Saturn Slide Show

Take a look at these photos of Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft, hosted on the New York Times website:

Saturn Up Close

Photo number 13 shows sunlight reflected off a lake of Titan.

The Empress of Mars

With the Seattle Public Library system shut down for a week, Bede and I are not sure who brought home The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker, but we're both glad somebody did. While not billed as a comedy, the novel is definitely funny. I appreciate humor-infused science-fiction. Humor is subjective, however. Fortunately, you can read the first chapter right here to decide if this story about a PanCeltic woman and her three daughters who brew the only beer available on Mars is your cup of tea (buttered, of course, with milk from cows bred on Mars by Clan Morrigan). I enjoyed it so much I read sections aloud to Bede just for the pleasure of sharing the humor. Let me know what you think.

This is not a book review. This is me exhorting, "Read it! Read it!" I've never read anything by Kage Baker before this novel, and now I'm compelled to seek out her other stories.

Stars and Stories

YA/Teen writer Justine Larbalestier's blog post Very Wrong Questions (which links to her fellow writer Ally Carter's blog post The Wrong Questions...) resonates with me and reminds me of why I quietly dropped out of my local SCBWI chapter. I enjoyed hearing the guest speakers, but the questions so often depressed me. I also didn't have a finished manuscript. I still don't.

However, now I'm ready to think again about working on a longer manuscript. There's a story I want to tell. It's the kind of story I want to read. It deals with space-travel, the longing to connect with beings on other planets in the universe, and the frustration of slower-than-light travel that currently stymies humanity's thirst for exploration and discovery even more than the money involved to undertake such ventures. It's character-driven.

It's altogether possible that you will never read it. I would be thrilled if I wrote and edited a manuscript that I felt was worthy enough for you to read. If it were also worthy enough of publication, that would be wonderful, too. However, I realize that all these years, my internal pressure to have written rather than to write has sabotaged my will to create stories.

I remember a moment years ago when I rode the escalator from one level of a bookstore to another. I looked down at the shelves and tables of books, and suddenly felt melancholy. "I'm so glad I don't have a book down there," I thought. The expanses of books that might never be brought home and read made me feel overwhelmed. How odd, then, that entering a library or looking up at the night sky brings exhilaration and excitement over the possibilities of discovery.

If after we die, we get to have our questions answered, my husband and I both know what our first question will be: "Is there alien life on other planets?" We'd really like to find out the answer to that question in our lifetimes, but we will take what we can get.

Now, if there is alien life, the next question might be, "Is it friendly?" And perhaps that answer would be, "It depends. How friendly are humans, anyway?"

Touché.

Three Planets

Photo-illustration from Siennasoft.com

From the Associated Press:

Planetary triple play this weekend

Stargazers will get a rare triple planetary treat this weekend with Jupiter, Mercury and Mars appearing to nestle together in the predawn skies.

About 45 minutes before dawn on Sunday those three planets will be so close that the average person's thumb can obscure all three from view.

They will be almost as close together on Saturday and Monday, but Sunday they will be within one degree of each other in the sky. Three planets haven't been that close since 1925, said Miami Space Transit Planetarium director Jack Horkheimer.

And it won't happen again until 2053, he said.

"Jupiter will be very bright and it will look like it has two bright lights next to it, and they won't twinkle because they're planets," said Horkheimer, host of the television show "Star Gazer. "This is the kind of an event that turns young children into Carl Sagans."


Where to look.
Use binoculars, but be aware that the sun will rise soon. Please take care of your eyes.

Also, the Geminid meteor shower is coming up and will be in full-force around December 14. This is one of the times when I wish I lived out in the country.

Astronauts Receive What Parents Crave

Headline: Astronauts Allowed Extra Hour of Sleep

Bede asked, "Where can we sign up to become astronauts?"

Dwarf Planet? Pluton? Lumpy Thing in Outer Space?

