Alien Covenant: A Review →

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While this blog is mostly intended to lay out my ideas associated with various technologies, every once in a while I'm happy to depart from that theme. 

Last week, Geeks of Doom was gracious enough to allow my opinion to be represented as their review of Alien Covenant. 

My overall assessment? Better than Prometheus, but still flawed. Here's an excerpt of what I had to say:

“Alien: Covenant lacks the same emotional heights sci-fi fans associate with Ridley Scott’s film of 1979 or James Cameron’s 1986 sequel, though it’s not without merit. Chief among the complaints is that the new film seems to sit on the franchise’s laurels rather than push it forward in the way Casino Royale did for James Bond or Logan did for X-Men. It’s been 38 years since the original Alien thriller, but this movie lacks some of the lauded learnings and innovations of modern science fiction cinema.”
— Dwayne D.

Find tne entire review here at Geeks of Doom.

Moon Express is slated for a 2017 Trip to... the moon. →

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Mike Wall, writing for Space.com, reveals that "For the first time ever, a private company has permission to land on the moon."

It's a great idea and long overdue. As much as I'm excited for development of the moon, I od have one concern and that's a worry about changing the face of the moon that we all see at night. If there's anything that all humans have in common (external to their anatomy), it's the idea that we've all looked at the same moon whenever it was present, for the countless generations we've been around. That heritage is important to save. The face of the satellite that's exposed to Earth should remain relatively unchanged for as long as possible. 

Why am I concerned? As awesome as the whole endeavour is, this promotional video, a marketing sizzle reel, makes Moon Express look like a company that's not very used to showing restraint.

SpaceX Lands Rocket at Sea. Makes History

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This is a great video from The Verge which explains how SpaceX achieved it's ground, err, water breaking** accomplishment of landing a rocket at sea.

Water landings are important because while rocket-based ships take off from land-based platforms, the fact that the Earth is mostly covered in water means that by the time the boosters are ready to come home, they're over water-- not land. Landing by heading straight down is far more fuel (and thus cost) efficient than travelling back to the landing pads they launched from. 

This is the sort of tech that could allow us to get a real version of the Utopia Planetia "dry docks" up and running for preparation to a mission to Mars, IO, Titan, and who knows where else.

**That doesn't sound right either...