Bear with me on this, it takes a bit to reach a conclusion. Okay, Conrad has been banging on about Project Daedalus of late, and - you may wince at this but it IS going to come up later - of course the name comes from Greek mythology. Daedalus, father of Icarus, consultant inventor and designer of the Labyrinth, which is a species of maze and the genesis of today's terrible title. Daedalus was also the successful part of an airborne escape attempt from captivity. Daedalus: home free. Icarus: splashed.
You may also be aware that yesterday your humble hack was provisionally diagnosed with "Labyrinthitis", which is an infection of the inner ear.
Coincidence? Only you can tell!
No, actually I'm taking that back, it is a coincidence. Look, the Coincidence Hydra, one of the BOOJUM! stable of unfriendly, unpleasant and unreal animals, has it's teeth in my nethers again.
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| An unlovely beast |
And with that unusually short Intro, let the motley career wildly away.
Project Daedalus
We meet more of the British Interplanetery Society's baby. At 50,000 tons it is, perhaps, a little on the large side for a baby - call it a "baby of the mind". This interstellar spaceship was designed to reach a substantial fraction of the speed of light, taking around 50 years to reach it's destination, Barnard's Star.
In reality only the second stage of the spaceship would get there, all 4,000 tons of it. This would deploy optical and radio telescopes for transmission of data back to Earth, whilst also releasing sub-probes to carry out further investigation. None of these stages or probes would decelerate and would go whizzing past the target star, because deceleration would prolong the mission too far.
| " - and don't hit anything." |
So, your tax pounds would accrue only information, although what information it would be! Planets of all descriptions, observed at sufficiently close distance to determine whether or not they harbour* life.
There is a corollary, as there so frequently is with BOOJUM! We are talking about objects that are travelling at relatavistic** speeds, after all. Imagine what would happen if the 2nd stage accidentally impacted one of the star system's planets. Despite deploying sub-probes and expending fuel it would still mass nearly a thousand tons. One imagines it would make quite a hole.
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| " - carry on not hitting things." |
I should point out that my academic brethren in the BIS were looking ahead rather; the physical construction of Daedalus is possible, yet the fuel needs to consist partly of Helium-3, an isotope in rather short supply.
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| "Oops." |
Film Reviews
Anyone who expects a rational and critical analysis of the latest releases had better head on over to Youtube and Mark Kermode, because what you get here is Conrad at his ranting tanting best. First up for the chop?
"Moonlight": Well well well. Conrad enjoyed watching the original series featuring Maddy and David, and I think I have the first series on DVD somewhere. It was, however, very much of it's time, and we're talking about the Eighties here. Why remake a series as a film? And why have they missed "-ing" from the title? Don't tell me, it's going to be an "edgier, darker, grittier" version?
Bah!
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| Light Moon. Close enough |
"Kong Skull Island": Hmmm. I wonder what this film could possibly be about? Vietnam-era helicopters and the silhouette of a large humanoid figure in the background. My first impression is a "Watchmen" spinoff! "The Adventures of Doctor Manhattan in Vietnam" as gone over briefly in both film and book.
Or was "Jack the Giant Killer" actually a sleeper hit, that recouped all it's budget and then some, sufficiently to justify a sequel? Surely "Donkey Kong", the old arcade game, doesn't have a big enough fan base to justify a film?
Ah, what the heck, I'm just monkeying around.
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| Conrad unsure where the donkey comes in |
"Ghost in the Shell": Another hmmm. Allow me to explain the original anime. I think; it was complicated. It involved an elite Japanese cyborg police unit, who accidentally come across an evolving artificial intelligence, which has been hacking human beings. That's the plot in a nutshell and it's taken half a dozen viewings for me to work it out. However, for this live version I strongly suspect there will be many a drooling creep in the audience simply because of Scarlett Johansson not wearing a lot.
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| Topless, yes. Also SFW |
Finally -
I did have a lot more, about "Elementary", Atomic Toasters and how many pirates came from Cornwall. However, time is short, I'm hungry and BOOJUM! is never shy about exploiting baby animals. Art?
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| See yesterday's blog for an explanation. |
* The only correct spelling.
** Speeds close to the speed of light, or a significant fraction of it.
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