At three years of age, Lucia is already asking the hard questions of life. Bede reports:

Planets

The Lost Planet

Headline: Pluto loses status as planet

I should've realized this IAU resolution was coming. A couple of weeks ago, when Lucia and I went to see Nancy Stewart at Pottery Barn Kids, I noticed a planet-mobile on display. "Hurrah!" I said. "Here's a fine addition for Lucia's room. Never mind that it costs $39.00 USD. We can skimp on the caviar bill, after all. But wait a minute..."




I counted eight planets plus the Sun.

"Where's Pluto?" I ranted. "And why is there no attempt to represent the planets to scale? Jupiter is 3/4 the size of the Sun, and the gas giants are all the size of Jupiter." In a rage, I ripped the planet-mobile from the ceiling. The security guards had to drag me away to a quiet room where I could sip weak tea and gather my senses together. No one pressed charges, but in an ironic twist of circumstances, Brad the Gorilla was the one who had to come and make sure I had a safe ride home. Meanwhile, Lucia was still enjoying the Nancy Stewart concert, oblivious to my planet-induced meltdown.

Thus, when I read the headlines this morning, I had already worked through my freak-out phase and arrived at a quiet acceptance of eight planets in the Solar System. My song will be shorter. So much for "Planet Hoppers: The Opera."

Just between you and me, I'm relieved.

I Gave Junk Mail a Chance

After discovering the Spamusement link on Galetea's blog, I decided to give my junk mail folder a chance to prove its creative potential before unceremoniously deleting it. Lo and behold, I found two useful pieces of junk mail:



A Victorian dollhouse with pirates: how could I resist? It's only money, after all, and it would indeed be a great surprise for Lucia.



You know what an astronomy buff I am. The thing is, this star is supposed to date back to 14 billion years ago, but there are wildly fluctuating theories as to how old the universe really is. Some people say it's only 10 billion years old, but in that cast, how can we see objects that are 30 billion light years away? Other people say that the universe is 15-20 billion years old. [And still others say the universe is only 10 thousand years old and multi-million year old dinosaur fossils were put in the ground to confound humans, but that train of thought just makes me grouchy.]

Song of the Planet-Hoppers

From the New York Times: Pluto Dodges a Bullet




If the new definition of the word "planet" extends to objects beyond Pluto that are larger in size than this wee solar satellite, I may have to make my planet song longer. I've made provisions for such an event, but I'm attached to the idea of nine planets. I wonder why Pluto can't follow similar rules to the Y in vowels ("A E I O U and sometimes Y"): when Pluto's orbit is closer to the sun than Neptune's, it's a planet. When Pluto is further out, it's a Trans-Neptunian object.

For those of you who care about such things:
I wrote my ode to the planets in the People's Key of A minor, but I like to place the capo on the first fret so that I can play it in B flat minor. When I figure out how to make a recording, I'll post a link to a rough version of the song.

Song of the Planet-Hoppers
Irregular 4/4 time


Mercury and Venus,
Earth and Mars
Inner rocky planets
that seem close and yet so far.

Chorus:
Round and round the sun we go,
round and round we roam,
Of all the planets in my life
I’m glad Earth is my home.

Jupiter and Saturn,
Uranus, Neptune,
Each a giant globe of gas
with rings and many moons.

Chorus

Pluto is the 9th one
and if more should come along,
Let's give them all resplendent names
and add them to our song.

Chorus

[This final verse to the tune of the chorus]

Earth, so blue and brown and green,
with seas of sparkling foam
Of all the planets in my life,
I’m proud to call you home.

Lyrics Copyright 2006 by Alkelda the Gleeful

From the comments section: Limpy99 says,

Bad news kids, under the new rules the scientists are saying there could be "hundreds" of new planets in the solar system. How do you feel about "Planet-Hoppers: The Opera?"

