Derby is Graduating!

Back when I was still involved with the annual Pets in Space anthologies -- before the series changed hands -- I donated toward the training of two Hero Dogs. 

Hero Dogs is a noble organization that raises and trains service dogs for disabled first responders and the Pets in Space volumes donated to the cause every year since inception in 2016. It was a great choice, IMHO, the perfect charity to be supported by limited edition volumes with a focus on "pets in space."

Both service dogs I sponsored had names that held meaning for me. 

The first was MITCH. 

Mitch is also the name of the hero of my as-yet-to-be-published novel, The Outer Planets, so picking out my first pup was an easy task. I followed him through his training and, as I was about to by a part of the second Pets in Space release, he graduated to become a bonafide service dog (not all pups make it, so I was very proud of him). This was the announcement I made on this blog on November 4, 2017:

_________________________________________________________ 

~ ~ ANNOUNCING A VERY SPECIAL GRADUATION ~ ~

 

As a participating author in both of the Pets in Space anthologies to date, one of the bonuses is being able to help support the Hero Dogs organization with a 10% donation from all preorders and first month's sales.

 

My Hero -- Hero Dog Mitch
Photo credit the Hero Dogs site

A year ago, while involved with the original Pets in Space, I "adopted" one of the Hero Dog trainees -- Hero Dog Mitch -- as a side project and made special donations to assist with his training toward becoming a service dog over the last year. (You can read Mitch's blog here.)

 

I am absolutely delighted to announce that tomorrow, November 5th, Hero Dog Mitch will successfully graduate the Hero Dogs program as a service dog and will be paired with a US Coast Guard veteran!

 

Much is asked of these dogs, and not every candidate has the right stuff to successfully graduate as a full-fledged service dog, so this is a very special occasion indeed. I received a personal invitation to attend from Hero Dogs, but will be unable to make the trip to Maryland this weekend to witness Mitch's graduation.

 

I want to take this opportunity to wish Mitch and his veteran a very long, happy, and successful partnership.

  

_______________________________________________

I was super proud of my boy, Mitch. :) 

After his graduation, I picked out a second pup to support for future Pets in Space volumes, and her name was DERBY. 

For those of you who are familiar with me, you probably know that we've been involved in breeding and/or raising Thoroughbreds for well over a decade, so "Derby" was an obvious choice. 

(Link to Derby's page at Hero Dogs)

Today, I was notified in a newsletter that Derby is now graduating, also as a bonafide service dog. She made it! 

Her graduation ceremony will be on October 7th (which will be right around the time the latest volume of Pets in Space will released this year--but no, I haven't been involved with PISA in a number of years now). 

Here's Derby's class graduation announcement:

The graduation of Derby feels like the Pets in Space chapter of my authordom is now closing. Though I'm still planning to publish my last former Pets in Space story -- Courting Disaster -- later this year, and that will close the entire book on my involvement with the Pets in Space franchise which introduced StarDogs to my Inherited Stars galaxy. :)

StarDogs will be back in later stories (or at least, that's the plan) but Pets In Space now feels a bit like a booster rocket that's been jettisoned. It helped to get me where I am, but it's no longer part of the program. 

Best wishes to Mitch on his continued mission as a Hero Dog, and Happy Soon-to-be-Graduated Derby. It was fun sharing part of my journey with two very exceptional Hero Dogs. 

1,600 Pounds of Writerly Inspiration

Now, Voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find. 
—Walt Whitman, 1819-1892

As a species, we experienced something amazing this past week. The realization we have a starship--an honest to goodness starship--the first man-made craft confirmed to have ventured into the unknown depths of interstellar space.

Image courtesy of NASA

Interstellar space! Just think of that, the dark and empty void between the stars. Out beyond the heliosphere--that bubble around our home system made up of charged-particle plasma ejecta from our Sun, into the unchartered space where this million-mile-per-hour solar wind gives way to a cooler, density space awash with charged particles from around the galaxy. Via Voyager 1, we learned that boundary lies at about 11.3 billion miles out from our Sun.

