Sean Williams

Is it just me, or does anyone else see a face in this picture of the centre of our galaxy?

New Scientist ran an article in its March 24 edition describing a new space propulsion system that uses nanoparticles for reaction mass instead of hot gases or charged Xenon atoms. Each engine is "about the size of a bacterium" and their designer, Brian Gilchrist, "envisions arrays of many millions of them being bolted onto a space vehicle". The article's penultimate sentence finishes: "within a decade or so, we'll know whether nanotechnology holds the key to space exploration".

I agree. In fact, I don't think Gilchrist is going far enough.

Geodesica featured vessels relying on a similar principle to the one outlined in New Scientist. To quote the book:

"Unlike craft with single engines, single life support systems, and control systems bearing only the most basic redundancy designs, Palmer Cells owed their considerable flexibility to a single, simple design concept. The work of all their systems was spread across the entire Cell, performed by millions of machines on the micro- or nanoscale. Every cubic centimeter of the Cell contained hundreds of components dedicated to air purification, water reclamation, field effect generation, VOID maintenance, and so on."

Not just engines, then, but every aspect of spacecraft design.

This made putting my characters in jeopardy difficult at times, since ships like this couldn't break down unless every single one of its millions, perhaps billions, of pieces failed. But it opened up possibilities too.

"Every cubic centimeter was, in a sense, a reflection of the Cell as a whole--in the same way a fragment of a hologram contained an image of the entire hologram in miniature. A Cell could take any shape, any size, and still contain all the elements it needed to be a functioning, human-bearing space vessel."

So you could whittle an entire ship down to a coffin-sized lump and it could still, theoretically, work.

NASA is funding Gilchrist's research, so I don't think we'll have to wait a decade to know if we're on the right track. Fingers crossed, anyway.

The universe is so beautiful I could weep.

This image of the Lagoon Nebula, with stars removed, confirms something I've been thinking for a while: that stars may be the engines driving many interstellar process and the campfires around which lifeforms like us huddle, but aesthetically speaking they're worse than dirt on the lens. The real beauty lies in the nebulae, the distant galaxies, and the vast webs of matter spanning the gulfs. Stars may come and go, but space dust will be with us forever. Amen.