The Planet Song (Hurrah, hurrah)

Lucia keeps asking me for a song about planets.* I have been working on a composition of my own, but due to my overwhelming affection for the key of A minor, everything sounds like an alternate version of "House of the Rising Sun" or "Greensleeves." I like both of those songs quite a bit, but perhaps music composition is not in my near future...

A quick internet search revealed a fair-sized collection of planet songs, but nothing really appealed to me: either I didn't like the tune** or I hated the rhymes.

Thanks to Lone Star Ma, I now have a planet song I can deal with... and even play on the guitar. The song is one her Lone Star Girl learned in school, and it's to the tune that I know best as "The Ants Go Marching."


The planets revolve around the sun, hurrah, hurrah
The planets revolve around the sun, hurrah, hurrah
The planets revolve around the sun,
And spin on their axis, every one.
And they all go spinning
Around and around they go!

Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, hurrah, hurrah.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, hurrah, hurrah
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars,
All whirling and twirling among the stars.
And they all go spinning
Around and around they go!

Jupiter and Saturn are next in line, hurrah, hurrah
Jupiter and Saturn are next in line, hurrah, hurrah
Jupiter and Saturn are next in line,
Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto make nine.
And they all go spinning
Around and around they go!



*The Basic Nine planets of our solar system. Planet X needs its own song, I think.

**There is a handful of songs I refuse to sing: "Old MacDonald" and "Farmer in the Dell" are two of them. When it comes to songs about farmers or animals, I prefer "I Had a Rooster" or "Fiddle-I-Fee." Even "B-I-N-G-O" is fine with me as a flannel-board story or used with the book by Rosemary Wells.

For the sake of conversation [i.e. lots and lots and lots of comments], which sing-along songs do you like most? Which ones do you like least? Which ones make you prefer the experience of dental work to the torture of listening to the songs?

Invasion

Here is the edited, altered version of the chapter I posted a few days ago and then took down because it wasn't flowing the way I wanted:

[My journal of alien contact]

I have bad news. ISAP is threatening to recall the Kookaburra IV from the Alpha Centauri-A meeting point. In response, two out of three of the major private sponsors are threatening to pull the plug on their funding of our space program. Mieko Alleyne-Cates III, the third sponsor, says that if her colleagues try such a stunt, she will personally turn those sponsors inside-out like the proverbial sea-cucumber. Still, I don’t know. Money and threats will only go so far. We need the Kookaburra to go further.

“We are five years away from first contact!” Alleyne-Cates said. “Five years! We have been so lucky and it’s ruined us. Up until now, nothing’s gone wrong, and we’ve all gotten a bit spoiled as a result. Has everyone really forgotten about the Challenger and Columbia space-shuttle explosions of the twentieth century? What about Mars? Mars was major. Mars just about shut us down for good.”

“Now, one little escape-pod from the Kookaburra goes missing, and everyone is talking about ‘the failure of the mission,’” Alleyne-Cates said.

“What are we worried about?” I asked. “All reports say that the celestronauts on the escape-pod are probably alive and have a good chance of rendezvousing back to the Kookaburra.”

“The Sartereans don’t think so,” Alleyne-Cates said. “They know our celestronauts are supposed to be in hibernation. Something has gone amiss, and they’re awake now. I really don’t see what the big deal is. But no, everyone’s lost their common sense.”

Alleyne-Cates smiled as if it pained her to do so. “It doesn’t matter how much we praise intergalactic communication and set our hopes on first contact with people from other planets. Deep down inside, we’re all worried about space-invaders.”

I wasn’t sure I had heard correctly. “What does the escape-pod have to do with space-invaders?” I asked.

Alleyne-Cates replied, “That’s classified information. But even if it weren’t, you know exactly what one has to do with the other.”

Alleyne-Cates was giving me more credit than I deserved, but I thought about what she said. I knew that there were factions who were convinced that the Kookaburra was on a fool’s mission to meet aliens that didn’t actually exist. Other factions, however, thought that the Sartereans were going to attack Earth the first chance they got. Still, it didn’t add up… and then I got it.

