28 March 2013

Birthdays
Nick Frost b. 1972
Lara Flynn Boyle b. 1970
Brett Ratner b. 1969

Frost has done several genre projects, the best known in the U.S. is the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead with Simon Pegg. Ratner directed X-Men:The Last Stand.

I chose Ms. Boyle for The Picture Position using the pretty girl rule, but chose a picture of her from the Twin Peaks era, before she went on a strange binge of plastic surgery and extreme dieting. It was during that era she was in her most famous genre role in Men In Black 2.
 
 

Prediction: In 2001, the trip from Earth to Saturn takes about seven months.

Predictor: Arthur C. Clarke in 2001: A Space Odyssey, published 1968

Reality:  That's really fast. In Clarke's story, it's a manned craft that makes the trip at that speed and we have only sent unmanned spacecraft anywhere farther away than the Moon. The ESA probe Cassini-Huygens took about seven years to get from Earth to Saturn.

Looking online, the fastest speeds for any manned spaceship so far was 25,000 mph (~40,000 kph) for Apollo 10 on its trip to the Moon. This would be closer to 150,000 mph or 240,000 kph.

This isn't just a minor quibble. How fast a spaceship can travel makes an enormous difference in how far it can travel. Even though space is very empty, any stray pebble hitting a ship at these speeds could a lot of damage. Until we have something like the force fields used in Star Trek, we can't possibly consider moving at speeds approaching the speed of light, and if we can't go about that fast, traveling outside our solar system is out of the question.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE! 

We interrupt our usual Antique Postcard Day presentations on Fridays for a visit from a mysterious stranger with advanced alien technology who comes to Earth hoping to save us from destroying ourselves.
 
Join me then... IN THE FUTURE!