But Voyager 1, and its sister ship, Voyager 2, have been flying through space for over 36 years and though largely forgotten until this major milestone brought them back to light, they've made history in a number of ways. 

• The Voyager mission was conceived in 1960 as a Planetary Grand Tour, using Jupiter's gravity as a slingshot to send the crafts on to Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The slingshot effect was later named gravity assist.

• Voyager I and 2 were originally to be named Mariner 11 and 12, however budget cuts forced a scale-back of the primary mission. Later referred to as the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn Probes, they were eventually renamed Voyager I and 2.

• Voyager 2 was actually launched before Voyager 1, on August 20, 1977. Voyager I was launched on September 5, 1977.

• Both crafts carry the famous Golden Record containing sounds of Earth--including human voices in several languages, insects, frogs, rain, whalesong, volcanoes, and symphonies. They contain the famous greeting "Hello from the children of planet Earth" recorded by Carl Sagan's young son, and a schematic of how to play the record in addition to a depiction of Earth's location in relation to several pulsars.

• Voyager I entered the asteroid belt on December 10, 1977. Nine days later, on December 19, Voyager I overtook Voyager 2.

• 

  Image courtesy of Wikipedia

• Voyager I's primary mission ended on November 2, 1980, after exploring Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980. It was the first probe to provide detailed images of the two gas giants and their many moons. (Go HERE and scroll down the page to see an amazing time lapse video of Voyager 1's approach to Jupiter on the right sidebar.)

• Differences between photos of the Jovian moon Europa taken in 1979 resulted in scientists theorizing that Europa may have a 30 mile deep liquid water ocean interior, below 19 miles of ice.

• The Voyager probes discovered volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon Io that had not been discovered by the earlier Pioneer probes.

• After Voyager 2 observed a thick atmospheric haze over the Saturn moon Titan, Voyager 1 was diverted for a closer fly-by. Its trajectory later carrying it out of the ecliptic plane of the solar system and ending its Grand Tour which originally would have taken it by Pluto after observing Saturn.

• Voyager 2 continued on to explore Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989, the only probe to have done so.

• On February 14, 1990, Voyager 1 took the famous solar system "Family Portrait"--a mosaic of 60 frames taken from 6 billion miles out--and showing six planets--Jupiter, Earth, Venus, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune--as well as our Sun. The famous image of Earth became known as the "Pale Blue Dot" and inspired Carl Sagan's book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. The photos were taken at 40.11 AU and 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane of the solar system.

• Voyager I overtook the earlier Pioneer 10 craft on February 17, 1998 at a distance of about 69.4 AUs. (An AU, or Astronomical Unit, is the distance between Earth and the Sun.) Pioneer 10 was launched 5-1/2 years earlier in March 1972 and was traveling outbound at approximately 28,000 mph. The last detectable signal received from Pioneer 10 was on January 23, 2003. It was well beyond 80 AU at the time.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

• Voyager 2 reached a distance of 100 AU on November 12, 2012, only the third craft to have reached this point in the wake of Voyager 1 (at 122 AU) and Pioneer 10 (at 107 AU). However, only the two Voyager craft are still communicating with Earth.

• Although Voyager I was confirmed to have crossed the heliosphere on September 12, 2013, it required over a year to determine that the craft had actually made the transition on August 25, 2012. It took over 35 years to reach interstellar space traveling at a speed of about 38,110 miles per hour.

• Voyager I's radio signals (which travel at the speed of light in space) reach Earth in only about 17 hours 23 minutes.

• Voyager 1 and 2 are expected to run out of power sometime between 2025-2030--over 48 years after their launches--but a shutdown of the science instruments will take place in 2020.

The Voyager probes have given humankind major breakthroughs in the understanding of our world, our solar system, and our universe. As a Science Fiction/Romance writer, I owe these pioneers of space exploration a debt of gratitude. So many of their discoveries and imagery have provided the backbone of research and the spark of inspiration for my work.