“The sponsors think that the escape-pod is full of double-agents in league with the alleged Sarterean plot to conquer Earth,” I said.

“Yes,” Alleyne-Cates said, and then she turned away from me. “In the entire history of our planet, our quest for discovery has always been infested with ulterior motives. It is only human of us to assume that everyone else thinks the same way.”
I turned toward the TIC. I wanted to ask Zeke something, anything that would remind me of how silly everyone was acting. Zeke was waiting with a question of his own. Before I could say anything, though, Alleyne-Cates stopped me.

“Until further notice, the TIC is down for maintenance,” she said.


GLOSSARY

ISAP: International Space Administration Program, pronounced "Ee-sop."
Kookaburra IV: the spacecraft sent to rendezvous with the Sarterean spacecraft (as of yet unnamed) in Alpha Centauri A.
Sartereans: The intelligent species from the planet Sarter in contact with Earthlings, pronounced "Sar-ter-ray-ans."
TIC: Transgalactic Instantaneous Communicator, pronounced "tick."

Journal of Alien Contact

Part I

Part II

Page from History

Don't Talk of Mars

Planet Shaping

Invasion

Interlude

GLOSSARY

Celestronaut: ISAP astronaut/cosmonaut/etc.
ISAP: International Space Administration Program, pronounced "Ee-sop."
Kookaburra IV: the spacecraft sent to rendezvous with the Sarterean spacecraft (as of yet unnamed) in Alpha Centauri A.
Sartereans: The intelligent species from the planet Sarter in contact with Earthlings, pronounced "Sar-ter-ray-ans."
TIC: Transgalactic Instantaneous Communicator, pronounced "tick."

Planet Shaping

[My journal of alien contact]

I’ve already said I’m not supposed to talk about the Mars terraforming project. Zeke, however, was able to talk all he liked about the terraforming* project of Sarter’s neighboring planet, Avas. While Avas was still primarily a host for research, much as Antarctica had been for Earth centuries back, there were growing communities of homesteaders who settled around the equatorial lands of Avas. The planet hosted the usual wintering-over of tourists who inevitably returned to Sarter with inflated stories of derring-do and rumors of haunted ice-caves.

Round-trips were expensive, and there weren’t too many people on Sarter to disprove the tall-tales of the thrill-seeking planet-hoppers. However, Zeke had spent a year on Avas working in the mines, and said that the main entertainment besides racing snow-plows was mountain-sliding. However, mountain-sliding on Avas was incredibly dangerous. Sarter made mountain-sliding illegal after investors complained about the high mortality rates.

"Planet-hoppers inevitably stretch the truth about their mountain-sliding experiences," Zeke said last week. The conversation seemed to start from nowhere, as the TIC was slow that day. We were experiencing a lag-time in messages. So much for "instantaneous" communication.

"If they were completely honest," Zeke continued, "they wouldn’t have survived to tell their stories. Really, the most exciting part of the whole Avas internship was standing on the ground of a new planet and looking into the sky at a different configuration of stars. The work itself was rather monotonous. There were times when I would have welcomed a haunting from one of those alleged ice-cave monsters just to make my life a little more interesting. The most exciting part of the whole experience was the travel between planets. If I had my way, I would be traveling with the Sarter delegation to Alpha-Centauri A.”

So far, Sartereans were better suited to space-travel than Earthlings. Our celestronauts endured loss in bone-density, muscle-deterioration, and were highly susceptible to nose-bleeds. They spent many portions of their prolonged lives in hibernation. There was a narrow window of time in which a person could choose to train as a celestronaut. Space-travel was devastating to humans who hadn’t completed adolescence, yet training required many years before humans would even enter a space-ship for their initial launch. ISAP required early commitment with severe penalties for defecting from the program.

