|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
[Also wildly off topic] Platinum Moon by Bill White
Credit Issui Ogawa for this review: I was curious to see how this novel of lunar development compared with The Next Continent. There have been occasions when two authors working in isolation come up with similar ideas; The Web Between the Worlds and Fountains of Paradise, for example, have enough points of similarity that Clarke wrote an essay for the Sheffield book explaining that sometimes these things happen [1]. This is not the case with Platinum Moon and The Next Continent; the similarities are mostly limited to the constraints imposed by current realities and by the setting. Hardness +4, Optimism +4, Whimsy 1 It's somewhere between 2013 and 2015 [2] and while NASA has as much chance of landing a human on the Moon any time soon as I have of becoming Lord High Chancellor of the Electoral College, a private company, Lu Mat, is on the verge of a crewed landing. Lu Mat's approach involves off-the-shelf technology applied in innovative ways and in the exploitation of the Earth-Moon L1 point, which Lu Mat's founder, Harold Hewitt, sees as the gateway to Lunar exploitation. Hewitt's supposed killer ap for Lunar exploitation is lunar platinum, touted as a necessary (or at least convenient) resource for the coming post-Peak Oil/Let's Not Lose Bangladesh and Louisiana to Sea Level Rise increased demand for batteries. His actual revenue stream seems far more dependent on ancillary activities that PT Barnum would have understood; his people hawk everything from clothing to collectible coins, and happily take advantage of national pride both positive (India is very happy that one of their own is on their way to the Moon) and negative (The prospect of having an impotent NASA sitting on the side-lines while a company based in Singapore lands on the Moon is very pleasing to some and when I say "some" I mean "the French"). Unlike many books of this nature the lander already is on its way to the Moon when the book opens. The drama comes not from the process of building a coalition and overcoming various technical challenges to reach the Moon but rather what to do when the mission goes wrong; soon after landing one of the two O2 tanks on the lander vents itself, leaving the lander with enough fuel to return to EML1 but without enough oxidizer to actually burn it. Rather frustratingly for the astronauts, the amount of O2 they have is almost enough; they could get into low Lunar orbit if they wanted to, implying the delta vee short- fall is only about 640 meters a second [3], a fraction of their total delta vee budget; the shortfall is enough to threaten the mission with a catastrophic failure and death all round for the astronauts. While Lu Mat struggles with the technical challenge of rescuing its astronauts, there's a political struggle going on in the USA. Many Americans, including lead astronaut Ander's career obsessed ex-wife Barbara and Senators Walthorpe and Angstrom see Lu Mat's existence as an affront to America; Angstrom is very fond of tossing "traitor" around as an epithet, even though as an elected official he should be aware of the extremely narrow definition the US uses for that word [4]. Lu Mat's set back doesn't displease either Senator (although Barbara doesn't want her ex to die) but just in case Lu Mat weathers the crisis, they are working on legislation to punish people, Americans and otherwise, who do business with Lu Mat. * * * One aspect this book has in common with the Ogawa is that in neither case is it clear to me that the public business model used will in fact yield profits from the supposed primary purpose of Lu Mat (Profit from all the secondary activities seems well in hand). There's a strong whiff of Poyais off Lu Mat's activities and for good reason; Hewitt has a secret agenda we learn about at the end of the book and the resource he's really after isn't really the platinum. That said, better Poyais than Darien. People looking for a one thing after another plot along the lines of A Fall of Moondust will be a bit disappointed; aside from some duff software and an unexpected problem with a crane, the astronauts and Lu Mat do understand the situation, its challenges and the resources they have to work with; it's just not clear which combination of resources and techniques will yield the best solution. I suspect a AFOM-style plot would have seriously undermined the idea that this is all only just out of our grasp today, and so would be counter-productive. I also suspect the model or at least a model the author had in mind was Apollo 13. This is a self-published novel, one that you can buy he http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/9415 I think it's White's first novel. It wouldn't have been out of place in a professional publisher's SF line (well, except it's inappropriately optimistic for American (Tea Bagger or Folk Song Army)-written near- future SF). I didn't enjoy it as much as the Ogawa but I really liked the Ogawa; I'd certainly read a second book by this author. 1: Poor Charles Sheffield seemed to get stung by this more often than most; he also decided to write a story about two worlds orbiting so close they were within each other's Roche lobes at the same time as Robert Forward and IIRC only discovered the coincidence in casual conversation with Forward. 2: They keep saying it's more than 40 years since the last man landed on the Moon. This suggests that it is either 41 or 42, possibly 43 years since December 14, 1972. If it was 45 years, they'd say so and if it was 44 years, they'd say "nearly 45 years". 3: I think. 4: Has anyone ever been found guilty of treason in the US? -- http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs) |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
[wildly off-topic] The Next Continent (Issui Ogawa): short, non-spoilery | James Nicoll | Policy | 2 | October 11th 10 09:15 AM |
Two NASA press releases give wildly wrong measurements. | Lin Liangtai | Astronomy Misc | 1 | August 8th 08 03:50 PM |
Platinum elements in space | Ian Parker | Policy | 3 | July 3rd 08 07:04 AM |
As Acceleration Approaches Platinum Levels | Quantum Mirror | Astronomy Misc | 10 | March 3rd 05 08:55 PM |
Concentrations of Platinum on Mars | stork | Science | 2 | January 22nd 05 04:44 PM |