GeekSix

SyFy gives us hope for space action with “Orion” and “Sherwood”

Josh
Sunday
5:16 pm

With space based sci-fi shows all but dead, and the science fiction genre itself hurting, our mood has been melancholy at best.

But there’s hope in the form of new shows coming down SyFy’s pike. It’s no secret that SyFy has been hunting for a new space opera since “Galactica” was on the wane — but it looks like we’re getting double for our patience. Both seem to crib liberally from “Firefly,” our favorite success story, but it’s yet to be seen whether the shows will capture the same magic.

From SyFy’s press release: National Treasure meets Firefly in this swashbuckling space opera about an adventurous female relic hunter and ..read more

Unmanned space shuttle…or something far more sinister?

Joe
Friday
12:12 pm

The best part of the Cold War (and that’s pretty high praise) was the underlying suspected accumulation of spy gadgetry that quietly accompanied the nuclear arms buildup.  “Dude, the KGB has exploding remote control gnats!”

But these days, we have to create our own hi-tech enigmas, as  America’s current enemies aren’t exactly the subtle technological wizard types.

Meet the new mystery.  Straight out of an elongated West Wing story arc and much more concrete than the Aurora, the Air Force has launched the X-37B.  What is it?  Other than looking like a sleeker, smaller regular space shuttle, that is open to debate.  The Air Force says it’s just an unmanned device ..read more

The dark side of the Moon

Joe
Friday
12:12 pm

Good news and bad news from that NASA LCROSS mission that was designed to find water on the Moon.

Well the good news is that the analysis of that crash cloud has determined there is indeed large quantities of water on the Moon.  Water that could theoretically be used to make future exploration and colonization more efficient.

The BAD news is that the water is very old and hasn’t been affected by the air and bacteria of earth.  Which means that there is a 125% chance that the water contains an evil alien microbe that will turn the first astronaut to explore it into a rampaging monster who at first appears ..read more

The rocket rocked it

Joe
Wednesday
11:57 am

NASA is on a roll.  This (Wednesday) afternoon the first test Ares I-X rocket was launched successfully, a big step toward returning to the Moon and a boost to the controversial Constellation program.  This comes just a few weeks after the water-in-dust crash tests on the Moon itself.  In the face of budget cuts and a lot of “let’s focus on Earth’s problems rather than spaceships” sentiment spawned from the recession, it’s nice to see the program can still deliver the goods.  This is early on in Constellation, but success is success, which will only help get money once the economy wanders back into NotEffedVille.

For those Utah readers, it’s ..read more

Your sea ain’t so tranquil now, Moon!

Joe
Friday
11:41 pm

Well, NASA pulled it off.  The impact wasn’t as readily visible to amateur astronomers as some had hoped, but the science stuff went off without a hitch. I guess that’s what’s important when you are dealing with an $80 million price tag.

Here’s NASA’s LCROSS mission page.  There aren’t a ton of great photos yet, but there is quite a bit of interesting stuff on the mission.

And speaking of that $80 million budget, that’s actually pretty cheap by space project terms.  Hasn’t NASA learned the city utility workers’ trick of just tearing up streets for no reason to justify getting a huge budget?  If the folks down at Canaveral can ..read more

One small poof of dust for man

Joe
Thursday
1:07 pm

Since nobody wants to deal with pandorum, NASA is sticking close to home on their newest mission.  The plan calls for a two-stage bombing of the Moon, where the first capsule crashes into the soil and the second capsule flies through the debris field created by the impact of the first and searches the debris cloud for traces of water.  There is definitely SOME water on our lunar friend, but the OCD eggheads want to figure out exactly how much.

I have two questions after reading that article:

1.  Is this really the easiest way to answer the question of how much water the Moon’s soil contains?  Why not send a ..read more

On starting up a role-playing campaign in the Firefly ‘verse

Josh
Monday
2:58 pm

The Firefly/Serenity universe is one of the best out-of-the-box settings for a role playing game that ever existed: A group of people on the raggedy edge, trying to scrape out a living in a postwar setting that blends the best elements of the Wild West and dystopian future.

As you know, I’m a big fan. (I started www.fireflyrpg.com a few years ago, and have a Mark II version that’s currently being refreshed with new content at test.fireflyrpg.com .) So, when Twitter friend and Geek6 reader @benhamill mentioned that he might — might — be running a Serenity-style game in the near future, I couldn’t pass ..read more

Space: The low-cost frontier

Joe
Tuesday
1:19 pm

I could do a lot of dumb things with $150,  especially with the farm animal-market so depressed in this economy. 

But how many people could do truly genius things with $150?  Apparently at least two.  A pair of MIT students took photos of the Earth from 17.5 miles up (”near-space”) with a benjamin and a half worth of funds.  Hubble has cost $10 billion since its debut.

What’s amazing isn’t just the cost, but the MacGyver-like list of materials used for this photo shoot.  A weather balloon, a crappy camera, hand warmers, a pre-paid cell phone… and not much else.  And it went off without a hitch.  The only problems ..read more

Countdown to the launch of Apollo 11

Blain
Wednesday
5:37 pm

It saddens me that the upcoming 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon isn’t getting more play. I remember back in July of 1989, I couldn’t turn on the television without seeing some sort of program about the 20th anniversary of the moon landing. ..read more

Concept ships and sci-fi artwork galore

Josh
Monday
2:47 pm

Sorry, dear readers, in not telling you about this site sooner. But, as I was culling down my massive collection of bookmarks over the weekend, I fell in love all over again.

Conceptships.blogspot.com is an image-rich vehicle to share the best work from the conceptships.org forum. What sets this site apart from the pack is the incredibly high level of excellence involved in the work.

Where to begin? Hard to say. Spend a few seconds scrolling through the blog, and you’ll see gut-ticklingly beautiful renditions of concept art, like this one from Ken Le Bras:

Happy browsing, and try not to fritter away the whole ..read more