Nevertheless, many Earthlings wanted to be celestronauts. Celestronauts were our heroes, sacrificing all other goals for the glory of interstellar-exploration. The Alpha Centauri-A delegations knew that their chances of returning to their home planets were minute, but ISAP was confident we would discover faster-than-light travel in time for the delegations to return. Still, my grandmother urged me to avoid celestronaut training. “You cannot make that kind of decision about the rest of your life before you’ve even begun to live it,” she said. She was bitter. Grandmother had three daughters. Two of them married and had children. The youngest, my Aunt Io, was one of the celestronauts on her way to Alpha Centauri-A. I didn't know what made Grandmother angrier: the thought of never again seeing her youngest child or the knowledge that when ISAP started its celestronaut program, Grandmother was no longer a candidate for space-travel.

Glossary

ISAP: International Space Administration Program, pronounced "Ee-sop."
Sartereans: The intelligent species from the planet Sarter in contact with Earthlings, pronounced "Sar-ter-ray-ans."
TIC: Transgalactic Instantaneous Communicator, pronounced "tick."

"Galactic" Tourists

Associated Press 13:41 PM Mar, 19, 2006 EST:

Galactic Tourists Pony Up To Ride

Two years after the first privately financed space flight jumpstarted a sleepy industry, more than a dozen companies are developing rocket planes to ferry ordinary rich people out of the atmosphere.... Unlike the Cold War space race between the United States and Soviet Union that sent satellites into orbit and astronauts to the moon, this competition is bankrolled by entrepreneurs whose competition could one day make a blast into space cheap enough for the average Joe.

I'm not an "ordinary rich person" (I'm not rich at all!), but I certainly am an average Joe Jane. I mean that in the best way possible. Sign me up.

Update: Bede just finished reading The Forever War, and said to me, "You're not allowed to travel at relativistic speeds." When I was little, my mother said that I wasn't allowed to travel into outer space.

I suspect a conspiracy.

From what planet did you come?

Based on my recent posts about alien contact, I thought this planet personality quiz might be a pleasant diversion. Thanks to Spinning Girl for the link.

You Are From Mercury

You are talkative, clever, and knowledgeable - and it shows. You probably never leave home without your cell phone! You're witty, expressive, and aware of everything going on around you. You love learning, playing, and taking in all of what life has to offer. Be careful not to talk your friends' ears off, and temper your need to know everything.

What Planet Are You From?

Don't Talk About the Mars Project

Flash forward from A Page From History...

[My journal of alien contact]

Most of us didn’t know what the Sartereans actually looked like. There were the grainy sketches on the probe that the celestronauts Dogstar and Summit found on Pluto, but those sketches were about as accurate as the ones we sent out on the Voyagers I and II all those years ago. In that time, Earthlings had changed in small but perceptible ways, so it was fair to assume that the Sartereans had also evolved differently from how we pictured them. On the regular TIC channels, etiquette forbade the discussion of appearances. Still, that didn’t stop us from joking about how each of us had imagined “aliens.”

“Sartereans were sure that any intelligent life out in the universe had to have three heads,” Zeke, my penpal, told me. “Many of our artists’ depictions of aliens still have variations on the three-headed theme.”

"That doesn't sound so strange," I said. "For a time, Earthlings were convinced that there were little green men living on Mars.”

“What did you find when you finally went to Mars?” Zeke asked.

“Lots and lots of red dirt,” I said. “When we finally gave up on the idea of finding life on Mars, we had grand ideas of terraforming the planet. That project almost annihilated the ISAP. In fact, the biggest opponents of intergalactic communication always love to cite the failure of the terraforming project. If you ever want to start a brawl, all you have to do is walk into a room full of strangers and say, ‘Mars.’”

Just then, I felt, rather that heard, Mieko Alleyn-Cates standing behind me. “Just a moment,” I said to Zeke.

“Don’t say anything more about the Mars project,” Alleyn-Cates told me.

