Stuff I've read lately

"L is for Lawless" (Sue Grafton)(audio) - Ironically, this brings me up to date with the series (which is currently at "U"). This one was pretty interesting, Kinsey managed to keep the body count to two (and she didn't kill anybody!) There was even a bit of a mystery element, where is the money hidden? Is there even any money? Quite gripping.

Liberty Ship

I forget where I first saw this... I was poking around on the Internet a couple of years ago, and found a lot of good stuff, this was probably in there. (Related to the Project Rho site, which I've mentioned before).

The Liberty Ship is truly impressive, something for our generation akin to the Saturn 5 rocket. A shame it will probably never be built...

I wanted to run some of the numbers, because I keep getting them jumbled (stupid units):
Mission mass: 2.722e6 kg (6e6 lbs)
Dry+empty mass: 7.258e5 kg (1.6e6 lbs)

The power is given as 80 GW, and the fuel mass flow is 178 kg/s. That translates (via ve = sqrt(2E/m)) to 29,981 m/s exhaust velocity (which matches well with the given 30k). That power sounds high, I will probably examine that in a separate post.

Thrust is ve * fuel mass flow, which yields 5.337e6 N (which roughly corresponds to the given 1.2e6 lbs, if 4.4N=1 lb force - which is what Google implies).

The biggest problem I ran into was finding the right delta v for LEO. Project Rho gives it as 11,180 m/s (before aero and grav drag). Wikipedia gives it as 7.8 km/s without drag (and 1.5-2 km/s drag).

The other problem is the total thrust is very low. With 7 engines, thrust is 37.357e6 N. Dividing that by the loaded weight (mission mass) gives an acceleration of 13.726 m/s^2 (1.4 g's). This will cause a very long lingering in the Earth's gravity well (rockets often use 10 g's for liftoff).

I'm not certain how to calculate the gravity drag. Project Rho gives vd = vo / a, which seems to allow for any velocity. It seems unlikely that any acceleration below 1 g can ever escape, but perhaps I am wrong...

Regardless, this gives us v_drag of 5,575 m/s - which cuts heavily into the given mission dv of 15 km/s (perhaps that is the intent). It is unclear what effect a lifting body has in these figures...

One alternative is to increase the fuel flow (to increase thrust, and decrease linger time). Unfortunately, this cuts into ve. The mass ratio (full mass divided by dry mass) is equal to exp(delta v / exhaust velocity) (that's the natural number, e, to the x power).

So any drop in exhaust velocity has an exponential effect on the mass ratio, which drives up propellant mass, which drives down cargo mass.

You can drive ve back up with engine power, but ve is the square root of power, so half ve must be made up with 4x power...

Stuff I've read lately

"Nebula Awards 27" (James Morrow ed.) - I like reading these short story collections. They give exposure to a lot of authors who I might not normally read. And coverage of a lot of areas. Plus, if I don't like a particular story, it's over quick!

Stuff I've read lately

"Paradise Lost" (John Milton)(audio) - This is one of those books you always hear mentioned by name, but no one ever talks about the details. Probably because the details are incredibly long winded...

I think the most amazing part was the whole thing is nine hours, and most of the time is spent with demons giving speeches to each other (and bizarre battle scenes where I lose track of who is fighting). In the last half hour, Milton covers all of history from Adam to the (his) present (~1600).

Failville

(continuing my review of Facebook games)
I don't know why I keep giving Frontierville another chance... I keep thinking it has to get better at some point...

There is an interesting correlation between games I enjoy and games that allow non-paying players access to the for pay item. For example, Robot Builder and Nitrous Racing (which needs its own reviews) are my two favorites - both allow you to get the bonus items without paying (of course you can pay to get more).

Frontierville gives you 1 per level (called "horseshoes"). Stupid decorations cost 10 or more (the treehouse is 100). You might need 4 or 5 just to finish some building that all your friends are done with (so they stop sending you the materials).

When I signed in last week to help some friends with items they needed, I was notified of a chance to win 50 horseshoes by completing 6 missions.

So, I churned hard on those missions - harassing my friends like never before. As the deadline approached, I was starting to finish!

Then, what do I see?

The missions are multi-part! Each one I finish gets backed by "Phase 2". Yea, no chance of success.

