Gayle Wiesner
Sessions in which Gayle Wiesner attends
Friday 12 February, 2021
The annual presentation of what the other Space Agencies are doing. This could include, but is not limited to, the European Space Agency, Russia, Japan, Canada, and China.
Saturday 13 February, 2021
You want your orbit to be stable, right? What's up with geostationary orbit around Mars? Speaking of Mars, astronauts travelling to Mars and then back to Earth will suffer poor health without gravity. A spinning space ship could work. How fast would it need to spin? In my spinning space ship, when I drop a wrench, how far will I have to chase it? All of this is pretty easy to calculate once you know how.
Part of what defines a culture is its system of shared beliefs--not only religious, but also secular. Designing and understanding the belief systems of your characters adds depth to the world in which they live, so let's discuss how to do so.
Author Ted Butler will read from his newest book.
Did George Washington really chop down a cherry tree? Did he have wooden teeth? Was Napoleon really short? We'll examine common myths that have been passed along as historical fact and discuss how they became so well (and incorrectly) known.
A recent text analysis by AI found a subtle pattern in stories collected from around the world and in hundreds of languages. This supports my observation that the structures of theater, traditional and modern, from Japanese Noh plays and Chinese operas to the Hollywood 3-Act screenplay, as well as Freitag's Pyramid, and the 7-sentence fairy tale (the basis for all Pixar films) all describe the same basic pattern of rising and falling tension: the secret structure of all stories.
Despite blowing up prototypes, SpaceX is making amazing progress toward reusable interplanetary spacecraft with hundred ton payloads. While the details change every day, it's time to review where they are and think about what this means for the not very distant future and and the expansion of our "playground" for real.
Sunday 14 February, 2021
Joyce will be reading from her newest work-in-progress, Broken Angel: The Lost Years of Gabriel Martiniere.
We have to eat when we send people beyond Earth's surface. What has been done so far to prepare for that need?
Since the dawn of the Satellite age we've been putting man made things into space, particularly around Earth.How much junk is out there? How much of it is useful? How much isn't useful? What is it used for?
How and How Long will it take to get from here to there in space? G. David Nordley will provide some rules of thumb for constructing timelines that involve interplanetary and interstellar journeys. Along the way, he will point out where conventional wisdom is seriously oversimplified in a conservative way, and where one may need to make some hard choices between what is possible and what one might want for a plot.
Come bid farewell to our guests!