Month: February 2017

SpaceX reportedly planning lunar orbit tourism in 2018.

Really big news, if (BIG ‘if’) true: “Two thrill seekers are paying SpaceX to make a trip around the moon next year [2018].” Why? Because the single hardest part of going anywhere in space is generally getting out of the gravity well.  They used to call orbit ‘Halfway to anywhere,’ because you used up so much energy just getting to that point. If you get to a place where you can routinely get manned craft orbiting the moon and coming back, well.  Landing on the moon and returning to lunar orbit are both problems that have been successfully solved before, is all that I’m saying.  And it’s easier to reach lunar orbit from the surface of the moon than it is to reach Earth orbit from the surface of Earth.

Mind you, 2018 is mad optimism.

Moe Lane

PS: It is no secret that I have a thoroughly justified low opinion of the previous administration when it comes to… pretty much everything; and I remain unhappy that the United States does not have a functional manned space program.  But I  will admit that I am pleasantly surprised at the way that private space initiatives were not squelched – or even particularly hindered – over the last decade or so. It could have been so much, much worse.

This Middle Earth: Shadow of War… wait. No. Please stop.

That’s not how this works, Middle Earth: Shadow of War.

That’s not how any of this works.

I mean, did they read the books? …They didn’t read the books, did they.  Also: now we know that people really can’t come back from the grave, because if they could JRR Tolkien would have over this.  With CS Lewis.  And a Sherman tank.

Look upon a form of your destructor.

Maybe not the form, but it’s gonna be on the list. Hey, it’s the Scorpion-3 hoverbike:

Note: it’s a demo, and it’s a Russian demo, so it’s doubly faked (all demos are faked), but the concept is sound enough.  It’s certainly an energy hog, and that’s probably its ceiling right there, and God help the driver when one of the rotors fails… but it probably works. Twenty years from now you may be cursing the fools who came up with this thing.

I need a good, solid, not-awful conspiracy theory for the Oscar thing.

The ‘Oscar thing,’ of course, is how the Academy apparently messed up giving the right envelope to the presenter for Best Picture and thus hi-jinks ensued.  But that’s boring. I want to believe that something else made it happen. Something absurd, and light-hearted, and not going down dark paths. Seriously, nothing about Reptoids or anything like that. That always gets weird fast.

Moe Lane

PS: I already thought of blaming Deadpool for this one, but I don’t think Ryan Reynolds has the resources to set it up.  Although he’s probably kicking himself now for not even trying.

Item Seed: Magiki Sfaira.

Blame this.

Magikí Sfaira – Google Docs

Magiki Sfaira

 

Well, it’s like this.  Back in the fourth century BC, one of the proto-mages that the Greeks had hanging around back then did a favor for a friend of his and enchanted a sling-stone to ‘kill the enemy its user chose.’  Unfortunately, the spell did not do anything to actually help with the aiming of the sling-stone in question; the first time it was used, the slinger missed his target completely.  And then apparently promptly forgot about it, except to possibly mildly complain to his magician friend.

 

The Magiki Sfaira has been the thaumaturgical equivalent of the Goose That Laid The Golden Egg ever since then.  The original mage’s notes have been lost, assuming that he ever wrote any in the first place, and nobody else ever learned the enchantment that he used. Which is a real pity, because black-box research on the Magiki Sfaira suggests that said enchantment was a masterpiece of efficiency and potency.  Even today’s state of the magical arts would probably still be improved if the spell was finally reproduced — to say nothing of the prestige that would result from finally cracking the code — but the item is still ‘stuck‘ in active mode.

Continue reading Item Seed: Magiki Sfaira.

Tweet of the Day, Marvel Studios Is F*cking With Us Again edition.

Witness what a studio drunk on its own power looks like. Via Nerdbastards:

For those following at home: that is the tweet of the teaser to the trailer of the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel that is coming out in a couple of months. AND MARVEL KNOWS THAT THE CLIP IS GONNA GO FAR AND WIDE ANYWAY.  Look at me: I put it up, just like a rat with his paw on the wirehead button. Because they know.  Oh, do they know…

The First ‘Bright’ Trailer (Netflix Urban Fantasy).

I first mentioned it here.  Short version: Will Smith in a buddy cop movie.  With an Orc.  Looks promising: it comes out in December.

So I hear that Zootopia won Best Animated Oscar. Tsk, tsk.

Why?  Because, frankly, Zootopia should have been up for Best Picture, period.  But that’s an old complaint, so let’s try something different. Let’s just admit, once and for all, that genre movies are going to get the shaft when it comes to the ‘prestigious’ categories  and instead do something like Best Science Fiction Picture and Best Actress in a Horror Movie and so on, and so on.  They might get more people watching every year that way.  Lord knows they could use the boost.