heinleinblog

Heinlein’s “The Menace from Earth” gets a mention in this New York Times blog post about whether the United States should return to the Moon or shoot for a Mars landing.

Personally, I don’t care … just PICK ONE and DO IT.

Dwayne Day reviews “Project Moonbase” (a television pilot turned movie co-written by RAH) for The Space Review and comes away with the conclusion that while The Master was ahead of his time in many ways in portraying women in authority, he had  a little problem with sexism.

I suggest that Heinlein was ahead of his time, but had no interest in portraying women who acted like men. And remember that a movie script is written to spec, and the bosses can and often do insist on changes. It’s quite possible the clunkers Mr. Day points out were the result of these changes.

It’s odd to hear this criticism considering that the term “Heinlein Heroine” is synonymous with smart and competent.

Dwayne A. Day’s July 2 article for The Space Review:

With these concepts in mind, it is worth looking at a rather amazing memo that Heinlein wrote in 1945 advocating a rigorous American missile and space program. Heinlein wrote it soon after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. He argued that the bomb had changed the world and he believed that intercontinental rockets would also have a major effect on warfare. He wanted the United States to get out in front of this new development like it had with the bomb.

There are many interesting aspects to the memo, but what is unique about it is that it occupies a point precisely in the middle of the overlap between science fiction and current reality. Although Heinlein thought that he was discussing the world as it was-or was about to be-his own interests in rockets and spaceflight were biasing his projections. He was advocating solutions to current problems that were far more fantastical than practical. Heinlein was certainly not alone in this. Many people looked at the atomic bomb and made dire predictions that fortunately proved false. But Heinlein believed in rocketry and spaceflight so fervently that it led him to conclusions that were not well-grounded in the actual technical realities of his day. That is worth considering today, six decades later, when Heinlein is still held in such high esteem as a prophet for the NewSpace movement.

I am continuously amazed at how RAH is revered as a guru in the worlds of fiction, politics and science.

[tags]Heinlein,Robert A. Heinlein,space flight,rockets,Space Review[/tags]

New Science has an article on elevators to outer space, but you have to pay to read the whole thing:

If you can make it into low-Earth orbit - about 160 kilometres up - then you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system. Sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein’s remark has become a mantra in the space community, mainly for its irony: despite leaps in rocket technology costing billions of dollars, those first 160 kilometres are still the hardest.

[tags]space elevators,new scientist,Heinlein[/tags]

Privately-funded ventures into space was the theme in many of The Master’s works, shich “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” “Destination: Moon” and others. And the Heinlein Prize was created to encourage private ventures into space. So it seems natural to give the very first prize to this man:

The trustees of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust have announced the first winner of the Heinlein Prize: Dr. Peter H. Diamandis. Dr. Diamandis will receive a $500,000 award, a gold Heinlein medallion and a replica of the Lady Vivamus sword (from Heinlein’s novel Glory Road) at a ceremony to be held in Houston, Texas on July 7, 2006.

Dr. Diamandis is a leader in the area of commercial space exploration. In the past twenty-five years he has started more than a dozen space organizations. In 1980, he founded the Students for the Exploration and Development in Space; it is now the largest student-based space organization in the world. The best-known of these is probably the X Prize Foundation; its $10 million Ansari X Prize helped to jumpstart the commercial spaceflight industry.

[snip]

“There is no question that Heinlein’s work has inspired and driven me during my career. His novella, The Man who Sold the Moon, is my favorite story. In fact, I flew it as personal cargo aboard SpaceShipOne during the winning Ansari X PRIZE flight on October 4th, 2004.â€? (The Heinlein Prize)

This article from TCS Daily makes a good case for a government-paid space elevator made out of carbon nanotubes:

Most importantly, however, space elevators could save us from going the way of the dinosaurs. Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid probably crashed into the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. Space elevators would greatly facilitate the detection and deflection of earth-bound asteroids. Space elevators would also make it far easier for humans to colonize space and thus survive any world-destroying disaster. As Robert Heinlein said “The earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.”

[tags]space elevators,carbon nanotubes[/tags]

The Space Review details the candidates for the award in the field of commercial space flight.

On Star Trek, the Starship Enterprise cruised the galaxy defending the United Federation of Planets. Is this the first step to making that future a reality?

The Personal Spaceflight Federation, whose establishment was announced Tuesday, brings together a who’s who of space entrepreneurs, including SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan, whose team won the $10 million X Prize last October, and video-game genius John Carmack, whose Armadillo Aerospace team was among the leading contenders for the prize.

The industry group plans to work with federal regulators to help draw up the “rules of the road” for suborbital space tourism, following up on last year’s landmark law on private-sector spaceflight, said Gregg Maryniak, who serves as the federation’s chief spokesman as well as executive director of the X Prize Foundation.

Actually, an association of private businesses designed to bring commerce to space seems like something one would find in a Robert Heinlein novel that anything created by Gene Roddenberry, who couldn’t even bear the though of money being used in the future.

Since our government seems more interested in subsidizing tobacco farmers and honey production than in extending humanity’s presence to the Moon, Mars and the outer planets, it’s up to private enterprise to secure humanity’s survival by placing all our eggs in more than one basket — the Earth.

Not only did SpaceShipOne reach outer space — and win the $10 million prize for two spaceflights by the same privately owned space craft — but I actually talked on the phone to Valentine Smith on the phone today.

Actually, it was Valentine P. Smith Jr. and I talked to his wife, not him. And she had never heard of Robert A. Heinlein or “Stranger in a Strange Land”

But a bunch of my co-workers watched the flight in the breakroom and cheered.

All in all, a good day.

MSNBC: SpaceShipOne whirls into space for a prize

SpaceShipOne landed safely Wednesday after a tilt-a-whirl start to its bid to win a $10 million prize for private spaceflight.

Judges with the Ansari X Prize confirmed at a news conference later in the day that the ship had gone beyond the 100-kilometer (62.5-mile) mark required for the flight to qualify as the first of two needed to win the $10 million purse. The official numbers, which come from radar at nearby Edwards Air Force Base, put SpaceShipOne at 337,500 feet, or 102.9 kilometers (63.9 miles).

The flight must be successfully repeated within two weeks under the X Prize rules. The second flight ? “X2″ ? is tentatively scheduled for Monday.

Science fiction author Robert Heinlein wrote several short stories — “The Man Who Sold The Moon” and “Requiem” — about private space flight, as well as the movie “Destination: Moon.”

There are many who blames the government’s virtual monopoly on manned space flight for our failure to return to the moon and for the lack of action toward getting human beings on Mars. President Bush proposed setting up a permanent human presence on the Moon, but nothing has been done so far.

Discovery of water on Mars and the Moon make human habitation technically possible. It is certain that until human beings can set up habitation on either place, there is no way we can take advantage of the resources there.

And there there are those who believe that we need to get back to the Moon and to get to Mars period simply because they are there. The effort
itself is its own reward.

Heinlein believed that. So do I.