Richard V. Rupp

November 8, 2022

Good Tuesday morning.

 

I trust you have voted on this Election Day. If not, please put this post aside and head to the polls. No matter what you hear on the news or see in the digital world, VOTING is the most essential part of our Democracy. We need to let our politicians know we care. And a large voter turnout will send a strong message.

 

Welcome to RUPP'S NOTES/FBI SPECIAL AGENT HARTMANN SERIES post on Election Day, November 8, 2022. I'm novelist Richard V. Rupp, writing from Burbank, California.

 

YEAH!!! It's raining; it's pouring. Yes, here in Burbank and up and down the State, we are finally getting some meaningful rain. It's supposed to continue for the next couple of days. We need all we can get to make up for our drought conditions. For some reason, I find rain makes you want to write.

 

This is from an article in the LA TIMES about seniors living in a senior living community - "Residents old enough to have lived through a dozen presidents get their morning exercise by hitting the links on flawless green golf courses and working up a sweat in communal gyms while chatting with friends. . . . Some are staunch Republicans, and others are equally devoted Democrats. The factions don't agree on much. But on this, they are unified: It's hard to enjoy a carefree life of leisure during a turbulent midterm election season that feels like a stress test for civil society itself. . . . Phil Friedman can hardly recognize the country he served when he was in the Navy in the early 1960s. . . .'I used to think that I knew what was going on in this country, but I don't anymore," says Friedman. 'The divisions are getting deeper.'"

 

If you look SKYWARD tonight, you have a chance of seeing a 'Blood Moon' tonight. That's assuming it's not raining where you are. It is the last total lunar eclipse for three years. The eclipse will turn the Moon blood red as it slips into Earth's shadow. Lunar eclipses occur when the moon, Earth, and sun are aligned, and the moon passes into Earth's shadow. Total lunar eclipses are sometimes known as blood moons because of the dramatic coloring caused by Earth's atmosphere, which scatters light from the sun and brandishes it on the face of the moon.

 

Hopefully, a blood-red moon does not indicate where our midterm election is taking us. I mention this because the FBI has warned of a heightened risk of attacks on political figures or election officials. Polling suggests that a growing segment of Americans expects political violence to increase. There is no question that most Americans from both main political parties believe that Democracy is 'in danger of collapse,' but for divergent reasons.

 

So much for what I said in my last post about finishing my manuscript for SKYWARD. Like many novelists and screenwriters in the sci-fi genre, I'm going through a learning process about the effects of gravity on humans (vertigo, nausea, impaired balance, decreased muscle and bone density). I did more research on "artificial gravity," which tells me no one knows how it will work. Developing "artificial gravity" is important because of the adverse effects on the human body during prolonged " microgravity periods."

 

I'm a crime novel writer who decided to dabble in the scifi genre because of my belief that humans need to colonize space. I should have watched movies such as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY  more closely as apparently "artificial gravity" has long been recognized by science fiction writers. The film has a wheel-shaped ship that rotates to provide "artificial gravity."

 

To keep things simple, I'm not going to delve deeply into "centrifugal force," Coriolis Effect," or "Newton's Third Law."  Based on what I have learned, my space cruise ship needs to be large in diameter, rotate to create "artificial gravity" and that gravity will be more significant as you move away from the center of the ship. So as a person moves from the central complex to the outer pods, they will go from floating in zero gravity to being able to walk in the pods at the outer limits. I'm in the process of modifying what I have written thus far to reflect this.

 

Here's part of my latest revisions (which may be revised again) to SKYWARD Chapter 1 –

 

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Eve's research indicated that the Bowman family was famous. The principal reason was that they had started the American migration of space. Her mind found pleasure in learning about them while confined as a passenger on a space cruise ship traveling the 4.2 light-years from Bowman's Mars Colony to Proxima Centauri b, a potential new Earth. Eve's ancestors' lives had long intrigued her, and she believed understanding them would give her a greater understanding of herself and her Pioneer assignment.

 

Eve felt sorry for the many generations before her, who traveled their entire lives only to die aboard a ship like she was on. She thought, If luck held out, she would be one of the first to leave a Space Cruise Ship to explore a possible new Earth. "Please, be like the Mother Earth I have studied."

 

She thought about how space cruise ships had evolved from Space Cruise Ship No. 1, which had been assembled above Mars over 600 years ago. It was massive. It had to be. Not because it needed to hold a large number of passenger colonists but rather to keep them healthy during the long journey through space. She knew that living for a prolonged period without gravity is not good for the human body. For humans to remain healthy, they needed gravity. Therefore space vessels require a wide diameter and need to rotate to provide that gravity. How they were configured made no difference, as there is no frictional resistance when traveling through space.

 

Since Space Cruiser No. 1, they were all configured the same way. A core Central Module housed a control computer system that communicated with the SKY, the master computer located at the Mars Colony. The core Module also contained the primary propulsion system. Attached to the Central Module were passageway arms that extended out to pods, each of which had a specific purpose. There were habitational pods, agricultural pods, light and heavy industry pods, and research pods. One pod also housed tiny spaceships, including mining spaceships that collected various ore from passing asteroids. The industry pods extracted metals from the ores to construct new equipment and repair and expand the spacecraft.

 

Eve's ancestors recognized that strategic decisions would have to be made as the ship traveled through space based on what it encountered. These included spitting off some of the pods along the way to develop waystations for those that followed.

 

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Cheers,

 

Richard V. Rupp, Author

Website – www.richardvrupp.com

Email – rupprisk@gmail.com

Copyright©2022 by Richard V. Rupp