On Friday, an invitation was extended to the public to send a message to Voyager 1 via @NASAVoyager using the hashtag #MessagetoVoyager. I was happy to add my tweet to the many other greetings and well wishes aimed at Voyager I:

Thank you for taking us places where only our imagination could have ventured before. #MessageToVoyager @NASAVoyager #SFRBrigade
— Laurie A. Green (@SFRLaurie) September 13, 2013

Godspeed, Voyagers.

Seriously Northern

Good morning, Yellowknife!

I'm doing research for my RCMP character (Greg Farr) in Outer Planets, who joins the mission out of a small town in the Canadian Northwest Territories called Yellowknife.  In doing various Google searches to learn more about the town and the area--population approximately 20,000...way, WAY north of Edmonton...big lakes...big trees...very cold--I stumbled across a photo blog that features some really unique photography taken by a resident of the town.  I love the flavor, insights and detail offered by these glimpses into everyday life of a town some...what?...3,000 miles north of my homestead in a very different environment. 

The title of my article today is the motto of a local airline.  And wow, does it fit.  Where I grew up in northern Michigan it was called "Up North" (I even have a t-shirt) but Yellowknife?  That's "seriously northern."

I don't need to know every detail about Greg's backstory, just a greater sense of where he came from and what forces shaped him. A feeling for the community where he lived prior to being packed off on a planetary research vessel. 

A picture is truly worth a thousand words but a collection is priceless.  Especially to a writer!  Just want to share a few of the postings (Sharon, I know you'll appreciate these):

sky  (And I thought WE had the bluest skies on Earth)
Inuit art  (I heart ptarmigans)
Yellowknife from the air  (Toto...we're not in New Mexico anymore.)
mural   :)
new mural   :) :)
logo   On Dasher....Oh, wait!  That's a caribou.
footprints in the snow  (Not sure why but this "coming and going" snapshot fascinated me.)
dizzy??  (Um...YES!)
courthouse window  another view  << what character!
chillin'   Mocs?...or mukaluks?
Yellowknife City Hall 
Greenstone building  (no relation)
Monday  (Want to know how to spell 'Monday' in Dene?) (I'm not sure what Dene is.  Inuit?)
Metal sculptures  (represents Drum Dancers on the lake side)
tree benchtable  (Cool!)
plane I will board  (First Air, based in Yellowknife)
Yellowknife turns 75   (Here's trivia for you.  What's the original name of Yellowknife?)

I look at these pictures and try to imagine this place thirty years down the road.  What will the population be?  Will many of these buildings still be standing?  Renovated?  Torn down.  The Great Slave Lake will most certainly be there, but what about the abandoned cabin on Main Street? 

Loved this! Yellowknife has an Aurora Forecast!

I'm no fan of the snow and the cold, but between this photo blog and the coverage of the Olympics today, I have this sudden an urge to go experience the culture of Canada.  Beauty, eh? 

Uranus Strikes Out

The Challenges of Writing a Near Future SFR

I had a funny thought today that in the process of revising my latest manuscript, Outer Planets, I effectively obliterated a member of our solar system from the mission parameters. Zap! Space dust. (Doesn’t being a writer come with some nifty powers?)

In my original draft of this Near Future Romance, my space exploration vessel was plotted to scout the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus for potential colony sites and resources that could be mined, extracted or otherwise pilfered by a burgeoning colony or two, or absorbed by consumers back on Earth. So why pick on poor Uranus? What did the seventh rock from the Sun ever do to me?

To put it simply, common logic killed Uranus.

