wispfox

Plants on my walks make me happy

Voltaire.  At best, a snarky frog but of all the “philosophers” of that era, I can get along with his “big three”; freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state.  But today, I want to speak of his famous quip:

"This agglomeration, which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."

I think that the European Union is merely another attempt at recycling the idea of the Holy Roman Empire.  Even worse than the rotating millionaires that populate our politics, the Eurotrash seem to wish to create a clever disguise for the recreation of the Ancien Régime with a different set of nobility replete with an inquisition to suppress any thoughts deemed unworthy.

I am annoyed by the poseurs who sit around and declaim anything European as worthy.  Remember, they are the colonial powers that spend couple of centuries raping Africa, the Middle East, India, and Asia.  We threw the bastards off this continent 250 years ago, we should stick to that principle (and please, do me the courtesy of not trying to claim the French as our helpers, Louis XVI didn’t do it because he “loved liberty”, he did it because it screwed the British). 

Nope, I say let Europe stew in their own juices.  They deserve what they have coming to them.  I think that the Non-Europeans that they have in their countries should take over from the aristocratic swine that has floated to the top.

One of the technical issues that I will be forcing into a scifi world will be the place that the “ship” goes on its colonization run.  One of the issues that I felt I needed to deal with is the simple fact that when you leave town (the Sol system) you don’t want to have to go dodging things on your way out.  So I figure that since the ecliptic is sorta crowded, you will need to leave the Sol system heading galactic north or south.

So I fired up the research associate that Elon has let me use and started asking questions.  When I asked about leaving south, I got nada.  But North was more interesting

what is the closest g-type star that is approximately (=/- 20 degrees) 90 degrees south of the ecliptic

The closest G-type star approximately 90 degrees south of the ecliptic (±20 degrees) is **Alpha Centauri A**, located at a declination of about -60.8 degrees, which is within the specified range (90 ± 20 degrees south). It is a G2V star, roughly 4.37 light-years from Earth.

Well, I suppose this should be shelved on the “been there, done that” shelf.  I would say that a large minority of scifi space travel ends up going to Alpha Centauri for science-based fiction.

Let me digress.  My personal fenceline between science fiction and science fantasy is the “actually doable using known technology” fenceline.  I always thought that James T. Kirk and Han Solo weren’t science fiction characters, they were fantasy characters, no different than Harry Potter shouting “expelleramus” (or whatever the little whiner shouts). 

Now, just to be clear here, I will probably jump that fence a couple of times as I proceed. But the next little while is going to come up with a way to stay on this side of the fence for the most part.