“It’s fine,” I told her. “Zeke understands that there have been some interesting mishaps along the way and he—“

“Don’t say anything more about the Mars project,” Alleyn-Cates said again. There was steel in her voice.

“Okay,” I said. “Can you at least tell me why? It’s not as if Zeke is in a room full of Earthlings.”

“In some ways, he is,” Alleyn-Cates said. “Look around you. ISAP is concerned that you and others are portraying Earthlings as buffoons. You know about the Stop Stupid Earthlings movement on Sarter. If the wrong thing gives them enough fuel for their hostilities, they could shut down the Sarter TIC.”

“I thought we were supposed to have free access to the TIC,” I said.

“Sure,” Alleyn-Cates said. “But freedom has always been a subjective matter.” Alleyn-Cates glared at me. Quickly and quietly, she said, “Look, the money isn’t going to hold out forever. Stick to the chatty public relations with your penpal and leave the ISAP totally out of it.”

I turned back to the TIC. “Sorry, Zeke,” I said. “That was more than a moment. Let’s change the subject quickly.”

“Time is irrelevant,” Zeke said. “Quick change of subject: What are you doing this evening? Would you like to go %$%^%^ and watch the moons rise?”

“Very funny,” I said. “By the time I got there, we’d both be dead. I didn’t understand the activity you mentioned. Something got lost in the translation.”

Zeke paused. “It’s %$%^%^. It’s…” he stopped again. “I can't explain. Let me look it up.”

I waited. It was quite common for things to get lost in translation. The basic language we had developed was still evolving.

“I’ve got it,” Zeke said. “The closest thing I can relate it to is ‘curling.’ There’s a slippery surface involved, and a lot of sliding around, but the rules are a bit different. Anyway, I was just being silly.”

“Silly is good,” I said, and on it went. This was the sort of conversation ISAP wanted us to have. Light, seemingly trivial, even flirtatious. They didn’t want us speculating on the meeting between the Earth and Sarter delegations, even though the projected rendezvous in Alpha Centauri A was some years away. They also didn’t want us getting our hopes up about actually meeting our penpals. Although our spacecraft could go much faster than anyone in the twentieth century could have ever dreamed, we were not making any progress with faster-than-light travel. Frankly, I didn’t think it was ever going to happen.

Alleyn-Cates would have kicked me off the TIC if I had ever blatantly suggested such a notion to Zeke or anyone else. I wasn’t stupid, and neither was Zeke. Many of us had developed little cues and emphases in our communications that ISAP didn’t seem to pick up on. It was the only way we could ever have real conversations with the Sartereans. Zeke and I knew more about each other than ISAP realized. At least, we hoped ISAP hadn’t picked up on what we were really saying.

If Zeke and I ever met on the ground, we might get freaked out by what the other person looked like. I imagined Zeke as some sort of silvery humanoid creature with the face of some handsome actor in an aliens-land-on-Earth film. How did Zeke imagine me? In his mind, did I have tentacles, antennae or (despite himself) three heads? As I said, etiquette forbade the discussion of such matters. I would like to think that if Zeke and I ever did meet on the ground, we’d get past all of the external oddities.

I’ll admit it: we fancied each other.

To be continued.

Glossary

ISAP: International Space Administration Program, pronounced "Ee-sop."
Sartereans: The intelligent species from the planet Sarter in contact with Earthlings, pronounced "Sar-ter-ray-ans."
TIC: Transgalactic Instantaneous Communicator, pronounced "tick."

Golden Record from Planet Earth

As a child, when I first learned about the Voyager Golden Record, I was both excited at the thought of an alien species actually intercepting one of the space probes, and concerned that they wouldn't be able to figure out how to work it. This is a legitimate concern, as I am sure many people today (March 6, 2006) wouldn't know how to work a phonograph record if one landed in his or her backyard. Of all the theories and jokes about what will happen when and if the aliens intercept Voyager I or Voyager II, this is my favorite:

In a memorable Saturday Night Live segment, it was announced by Steve Martin that the first message from extraterrestrials was being received. Once decoded, the message stated, "Send more Chuck Berry."