First of all, it created a timing problem. My mission takes place from approximately the year 2039 to 2044. As it turns out, Jupiter and Saturn are going to be in close proximity in orbit in approximately November 2041, instead of being at opposite sides of the sun. The timing is perfect. Actually, they’ll be close again sometime in the 2070s but that’s too far in the future for the story I want to create, which I intentionally set within the life span of most readers. There’s a reference in the story to His Majesty, the King of England. Guess who that is? I thought it was kind of a cool thing that when the reference is made to a monarch some 30 years in the future, the reader will know who will most likely be occupying that seat.

But back to Uranus.

First of all, placement in orbit. I simply couldn’t make the inclusion of Uranus work in any feasible way, since although it wasn’t at the opposite side of the sun at that point, it was too far away to work into my mission without adding tens of million of miles. That was strike one.

Secondly, my purpose for including Uranus in the story was to open up the possibility of its additional 27 moons (as of this date) to explore. But with just Jupiter and Saturn there are already 123 moons. (Amazing, isn’t it? There are 150 moons orbiting those three planets!) Upon re-evaluation, 123 moons is plenty to explore especially with the possible water moons of Europa and Encaledus, the methane oceans of the Earth-lookalike Titan, and the volcanic activities on Io, et al. In fact, exploring 150 moons was probably overkill. So that was strike two.

Last of all, distance. Even if I’d cheated a bit and made Uranus’s orbit position feasible (i.e. fictional) for the timeline, it’s still way out there. Literally wayyy out there. Though Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are neighbors, the distances between them are enormous. Earth is a mere 92,957,000 miles from the sun—to make the measurement of great distances easier to understand, that’s called an AU (or Astronomical Unit). In comparison, Mars’ orbit is only about one half of one AU away from Earth. Venus is even closer, but in the opposite direction. Jupiter is 483,632,000 miles away or four AUs. Saturn is 888,188,000 miles or nine-count ‘em—nine! AUs. And Uranus? A whopping 18 AUs or 1,690,950,000 from Earth, about twice as far out as Saturn.

Just for fun, I laid all the planets beyond Earth out on a graph line and translated it into rounded AU numbers. It looked something like this:

0.5 Mars

1.8 Asteroid belt

4.0 Jupiter




9.0 Saturn








18.0 Uranus










29.0 Neptune








38.0 Pluto

So even if Uranus was in perfect alignment, like Jupiter and Saturn will be, it would require all the time it took to reach Saturn (another two years) to get there, making my mission at least an eight-year mission, not five years. For reasons of both believable logistics and most of all, plot dynamics, that simply doesn’t work.

At our present level of propulsion technology we’d be hard pressed to even reach Jupiter in the first year, but I think it’s reasonable to assume some advances in both speed and efficiency in the next thirty years. So, one year to reach Jupiter. Six months to research the Jovian system. Another two and a half years to reach and study Saturn. And a final year to return home. (I developed new technology to increase the ship’s velocity for the return to Earth. Voila! Five year mission.)

So that settled it. Strike three. The mighty Uranus has struck out. Besides, the blue gas giant and her twenty-seven moons was just way too much additional detail to pack into an 110,000 page novel.

Writing a Near Future SF Romance is presenting a whole new set of challenges for me than I’ve encountered in my other SFRs. In P2PC and Draxis, I could simply create the worlds I wanted with all their little quirks, customs and idiosyncrasies to compliment the plot or add conflict for the characters. But dealing with characters living in a world only two or three decades down the road, the story takes on the feel of a contemporary (albeit an extraordinary one). There’s a lot more research involved. In P2PC, the distance between Veros and Banna (or Rathskia and Ithis) didn’t matter. Because those planets are…you know…fictional. Whereas Jupiter and Saturn are fact. And they can be seen by anyone on any given night with any decent telescope. Hello!

This project has been an incredible journey for me via my research. Whether reliving the giddy years of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, studying how a space shuttle actually orbits, marveling at the amazing paintings of former astronaut Alan Bean, touring the Skylab at the Smithsonia Air and Space Museum, or puzzling out the political dramas surrounding the Mir space station, Outer Planets has taken me places I’ve never been before. I hope it will do the same for readers someday in the not too distant future.