Stuff I've read lately

"K is for Killer" (Sue Grafton)(audio) - Yet another last minute killer reveal. Plus, I can't even figure out if the killer was strategically bumped off by Kinsey or simply disappeared to start a new life (she called someone who she thought was a mobster - it was unclear if the killer was working with them). Another big body count: the original victim, her friend, an old guy, his gardener - plus maybe the killer.

Riverworld

I finally saw the Sci Fi channel movie adaptation of Riverworld (by Philip "The Outlaw" Jose Farmer).

I was mostly impressed. The story is fairly true to the original (including the important aspect of grail slavery). They even managed to fit in the airship, although some characters were shuffled.

The most disappointing aspect for me was the not-so-fabulous riverboat. It looked like an ordinary riverboat. And instead of steam-driven machine guns, it had a small cannon on the front (like an age of rifles cannon).

I was also surprised by the ending. Although the books didn't exactly end well either (I don't even remember the ending!)

Stuff I've read lately

"The Reenchantment of Nature" (Alister McGrath) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

Stuff I've read lately

"The Best of the Best" (ed. Gardner Dozois) - A collection of science fiction stories from 1981 to 2002. I was surprised that several of them were not very good. It is unclear whether the selection criteria is "this is representative of the year", rather than "this is a pleasure to read". I was also surprised that two of the stories were very similar (life in a virtual world).

Stuff I've read lately

"Guards! Guards!" (Terry Pratchett)(audio) - I hadn't realized Discworld did not have dragons. A lot of characterization of the night watch, which I don't recall before.

Stuff I've read lately

"J is for Judgment" (Sue Grafton)(audio) - Meh. Kinsey did manage to avoid killing anybody this time. The ex-cop red herring totally fooled me. I figured he had to be the murderer. The jilted girlfriend didn't seem capable of it.

Stuff I've read lately

"Valkyrie" (Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager)(audio) - This is (somewhat) about the attempt to kill Hitler by German army officers. Most of the story is about Boeselager's experience in the war (the book is short, and the war frames the events).

The interesting points:

1. Initial thoughts came from Hitler's mismanagement of the war
2. Discovery of atrocities by the SS added fuel
3. There was no attempt until summer 1943
4. Matters were complicated by the realization that Himmler also needed to be killed, and a total coup arranged to prevent further Nazi dictatorship

There is a nice bit near the end, when the Russians are driving west. While retreating, they meet British troops. After surrendering (gladly), they tell the British about the Russians. The British offer to let them help fight the Russians. Boeselager says, (something to the effect of) "I prefer not to".

Stuff I've read lately

"Black Bodies and Quantum Cats" (Jennifer Ouellette) - I was disappointed by this book. Popularizing advanced physics is hard, and Ouellette does a good job of making it accessible to the layman. That said, I was looking for more technical details, at least some of the problems driving solutions. The metaphors were well chosen (I think I learned more about modern culture than physics), but metaphors can only go so far.

Stuff I've read lately

"Finding Darwin's God" (Kenneth Miller) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

"The Last Centurion" (John Ringo) - Only Ringo could make a disaster which eliminates 50% of the world population funny. It's basically a fantasy scenario where liberal ideas and policies selectively kill themselves off, leaving conservatives to rule the world. I expected more action scenes. He probably needed to leave out one scenario and go into more detail in the remainder.

Stuff I've read lately

"The January Dancer" (Michael Flynn) - I am really enjoying Flynn. This story was really well done. In this universe, FTL is done via regions of space with higher local c (to enter the "Electric Avenue"). The main problem I saw is that Flynn required ships to approach local c to enter these regions. The ending was a little anticlimactic, but understandable for a short book (350 pages). I'm not going to encourage 800 page monstrosities.

Stuff I've read lately

"I is for Innocent" (Sue Grafton)(audio) - Grafton didn't have me fooled. Well, I was fooled for a little while. Going in, I knew the obviously guilty guy had to be guilty (despite the title). But, near the end, it looked like he really was innocent (the most suspicious guy haven't picked up some hapless mook for obvious en-murder-ation).

Of course, the obviously guilty guy really was guilty. The suspicious guy was just suspicious.

Body count: we had:

1. the original murderee
2. the detective who Kinsey replaces
3. hapless mook on the night of the main murder
4. main bad guy (courtesy Kinsey, of course)

Stuff I've read lately

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" (Seth Grahame Smith)(audio) - It's funny, the book is actually listed as "by Jane Austen and Seth Smith". It's really a good idea; take an old stuffy book and add in a bunch of scenes with zombies.