For more details about the photos that represent the Planet Earth, click here. Surely, the creators have got to be kicking themselves for all time over the photos portraying human beings from the 1970's.

Ansible, Lodestar Resonator, and "TIC"

I had thought it was Orson Scott Card who had created the idea of the ansible (my less-eloquent "instantaneous communicator"). I just found out the concept in science-fiction was created by Ursula K. LeGuin. A number of other authors have picked up on it as well, including Philip Pullman, who calls it a "lodestar resonator." I'm calling mine the TIC. Now, we just need someone to develop it. Some crazy genius, perhaps.

A Page from History

[My journal of alien contact]

Before I tell you more of the present, it might be helpful to view a page from the past. My grandparents were quite young when Earth sent its first humanned spacecraft to Pluto. They were in their teens when the SHS Kookaburra landed, and in their mid-twenties when the ship returned. Although the article has been reproduced everywhere, my grandmother, Marisol Yoderkulp-Speyer,* kept the original printout of the news-story documenting the historic landing and our first indication that there was at least one other sentient species in the universe. Here is the copy of my grandmother's printout:



If it's too hard to read the copy of my grandmother's printout, you may read the text here:

Southern Hemisphere Nations land humans on Pluto

Siriana “Dogstar” Janiewski has become the first person to walk on Pluto. The celestronaut stepped onto Pluto’s surface, in the Sunshine Plateau, at 0256 GMT, nearly 20 hours after waking from hibernation-travel. Dogstar had earlier reported the spacecraft’s safe landing with the words, “Melbourne, Sunshine Base here. The Kookaburra has landed.”

As she put her right foot down first, Dogstar’s first words were, “It’s cold! It’s really, really cold.” Dogstar quickly followed up with, “Humanity, welcome to the rest of the universe.”

She described the surface of Pluto as being unremarkably like the surface of Luna, Earth’s only natural moon: powdered charcoal, with the spacecraft leaving a crater about a foot deep.

Dogstar spent her first minutes on Pluto taking photographs and soil samples in case they had to leave suddenly. “This first visit is just a social call,” she joked, ironically referring to the 8 year long voyage of the Kookaburra.

Dogstar was joined by fellow celestronaut, McKinley “Summit” Smith, at 0315 GMT, and the two collected data and performed various exercises to warm up their muscles before planting the Southern Hemisphere Nations flag at 0341 GMT. They also unveiled a plaque bearing President Zindel’s signature and an inscription reading, “Here humans from the planet Earth first set foot upon Pluto at the turn of the century in March --01. We came in peace for all humankind."

Soon after, Dogstar said suddenly, “What’s this?”

“It’s a probe,” Summit said.

“One of ours?” Dogstar asked.

“No,” Summit said.

“Oh. I thought Northern Hemisphere Nations' probe crashed somewhere on Charon.”

“It's not the NHN's,” Summit said. “It’s someone else’s.”

Nothing else came over the system until Dogstar announced that take-off was on schedule for 1750 GMT. Dogstar and Summit will reenter hibernation after the successful launching of the Kookaburra from Pluto. If all goes according to plan, the return to Earth will take less than 8 years due to fortuitous differences in the planetary orbits.


As you can tell, the reports indicate that the voyage wasn't too different from humans' first trip to Luna. You can read that legendary story here: 1969: America lands man on the Moon.



* You may remember that my username for the Transgalactic Instantaneous Communicator is "Marisol," after my grandmother. My grandmother was the one who encouraged me to study linguistics in addition to cosmology and World Literature. "Read Out of the Silent Planet if you don't believe me," she said.

"But Oma, that's science-fiction," I protested.

"That's what they once said about Jules Verne's novels," she scoffed.

