News dated 14 April 1999
And it was about this time last week that I discovered The Elite Project and The Galileo Project. Two amazing attempts of re-creating the magic of Elite, the old 1984 space trader computer game. "First Encounters" (Elite 3) was described by someone as "Beta code on customer's hard drives", and was very dissapointing.
The Elite Project (TEP) are creating a new Elite type game, complete with inolving plot, character interaction and a huge galaxy to explore. The Galileo Project have set themselves the task of creating an online adaption of Elite. It will have similar things to TEP, but the primary aim for Galileo is for the game to be played online, so that all the other characters in the game are real people! Visit the websites for more information.
And now, Deep Space One has almost tested all of it's twelve new technologies. It's ion drive has been proven to be 10 times more efficient than conventional rockets. Hoepfully, withing a few more years, we'll look back and say "Do you remember those old liquid fuel rockets...?"
News dated 1 March 1999
I recently joined the Advanced Space Transport Science club at Yahoo.com. It, obviously, deals with advanced space travel concepts. This is something that really interests me because Faster than Light space travel is the very centre of most sci-fi. We've seen a lot of them ain't we? The hyperspace of Star Wars, the Warp Drive of Star Trek, the Cherenkov Drive of Starship Troopers (the novel -- the film used a 'warp drive'!) and the good old Star Gates of ye olde 70s Buck Rogers. So, I've done a bit of 'Star Drive' page to tell you what does what in the world of sci-fi!
Back in the real world, (does that exist?) we've had a whole host of extra solar planets found around nearby stars. As far as I can understand, these planets aren't observed dirctly, but are detected by the 'wobble' of the stars from the gravitational pull from the planets. A lot of them seem to be gas giants, with size in the region of our good old Jupiter, but a few are a lot larger (which says quite a lot!)
News dated 15 January 1999
It's 1999 and we're not living on the moon, haven't had any alien visitors (that one's open to controversy) and, more importantly, have only 2 years left until that big black monolith comes to haunt us!
What IS going to happen though, is the Star Wars Prequel. Episode One: Phantom Menace!! Yes, the trailer is out there and can be downloaded or streamed from The Official Star Wars site. We're all wetting ourselves in anticipation!
And Deep Space One. Not a huge Star Fleet owned space station, but a small JPL spacecraft now more than 45 times as far away as the Moon from our humble little biosphere.
This got me really excited because I'm strange and the fact that it is propelled by an Ion Propulsion system (as seen on the 'Millenium Falcon' -- but don't tell JPL that!!). It is the first of 8 Deep Space missions (they had to stop there didn't they??) and DS1 is testing 12 different technologies. One of them is the aforementioned Ion Propulsion system which uses charged Xenon ions to propel the craft. Another system being tested is the AutoNav which navigates the craft by checking its position against the positions of known asteroids.
For more information about DS1 and other JPL bits of stuff, check out the JPL Site.