A Mailbox on Mars

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-68
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Eller
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Control Center ◽  
The Future ◽  
Mission Control

Chapter nine opens with Bradbury’s growing association with the 1976 success of the Viking Mars landers. He was featured in the JPL’s mission control center during the landing of Viking 1, meeting Wernher von Braun for the last time before von Braun’s passing. He returned to the JPL at Caltech to open the symposium on “The Search for Life in Our Solar System.” The chapter also surveys the growing momentum toward a film adaptation of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Although an option with Paramount failed, producer Peter Douglas and his father Kirk Douglas were able to keep momentum going as Bradbury and director Jack Clayton worked to improve and shorten Bradbury’s screenplay for the future.

The Original Mission Control Center

2018 ◽  
pp. 8-12
Author(s):  
Manfred “Dutch” von Ehrenfried
Keyword(s):  
Control Center ◽  
Mission Control

scholarly journals The Quadrantid Meteor Stream: Past, Present and Future

1980 ◽  
Vol 90 ◽  
pp. 153-156
Author(s):  
David W. Hughes ◽  
Iwan P. Williams ◽  
Carl D. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
Fourth Order ◽  
Equations Of Motion ◽  
Meteor Stream ◽  
Eccentric Anomaly ◽  
Test Particles ◽  
The Future ◽  
Runge Kutta

At the present time the orbit of the Quadrantid meteor stream not only intersects the orbit of Earth but also passes very close to the orbit of the planet Jupiter. This causes considerable perturbations. In a series of three papers (1,2,3) the authors replaced the myriad of meteoroids in the stream by ten test particles set at equal intervals of eccentric anomaly around the orbit. The equations of motion of these particles in the solar system were solved using a standard fourth order Runge–Kutta technique with self–adjusting step lengths. The orbits of the test particles were output at ten year intervals going back from the present to the year 300 B.C. and forward into the future to the year A.D. 3780.

Arthur C. Clarke

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Westfahl
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
First Century ◽  
Space Travel ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Future ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Distance Communication ◽  
First Time

Despite extensive critical attention, Arthur C. Clarke’s distinctive science fiction has never been fully or properly understood. This study examines some of his lighthearted shorter works for the first time and explores how Clarke’s views regularly diverge from those of other science fiction writers. Clarke thought new inventions would likely bring more problems than benefits and suspected that human space travel would never extend beyond the solar system. He accepted that humanity would probably become extinct in the future or be transformed by evolution into unimaginable new forms. He anticipated that aliens would be genuinely alien in both their physiology and psychology. He perceived a deep bond between humanity and the oceans, perhaps stronger than any developing bond between humanity and space. Despite his lifelong atheism, he frequently pondered why humans developed religions, how they might abandon them, and why religions might endure in defiance of expectations. Finally, Clarke’s characters, often criticized as bland, actually are merely reticent, and the isolated lifestyles they adopt--remaining distant or alienated from their families and relying upon connections to broader communities and long-distance communication to ameliorate their solitude--not only reflect Clarke’s own personality, as a closeted homosexual and victim of a disability, but they also constitute his most important prediction, since increasing numbers of twenty-first-century citizens are now living in this manner.

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