Instantaneous Communication: Part II

[My journal of alien contact]

This post continues the story I started two days ago with Instantaneous Communication: Part I. I'm making this up as I go along, so details are bound to change. I'm hoping that the two made-up acronyms don't make your eyes glaze over from resistance to techno-babble. I don't know any techno-babble, and I'm not going to try to slip quarks and parseks into this story. If there is a glaring scientific error somewhere, I'll be happy for you to point it out (or even give me ideas, if you so desire), but I'm not even going to attempt to write in-depth about future technology. I am trying to imagine what it would be like to be a human being in a future century who can talk with with someone who may not be human, but who is definitely a person. Here goes:

Part II: Crazy Geniuses

Who knows how long it would have taken human beings to leave the solar system if it hadn’t been for the crazy geniuses with unlimited funds. Even after we received the Sarterean probe, the International Space Administration Program (ISAP) had dragged its bureaucratic heels on the development of the transgalactic instantaneous communicator (TIC). When Mieko Alleyn-Cates III, the scion of one of the great houses of crazy-geniuses, stepped forward and said, “We are going to make this thing, and I don’t care how much it costs,” she got her way. There was some quibbling over the name of the TIC, but Alleyn-Gates snorted, “We’ve been talking about ‘universal’ values for centuries before we even got to the outer planets. The universe is a big place. In the grand scheme of things, ‘transgalactic’ is a bit smaller. Why not start small?”

Despite the protests of world leaders who said Alleyn-Gates was wasting precious funds on publicity stunts, we had pen-pal stations set up all over the world. Alleyn-Cates was concerned that Earthlings not be represented by one small privileged group of humans. We 20 humans were part of Alleyn-Cates’ penpal club. You couldn’t buy your way into it, and you certainly couldn’t get in by any claims of who your ancestors were. We all met some sort of criteria, but Alleyn-Cates wouldn’t tell us what it was. Some politicians protested at this secrecy, citing possibilities of discrimination, but Alleyn-Cates said, “Back off! This is my project and I’m funding it. It’s not as if your lot ever cared about ending discrimination, anyway.”

Thanks to Alleyn-Cates, I had unfettered access to the TIC except when it was down for maintenance. I could write anything to my Sarterean penpal with the understanding that nothing was private. I will spare you the in-depth explanations of how Earthlings and Sartereans devised a language that was easily accessible to us. Unless you’re a linguist, you’d find the whole thing tedious. Suffice to say, I had two years of intensive study in the language before anyone let me near the TIC.

In the beginning, we all had sets of questions to ask and answer to ease us into conversation. We got to choose screen-names for ourselves (we weren’t allowed to use our real names). Alleyn-Cates rejected my first three choices on the grounds that they sounded too “old-timey science-fiction.” Apostrophes were absolutely forbidden, as were hyphens. (Was the irony of the second rule lost on Alleyn-Cates herself? Somehow, I doubt it.) I finally settled on the name “Marisol.”

“’Marisol’ sounds a bit spacey to me,” Alleyn-Cates said.

“It was my grandmother’s name,” I said, and Alleyn-Cates let it drop. Any references to Helios-G2 as “Sol” or “the sun” were embarrassing. We didn’t like to be reminded of the times in which we thought we were at the center of the universe. In fact, ISAP would have been quite happy had we not mentioned the matter at all to our penpals.

“Propriety is important,” ISAP said. “You are responsible for representing Earth in a positive light. Don’t make us look stupid.”

“Are you kidding?” Zeke, my penpal said, when I told him of the whole interchange. “We still have factions on Sarter that insist we’re the only planet in the universe with sentient life. Arrogant stupidity is not exclusive to any one species. We’ve got people constantly trying to cut funding for the TIC.”

“What stops them?” I asked.

“Crazy geniuses with unlimited funds,” Zeke replied.

Next: In which I attempt (in vain) to conceal my crush on my Sarterean penpal.