Dawn Rendezvous With Vesta Rock animation

I saved individual frames from Dawn simulator images covering 2 weeks as the spacecraft arrived at Vesta and created a Dawn rendezvous set at Flickr.  Play them as a slideshow! (Let the slideshow run once first to download the images, then it should run faster on replay.  For me, slides display at 3 second intervals, resulting in a two minute animation.  Your flickerage will vary.)
Simulation courtesy of Gregory J. Whiffen, JPL.  I encourage him to do an official time-lapse, once he has time out from frequent Vesta texture map updates.  He has other Dawn viewpoint sims and charts at http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/live_shots.asp

This animation is made of frames from this feed:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/orbits/fullview4.jpg

In the Cave of Night – memorable

My next personally memorable word, phrase, or scene (aha! cheating already – yep) is my very first one – “the cave of night.”  I’m a second-generation sf reader, and Mom kept her Galaxy and Astounding magazines lying around out on the (enclosed) porch of our 2nd floor apartment.

Wandering out there in 1955 as a seven-year old who had awakened to the worlds inside any block of black-marked sheets of unpowered paper, I found a Galaxy Feb issue.  I settled down to read a story called “The Cave of Night.” …

I learned of Rev McMillen’s plight in the first hours, along with the rest of the world.  Stranded – all his return fuel burnt, receiver out, air for 29 more days – trapped in the cave of night.  We listened to him talk of the beauty of the world turning below him, how there were no boundaries visible.  How many sunrises and sunsets he saw every day in orbit.  And we rushed to build the second ship…

James E. Gunn wrote this, and four more involving the Big Wheel space station they built to carry on Rev’s pioneering spirit.  These were published by Bantam Books in 1958 as Station in Space,

 

taking advantage of the Russians launches of Sputniks 1 through 3 to help sales.  According to Prof Gunn’s website, the television show I saw based on the story the next year was on Desilu Playhouse in 1959 as “Man in Orbit”.

Station in Space was reprinted in 2004 as an eRead.com ebook Station in Space Kindle edition and paperback.  After you read it, if you are lucky enough not to be in an urban sea of nightlight pollution, look up at the stars … and consider how different our timeline was.

I think the 2 versions of Martin Caidin’s Marooned have been the best subsequent treatments of the theme, with honorable mentions to Dean McLaughlin’s ASF story The Last Thousand Miles, later revised as the first section of his 1965 novel, The Man Who Wanted Stars, and Charles Sheffield’s 1999 novel, Aftermath, in which returning expeditions from the Jovian moons and Mars find dead space stations (a subplot in Aftermath).

I’ll share other memories with you.  Next one, the 3rd: “In the ocean of night.” Let’s hear yours!

Catchy or memorable sf words or phrases

Reading a half-century of sf has left me with quite a few memories.  One subcategory of sf reading memories is “catchy or memorable sf words or phrases,” not necessarily popularized ones, you grok?  Just ones that resonated for you.

One coinage I’ve admired was from a short story called “The Ultimate Racer,” by Gary Wright in the Nov 1964 Worlds of If sf magazine.  [Wright was mentioned by Fred Pohl as being a Samuel R. Delany pseudonym – I can’t find internet confirmation.]

In the story, the greatest computer company and biggest automaker collaborate on a new computer-driven car.  To get publicity and to demonstrate its safety, they set up a race with 3 of their new cars against the world’s greatest race driver.  The reader doesn’t see the robotic car’s name until race day, when the protagonist watches the racer get into his car, and turns to look at the 3 idling black-painted IBM-GMs.  I loved the creativeness and menace and sound and rhythm of “the IBM-GMs.”

Flash-forward by way of antiskid brakes, anticollision radar, 8 processors per car, GPS, and OnStar to Nov 2007 and the “DARPA Challenge,” a robotic city-street driving competition with U$3.5 million in prizes.  One of the University teams, Carnegie-Mellon is funded by the largest automaker, General Motors.  Yes, their entry could be called a “CM-GM!”  🙂

Here’s the item on the competition that told me this:

http://www.spacemart.com/reports/US_military_spurs_robot_car_creations_with_big_money_race_999.html

Update – And the winner – the CM-GM!  As reported on 11/05/07 at RLV & Space Transport News, my prime source of non-Nasa manned spaceflight news at

http://www.rlvnews.com which takes u to:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php

Additional update – Dr. Red Whitaker, leader of the CM team, is now involved with a group planning to win the Google Lunar Rover Prize…

I’ll share other phrases with you.  Next one: “In the cave of night.” Let’s hear yours!