot) com and I have been e-mailing each other for many years, and a lot of them liked the TV Series effort we were working on - I can't speak for all of them. On July 4th we decided to close shop on the Television Series because the market just isn't there right now beyond a niche market. <br /><br />But, we have several dozen e-mails since posting 5 (scattered) episodes from Season One - and we don't rule out eventually putting out the "Mission Collections" next year on schedule, anyway. <br /><br />Please don't consider this an "ad" because it's not. I have decided not to further update the sites, and we have closed the store. One of the things we were going to feature was "the best space atlas ever developed for TV" and that's not a lie. It was the best seller, but we'bve decided that as soon as we can find time as we liquidate sets, models, and equipment, we're going to throw it on line somewhere for free.<br /><br />So, a look at the "future fiction" TV show that almost was ...<br /><br />Why not call it "Sci-Fi?" Well, because for the most part, I hate Sci-Fi. I LOVE Tech, Science, and Possibilities, which is why Space (dot) com is my favorite website on Earth. When I say that our "ship" has to endure 15,370 g-forces using a set of antimatter spiced Linear Spike Engine Pods to go from orbit to 0.6c in 20 minutes, believe me, that's exactly the kind of technical exactness we were putting into the series. A lot of the general public, it was figured, wouldn't have a clue what that even means, but since we used Space (dot) com for 75% of our ideas, it's only fair to pay you back to show you what we came up with - almost. Even as we liquidate the company, we do want to offer you the opportunity to enjoy the projects for a while until the unattended domain names expire. Feedback has been very positive. Most of the help (beyond this page) came from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Kennedy Space Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

 

[ew72]

I have received some very kind and nice e-mails from professionals in the aerospace and science industries complimenting my efforts, and I thank you very much. However, a few professional astronomers took me to task for my orientation of the galaxy as outlined in the various links, and having received 2 e-mails from astronomers in 2 hemispheres, I feel that here (and no one anywhere else has ever bothered to notice this) I have to explain myself. They say that I have inadvertedly confused "up" from "down."<br /><br />Well, not exactly. I intentionally flipped the galaxy as astronomers know it today over like a pancake, so that what the astronomers call "down" e.g. the Galactic South Pole I call "up." <br /><br />The reason is quite simple. I like for 090 degrees to head EAST, and 270 degrees to head WEST. When turning from a heading of 045 to 010 degrees, I would move the stick left to do so, not right. <br /><br />Unlike most professional astronomers, for all I can tell, I spent a lot of my life in aircraft, and 4 years of my Naval career aboard airplanes, so I'm sticking to an orientation where I can keep the degree markers the same as they are to the astronomers today, with 360/000 centered on the galactic core and 180 degrees headed out towards the galactic rim, but beyond that, yes, I did take the liberty of turning the whole galaxy upside down so that the degrees go in a clockwise direction. I appreciate the questions, anticipate more like them, and hope I've answered that one to everyone's satisfaction. I was surprised that here, where the real pro's hang out, I would finally be called on that one. But in hindsight, I really shouldn't have been surprised, because after all, this IS where the pro's hang out!

 

[ew72]

I'm not going to get away with anything here! Again, my compliments to the Space (dot) com readers for picking up things that everyone else has missed all these years. This time I need to answer 2 questions about the "DMT" system. First question is "why not just call it a "Stardate," and the 2nd question (by someone who realized I was off in 2 of the 3 episodes posted, and I'm stunned that was caught, and yes, that will be fixed) was "are there REALLY any practical applications of Digitally Measured Time?<br /><br />(The reference link is here: <br />http://www.endlesswonder.com/dmt.html )<br /><br />Yes, there are actually real applications to the "DMT" system. Here's one right off the bat - as I said, I take the "science background" extremely seriously, and so in late 2000 I put a Science "ALL CALL" with the question of where I might find a full moon in the years 2668, because if I wanted to say that on a given date the characters on Earth would look into the sky to see a full moon, then by God I wanted to be right in my predictions. Well, Doctor Kevin Clarke came through for me in early 2001, and he tells me that, for instance, there will be a New Moon at 03:11 GMT on January 6th, 2668. Once I could get a numerical "DMT" benchmark for what that would be, then the rest of the matrix was easy, because I then figured out how to subtract 29.531 days in DMT equivalent to rapidly figure out new moons - to the minute, across the centuries rapidly just by subtracting or adding the interval, and turns out that when I went all the way back to 2004, I was right on, because we are approaching a New Moon. The system works, and it is a lot easier than trying to figure out days, hours, minutes, and seconds. <br /><br />As to if it is another name for "Stardate," the answer is yes and no. I thought Roddenberry's "Stardate" idea was brilliant - although somewhere they rarely had a consistent formula, and admittedly, the