Author Archives: Sci Fi Engineer

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About Sci Fi Engineer

Husband Father Writer Engineer

NaNoWriMo Day 17 Status

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So todays version of Elgin is up at Smashwords, or should be shortly.   As before please have a look and let me know what you think. If you can plow through all the bad grammar, fumble finger mistakes, cut and paste snafu’s etc.   You can follow the links to the side they should get you there, and they also give you access to the Moon Dreams a sci fi thriller about the year after next year, and if you like that, Under Siege, a novel of the far distant future, where humans are still human far from the wreckage that was Earth.
  Cheers
 
Status from NaNoWriMo:
Target Word Count 50,000 Target Average Words Per Day 1,667
Words Written Today 1,071
Total Words Written 45,541  Current Day 17

Your Average Per Day 2,678

Words Remaining 4,459  days Remaining 14
Words Per Day To Finish On Time 319
At This Rate You Will Finish On November 18, 2011
 

NaNoWriMo Day 16 Status

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NaNoWriMo Status:
Target Word Count  50,000  Target Average Words Per Day  1,667

Words Written Today  2,066

Total Words Written  44,470  Current Day  16
Your Average Per Day  2,779
Words Remaining  5,530 Days Remaining  15
At This Rate You Will Finish On  November 17, 2011
Words Per Day To Finish On Time  369

NaNoWriMo Day 15 Status

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What can I say, the boy wanted a video game and I have to work a little later in the day sometimes.
 
Status from NaNoWriMo Site
Words Written Today  990
Total Words Written  42,404  Current Day  15

Your Average Per Day  2,826

Words Remaining  7,596  Days Remaining  16
At This Rate You Will Finish On  November 17, 2011
Words Per Day To Finish On Time  475
Target Word Count  50,000  Target Average Words Per Day  1,667

NaNoWriMo Day 14 Status

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So I’ve always had this problem, I have a picture of the arc of the story now, have various characters in place, more things to reveal.  etc, etc but I begin to wonder is it all too damn predictable.  If some has read to this point are they going to say, ‘oh I know how this all ends up, BORING.” I don’t think so but it niggles at me. 
 
NaNoWriMo Day 14:
Words Written Today  1,448
Total Words Written  41,414  Current Day  14
Your Average Per Day  2,958
Words Remaining  8,586 Days Remaining  17
Words Per Day To Finish On Time  506

At This Rate You Will Finish On  November 16, 2011

Target Word Count  50,000  Target Average Words Per Day  1,667
 
 

Elgin is up on Smashwords

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Cover to my newest Novel
Cover to Elgin By M.A.Harris

So here is the cover I whined about spending a lot of Saturday working on, I think its pretty good. 

 
You should be able to click-through and get to the Smaswords page for the book and download the most current version.  I pulled up the ePub version, seems to work pretty well.  Saw several issues already but that’s what you get for getting the raw unedited form.
Don’t feel bad if you can’t make progress because of all the bad grammar and spelling.  But if you can plow through, suggestions would be welcome, I just won’t guarantee I’ll take them up.
 
Anyway here is the link to Elgin, again
 
 Regards
 

NaNoWriMo Day 13

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So when you get to see where I am story wise you’ll agree that this is not a 50K word book, but I think I can keep it sub 100K….maybe, I hope anyway. We shall see.
 
NaNoWriMo Day 13 Status on Elgin 
Words Written Today 5,634
Total Words Written  39,966  Current Day  13
Your Average Per Day   3,074
Words Remaining  10,034   Days Remaining  18
At This Rate You Will Finish On  November 16, 2011
Words Per Day To Finish On Time  558

Target Word Count  50,000  Target Average Words Per Day  1,667

 

Space Junk to Resource

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I saw this picture elsewhere and lost it, its cool and a bit worrying, thought of course the scale is so out of kilter it’s almost sublime, but if you figure this only the big stuff and that it’s all in motion all the time and new stuff is going up there, then the worry is not so out-of-place.

The real cloud up there
Junk, very expensive Junk, maybe reusable Junk
All sorts of solutions for removing this stuff has been proposed, from robo tugs to catchers mitts, and evaporating them with lasers.  That last has been under study since the 1990’s and you don’t have to blow them to ‘microns’ you just have to slow them down enough so they did into the outer atmosphere and come crashing to the ground.
 
Basic equeipment and geometry to deorbit debris

A very high tech broom (click through to Wired article)

And in the end I think the laser broom will be used, to deorbit bolts, dropped tools, smashed up debris etc, not worth recovering.

 
But a lot, even most of the material up there probably can be reused.  If we could cheaply catch the small stuff, maybe my using the Laser Broom to guide it into a catch basket, there is plenty of solar power and vacuüm to smelt the metals and create new things. 
 
Using spare material, sunlight, natural vacuüm and microgravity environment it seems reasonable that we could design and build a large-scale Additive Fabrication Machine in orbit that could build space craft parts from scrap.  In the long run we then start getting the materials from asteroids or the moon and off we go into the solar system.