A similar book was Philip Jose Farmer's "The Other Log of Phileas Fogg" (based on "Around the World in 80 Days"). In that book, Farmer created a whole story in between the breaks in the original.

Here, Smith took the original text, then made slight changes. It actually had me going for a while. I considered going through the original to find the differences (did Wickham really get crippled?). Then I realized, wait "Pride and Prejudice" was one of the worst books I ever had to read! (The worst being "The Illustrated Man" and second worst being "Where the Red Fern Grows")

Sadly, the book did need more zombies. It is a hard trade off - keeping the original text, and adding enough zombies to make it interesting.

I almost want to grab the text for "Old Man and the Sea" and make "Old Man and the Sea and Zombies" (Zombie fish? Drowned?).

Software Updates

A NewStars update!

Surprise, surprise, the first executable didn't work (at all). The second executable mostly worked, the third executable should work (haven't heard any complaints!)

Each executable is about 3 MB, which takes several minutes to upload (no FIOS for me right now).

But, there is a way to update a Starkit piecemeal! Just make a list of files to check for updates, then foreach s in that list:

if {[file exists $s]} {
file rename -force $s [file join $starkit::topdir $s]
}

So, I can update one file and just drop it in the runtime directory, and it will slurp it into the archive.

Of course, Windows becomes extremely angry if you try and update an exe while it is running!

This is going to require me to drop from a Starpack back to a Starkit and ship Tclkit. I'll also need a batch file to couple everything together.

Irritating, but worth it to reduce update sizes.

Stuff I've read lately

"The Wreck of the River of Stars" (Michael Flynn) - The first book I read by Flynn ("Fallen Angels") left me full of meh.

It was a strange set of circumstances that led me back to Flynn.

Imonk had a post about aliens and Christianity (what with all the talk r.e. Gliese 581g). There, someone had a comment about dogheads, and linked to Flynn's blog. His blog interested me enough to try another of his books.

"Wreck" is a tragedy. It seems like a lot of current SF is depressing, Wreck still manages to be enjoyable.

The story entails the series of accidents which lead to the loss of the River of Stars (a hybrid magsail/fusion torch ship headed into Jupiter). It is very much like the old story of the man who sells his watch to buy a braid for his wife's hair - while the wife sells her hair to buy a new band for the watch.

Many people think SF is all about technology and science. Really, it is about people. The science and far future settings allow the author to strip away the conventions that the reader is accustomed to and reveal aspects of raw human nature.

Flynn excels at this. The wreck is due to the conflicts of human nature; the science behind the events are secondary. The ruined careers, the last chance for glory, the longing for the good old days, interpersonal squabbles, simple hatred and jealousy.

A sad story, but well done.

I particularly like Flynn's snarky comments:
Twenty-four DeCant (to the sail master): "Then, if you're staying... I'm staying."
Captain Gorgas: "We don't seem to have gotten this 'abandon ship' thing quite right."

Titanic

I have almost finished "The Wreck of the River of Stars". It got me thinking a lot about the Titanic (which I'm sure was the parallel the author had in mind).

As I remember it, there were a number of factors involved, any one of which might have reduced the magnitude of the disaster:

1. Ice cube tray effect - the bulkheads should have run higher, but were shortened for aesthetic effect
2. Running too fast (trying to break a speed record)
3. Reversing engines (their rudder design worked better in forward)
4. Poor utilization of lifeboats
5. Poor communication with other ships

Of course, Wikipedia is the wet blanket on many of these ideas:

1. "The height of the bulkhead deck above the water line in flooded condition was well above the requirements"
2. "Captain Smith to increase speed in order to make an early landfall... There is little evidence for this having happened"
3. "The Olympic using the same semi-oval shaped rudder as Titanic's was able to turn in a virtual moment's notice"
4. "The White Star Line actually exceeded the regulations by including four more collapsible lifeboats" (although regulations were out of date). Lifeboats were not intended for carrying everyone at once, but for ferrying to a rescue ship (so 1/3 capacity means three round trips).
   
5. "The closest ship to respond was Cunard Line's Carpathia 58 miles (93 km) away, which could arrive in an estimated four hours—too late to rescue all of Titanic's passengers"

Ahh, well.