Author: Erin Penn

Geeking Science: Percussive Defense

Erin Penn

This imagery from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope from Oct. 8, 2022, shows the debris blasted from the surface of Dimorphos 285 hours after the asteroid was intentionally impacted by NASA’s DART spacecraft on Sept. 26. The shape of that tail has changed over time. Scientists are continuing to study this material and how it moves in space, in order to better understand the asteroid. Credits: NASA/ESA/STScI/Hubble

You can take humans off world, but you can’t take the world out of the humans. Or should this just be “humans will be humans”?
I’ve previous mentioned NASA solution of fixing the Martian Lander by having it hit itself with a shovel. (Percussive Maintenance; January 21, 2021)
Now they, our biggest scientific brains, are exploring asteroid defense of planet Earth so we don’t go by the way of the dinosaur, by …. hitting an asteroid with a solid object, in this case a DART.
Double Asteroid Redirection Test exceeded the minimum goal of changing the orbit an asteroid by 73 second by a bit … like 33 minutes … with a planned collision. (NASA. October 2022; Paoletta, 2022)
When in doubt, bang it, see what happens.
Of course they use words like “kinetic”, “impact”, “intentional”, “defense technology”. But really, we figuring out how to swing a stick in space so the bad space rocks won’t hurt us.
Ain’t science grand?
Of course scientists being scientists, they are still sorting the data what happened beyond the Percussive Defense incident. Further study indicates that the change in orbit around the second asteroid was a combination of initial impact and the ejecta tossed out from the impact. (NASA, December 2022)
DART’S LAST COMPLETE LOOK AT DIMORPHOS In a thrilling moment, DART captured this view of Dimorphos just as it was about to crash into the asteroid moon. Seconds later, the transmission ended. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL
Bibliography
NASA. “Early Results from NASA’s DART Mission.” December 14, 2022. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/early-results-from-nasa-s-dart-mission – last viewed 12/16/2022.
NASA. “NASA Confirms DART Mission Impact Changed Asteroid’s Motion in Space.” October 11, 20222. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-dart-mission-impact-changed-asteroid-s-motion-in-space – last viewed 12/16/2022.
Paoletta, Rae. “NASA says DART’s asteroid impact was a huge success”. The Planetary Society. October 11, 2022. https://www.planetary.org/articles/nasa-says-dart-impact-successful – last viewed 12/16/2022.

Editing Rant: White Box

Erin Penn

Photo by Muhammadtaha Ibrahim Ma’aji on Unsplash

Break the White Box (cut and paste from an editing letter)

Fantasy genre is rich in texture, color, scents, and tastes. As mentioned, the dialog lacks the fantasy texture when Ping-Pong (see 1/10/2023 post) is happening. In addition, often a scene opens with a passive “real-estate” description of the situation using only copula.

Pretend example

The ping-pong table was a lawn green, but the paddles were red rubber. The cement floor was softened by the rubber pad. The rubber pad saved the players’ knees when jumping around and was broad enough so they didn’t have to worry about running off of it. Flickering neon lights were headache inducing.

Instead

A lawn green ping-pong table made the red rubber paddles vibrate under the neon lights, a color combination the eyes revolted against seeing side-by-side. A very large rubber mat sat under the table to save the players’ knees from hopping around on the unforgiving cement floor.

Actual Editing Rant

Don’t do the real-estate description. It happens so often.

The house looks like this. Has this number of rooms. Good Gardens.

Immerse the reader in the situation, full sensory overload. Don’t just provide the grocery list of features.

Flash: Performance Anxiety

Erin Penn

Image by Erik McClean on Unsplash

“Behold two houses, alike in dignity.” The Performer hovered midair, holding his victims inches above the asphalt on the lowest level of the car port. “That is to say, they have none. So hero, which one will you rescue, your sister or your wife?”

(words 44; first published 11/30/2023 – created based on a visual prompt for a Facebook writer’s group, aim is about 50 words)

Book Review: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Erin Penn

Amazon Cover

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: A Novel by Hank Green

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON

In his wildly entertaining debut novel, Hank Green—cocreator of Crash Course, Vlogbrothers, and SciShow—spins a sweeping, cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight celebrity before realizing she’s part of something bigger, and stranger, than anyone could have possibly imagined.

The Carls just appeared.

Roaming through New York City at three a.m., twenty-three-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship—like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor—April and her best friend, Andy, make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day, April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world—from Beijing to Buenos Aires—and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight.

Seizing the opportunity to make her mark on the world, April now has to deal with the consequences her new particular brand of fame has on her relationships, her safety, and her own identity. And all eyes are on April to figure out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us.

Compulsively entertaining and powerfully relevant, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing grapples with big themes, including how the social internet is changing fame, rhetoric, and radicalization; how our culture deals with fear and uncertainty; and how vilification and adoration spring for the same dehumanization that follows a life in the public eye. The beginning of an exciting fiction career, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a bold and insightful novel of now.

 

MY REVIEW

We need more April in the World.

I found this an uncomfortable read in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home orders in America. I read this July 8, 2020.

“This is the first time a truly international issue had hit our newly borderless world this hard, and no one knew how it might play out.” (page 215 / 65% mark on my kindle)

Copyright 2018. Meaning written no later than 2017. I would say far earlier for a first work, but Mr. Green had major connections.

So many things of this book follow what we are experiencing right now. Social media connections around the world, people using fear as a weapon to raise themselves up and attack other people for a cause, and the need to problem-solve WORLD-WIDE because no one person, no one country has the whole thing sewn up.

It is like a huge metaphor for what is happening right now. Of course, it was meant to use a sci-fi setting to explore insta-fame, relationships, and a variety of day-to-day questions. It’s more a literary work than a genre work.

We are now in a borderless world, but various entities are fighting to reestablish barriers. Some governments try building walls and fences, others locking people out electronically and physically, and still others are removing themselves from treaties and world-wide organizations. But, like in WWII, doing so just mean those barriers will fall at the worst possible time. Children don’t get to climb back into the crib; the world always gets bigger … and scarier.

All of this is in the book, only it isn’t. The subtext hit me hard, making me put down the book several times. If I wasn’t on a deadline for a book club in less than three days, I likely would have set it aside. To recover. But I pushed through in a single day.

The story is there. And I *think* some people can just focus on the story. Which is a problem-solving, literary exploration of fame, science-fiction drama. I just couldn’t see it well through the life I am living right now.

But I do agree with the character, even after one of the worst attacks on her person, she still sent out Hope. Even when fear should have been winning, she tried to make things Better. More inclusive – even for selfish reason – her message was about Building and Growing. In that, I would like to see more April in the world.

(Checked out through the local library system as an eBook. Vivat local libraries!)