Post by Floyd Looney on Jul 15, 2011 19:17:52 GMT -5
Feb 17
June 12 is still the target date for arriving at the asteroid. It is starting to look like something besides a bright dot. I am informed that it is a carbonaceous asteroid (C-Type) and that it is shaped a bit like a tri-oval which is 8 miles, or 12.8 kilometers, across.
Once the explosion creates the bubble inside of it there will be "plenty of space" we are told. If needed we could always find another asteroid but the nearest one is more than 2,000 miles away and that one is far too small to occupy. It might be mined someday though.
My little brother Mathew has apparently written his first New Basic software program that simply makes colorful circles pop up on the screen with pictures of our family. He could have just used the screen saver program for that but he seems to have a grasp of that particular, if ancient, coding language.
March 6
Something bad must have happened on Earth. Radio frequencies Uncle Robert monitors became static and then stopped altogether. He told us that he can still pick up signals from Tonga and Fiji must he cannot tune in to what is being said.
March 21
Uncle Robert says a broadcast from Shanghai was now being heard loud and clear. He told us he was listening intently when he figured out the message was being repeated in different languages. After hours of listening he found it was a looped message. Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Arabic, French and then English over and over.
Dad asked what the message was. Uncle Roberts demeanor had been very grave. Nobody else really wanted to push him to tell us.
"Apparently World War Four happened" he said "Last time they took out New York City and we took out Cairo and Damascus. This time it looked like Israel was attacked and their submarines returned the favor fifty-fold and then the Euro's, Russians, Chinese and Americans got into it"
So radio signals, the ones that were left, had been blocked by higher radiation in the atmosphere and Van Allen belts. He predicted that some smaller countries would be heard in the coming days and a clearer picture would emerge.
Meanwhile the flare-up of ionization in the Van Allen belts seems to have destroyed several of the space stations in orbit. Almost like an ElectroMagnetic Pulse and the chance of repair or rescue were slim to none under the circumstances.
"Although it sounds like we'll be safe from any Earth government for decades we should always be preparing to move again."
Move? Where would we move to if the asteroid belt wasn't far enough?
Dad suggested a next stop could be Saturn with all of the resources in the rings. Grandpa thought that might be a way station on the way to the Kuiper Belt.
That was outside the solar system.
After that, in the distant future our kids, I mean my kids, might have to think of taking an interstellar voyage that could last a lifetime. We would be abandoning Earth for good? We wouldn't go back to fix it if we could? I guess a small group like us can't fight billions of people, if there were still billions left that is.
April 15
I spent the day cheering up Neda, she had been sick. Nothing serious but they had built a tent around her bed. This was to keep the germs in so others would not get sick.
All she could do was to draw on her flatscreen all day it seemed, so I went to cheer her up. We declared her bedroom, as tiny as it was, to be a soveriegn and independent nation. Queen Neda appointed me Prime Minister and we had adventures until her mother shoo'd me away and put Neda to sleep.
I had just begun to explore the dark boreal forest when that happened. Neda didn't stay sick very long and we decided to explore the corridors again, this time pretending they were something else. It made the familiar tubes more mysterious as we battled the evil Orc invaders trying to steal her kingdom away.
June 12 is still the target date for arriving at the asteroid. It is starting to look like something besides a bright dot. I am informed that it is a carbonaceous asteroid (C-Type) and that it is shaped a bit like a tri-oval which is 8 miles, or 12.8 kilometers, across.
Once the explosion creates the bubble inside of it there will be "plenty of space" we are told. If needed we could always find another asteroid but the nearest one is more than 2,000 miles away and that one is far too small to occupy. It might be mined someday though.
My little brother Mathew has apparently written his first New Basic software program that simply makes colorful circles pop up on the screen with pictures of our family. He could have just used the screen saver program for that but he seems to have a grasp of that particular, if ancient, coding language.
March 6
Something bad must have happened on Earth. Radio frequencies Uncle Robert monitors became static and then stopped altogether. He told us that he can still pick up signals from Tonga and Fiji must he cannot tune in to what is being said.
March 21
Uncle Robert says a broadcast from Shanghai was now being heard loud and clear. He told us he was listening intently when he figured out the message was being repeated in different languages. After hours of listening he found it was a looped message. Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Arabic, French and then English over and over.
Dad asked what the message was. Uncle Roberts demeanor had been very grave. Nobody else really wanted to push him to tell us.
"Apparently World War Four happened" he said "Last time they took out New York City and we took out Cairo and Damascus. This time it looked like Israel was attacked and their submarines returned the favor fifty-fold and then the Euro's, Russians, Chinese and Americans got into it"
So radio signals, the ones that were left, had been blocked by higher radiation in the atmosphere and Van Allen belts. He predicted that some smaller countries would be heard in the coming days and a clearer picture would emerge.
Meanwhile the flare-up of ionization in the Van Allen belts seems to have destroyed several of the space stations in orbit. Almost like an ElectroMagnetic Pulse and the chance of repair or rescue were slim to none under the circumstances.
"Although it sounds like we'll be safe from any Earth government for decades we should always be preparing to move again."
Move? Where would we move to if the asteroid belt wasn't far enough?
Dad suggested a next stop could be Saturn with all of the resources in the rings. Grandpa thought that might be a way station on the way to the Kuiper Belt.
That was outside the solar system.
After that, in the distant future our kids, I mean my kids, might have to think of taking an interstellar voyage that could last a lifetime. We would be abandoning Earth for good? We wouldn't go back to fix it if we could? I guess a small group like us can't fight billions of people, if there were still billions left that is.
April 15
I spent the day cheering up Neda, she had been sick. Nothing serious but they had built a tent around her bed. This was to keep the germs in so others would not get sick.
All she could do was to draw on her flatscreen all day it seemed, so I went to cheer her up. We declared her bedroom, as tiny as it was, to be a soveriegn and independent nation. Queen Neda appointed me Prime Minister and we had adventures until her mother shoo'd me away and put Neda to sleep.
I had just begun to explore the dark boreal forest when that happened. Neda didn't stay sick very long and we decided to explore the corridors again, this time pretending they were something else. It made the familiar tubes more mysterious as we battled the evil Orc invaders trying to steal her kingdom away.