%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |   Tales from real life |
| Well, if they're not true, they oughta be! |
I recently wrote a poem, Just Sayin'  , about filler words that can grate on the ear. There are a lot of different forms and styles, but they mostly boil down to being unable or unwilling to express true feelings. Stock words and phrases allow people to spend time together and share a conversation without really revealing themselves. They're a form of small talk, a way to make a connection without risking real intimacy.One of my pet peeves is the casual use of profanity. Most of us have rather dull days at work and spend our evenings in front of the TV. We rarely have anything interesting to say. But if we dress up the dross with shocking words, it sounds more meaningful. I don't object to strong language when the situation warrants. I can use some choice words if I'm truly angry or when I'm really in pain. But how can a person signal real emotion when every third word of their daily discourse is an F-bomb? The appropriate use of filler words, stock phrases, and profanity is a topic for serious consideration by an author. It's a matter of balance. The dialogue in our stories has to feel natural to draw the reader in. We have to use some filler words and casual profanity to capture a particular character's voice. But not so much as to annoy the reader. Too much boring, repetitive, or objectionable stuff will drive the reader away. If I were to write dialogue from my real life, it would be a horrible mishmash. I often catch myself saying something that would make me cringe if I saw it in print. I have a tendency to speak half a thought and leave it hanging because the conclusion is obvious (to me). Or I'll feel unsatisfied about what I've said and start over, rephrasing the whole thing from the beginning. I'm sure my audience really appreciates hearing it twice! I thank God that I have the time to review and edit these blog entries before you read them. And you should too. |
Trigger Warning: This post contains math. Reality is a harsh mistress and for interstellar travel, physics is a bitch. It takes light, which weighs almost nothing, more than four years to travel from our solar system to Alpha Centauri. How long would it take for even a very small spaceship? Let's assume the ship has a mass of 15,000 kilograms (33,000 lbs.), about the same mass as a large motorhome. We'll limit acceleration to 1G (9.8m/sec2) for passenger comfort, and top speed to 0.8C because the energy required for acceleration goes up exponentially as we approach light speed. With this mass and acceleration, the trip would take 6 years each way. So, how much thrust would we need and how much fuel? The thrust calculation is fairly simple, Force = mass x acceleration. 15,000 kg x 9.8m/sec2 = 147,000 Newton (323,400 lb). The problem is that we need to apply that thrust for approximately six months to accelerate and another six months to decelerate (in between, we'll coast for five years at 0.8C). And that's only one way. We also have to carry enough fuel to do it again on the return trip. The fuel requirement is much more difficult to compute, but for simplicity, let's consider the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo 11 to the moon. It had three stages. Stage 1 held 2.1 million kg of fuel and provided 34,500 kilonewtons of thrust for 168 seconds. Stage 2 held 440,000 kg of fuel and provided 4900 kN of thrust for 6 minutes. Stage 3 held 110,000 kg of fuel and provided 890 kN of thrust for 8 minutes. The total fuel carried was 2.65 million kg and it provided a burn time of about 17 minutes. If we assume that the Saturn V engines could be 'throttled back', then all three stages could provide 147,000 Newtons of thrust for about 880 minutes. So, one Saturn V booster would last only 14.7 hours. For two six-month burns, we'd need the equivalent of 924 of them to reach Alpha Centauri. And another 924 to get back to Earth. And even that very rough estimate is outrageously optimistic, because we have to accelerate all those billions of kilograms of fuel in addition to our 15,000 kg spaceship. It's simply not possible to carry enough fuel to accelerate to near light speed with a conventional rocket booster. So, carrying fuel seems to be a non-starter for an interstellar mission. But what about an external push? In my story Project Hermes I propose using a solar sail to accelerate a tiny ship with a beam of sunlight. This light pressure is real, but it's not very strong (you can buy a radiometer on Amazon that demonstrates the effect). In the story I've imagined a solar boost satellite orbiting near the sun that amplifies the solar flux by a factor of a million. So, what would this concept look like? We still need a thrust of 147,000 newtons to accelerate our 15,000 kg spaceship at 1G. And the solar flux near the sun can provide a push of 0.00008 newton per square meter. Multiplied by a million, the solar boost beam would provide a thrust of 80 N/m2. So, our sail would need a surface area of 1840 square meters to produce 147,000 N of thrust. A round sail 48 meters in diameter would do the job nicely. Is it possible to build such a boost satellite near the sun? Could our spaceship actually 'balance' on the end of the beam for six months? I don't know those answers, but the concept seems more feasible than carrying billions of kg of rocket fuel. Of course, there's still the question of deceleration at Alpha Centauri and then the return trip to Earth. How does our spaceship accomplish that with very little fuel on board? My solution in the story is to not slow down at all. I have the ship do a gravity slingshot maneuver and retrace its path toward Earth. As it approaches our solar system again, it's decelerated by the same solar boost beam. Is such a maneuver possible? Is it worth it to make a 12-year trip for a 15-minute pass through the Alpha Centauri system? I don't know, but again, it seems more feasible than an impossibly huge rocket. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
