NASA's Project M

Via io9, seriously cool, and a great save in the wake of the Constellation cancellation:

NSS on Hurricane Moon

Chairman of the Space Books Committee and one of NASA’s first ten women flight controllers Marianne Dyson has reviewed Alexis Glynn Latner's Hurricane Moonas the featured book for October for the National Space Society. Which is a very cool person and a very cool place for a review of a book about planetary colonization indeed. And her verdict? Well, she has an interesting discussion of whether or not moons are essential for the stabilization of climate. But she concludes, "For those of us entertained by contemplating starship designs, planetary choice criteria, and biological considerations, this book has it all. But the book is also a great read for those who enjoy science fiction about people making choices based on the kind of world and future they want to build for themselves. What kind of people will sign up for one-way trip to an unknown world? What sort of challenges will they face? Will they be willing to change their plans, their minds, even their own humanity to survive beyond the stars? I highly recommend Hurricane Moon to anyone who wants to imagine life on another world."

Remember, of course, that you can visit Alexis online at her website or her group blog, and that you can read the first three chapters of Hurricane Moon online here.

Islands in Space: An Appreciation of Dandridge M. Cole

George Zebrowski alterted me to this article by Alex Michael Bonnici, "Islands in Space: The Challenge of the Planetoids, the Pioneering Work of Dandridge M. Cole," an appreciate of the American aerospace engineer and futurist, posted on The Discovery Enterprise. As the article attests, Cole's contribution to space exploration has been tremendous. His book, Islands in Space: The Challenge of the Planetoids, co-authored with Donald Cox, laid the foundation for our eventual exploration of the asteroid belts. He was one of the first scientists to draw the broad outlines of what a mission to the asteroids might entail, and, in Exploring the Secrets of Space: Astronautics for the Layman with I. M. Levitt, Cole first proposed the notion of hollowing out an asteroid, spinning it to provide a simulation of gravity, and populating it as a permanent space colony. This idea - which predates that of Gerard K. O'Neill by over a decade - had been incredibly influential on both the real world of space exploration and on science fiction itself. Can anyone say Babylon 5 ? Cole is also paid direct tribute in George Zebrowski's classic, Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia, which was chosen by Library Journal as one of the hundred Best SF Novels of all time, and which was directly inspired by Cole's concept of a mobile, space-faring humanity. As Cole wrote:

"Taking man as representative of multicelled life, we can say that man is the mean proportional between Macro-Life and the cell. Macro-Life is a new life form of gigantic size which has for its cells individual human beings, plants, animals, and machines . . . Society can be said to pregnant with a mutant creature which will be at the same time an extraterrestrial colony of human beings and a new large-scale life form."