A Martian Named Frank & Lord Rosse’s Telescopes

Birr Castle, Parsonstown, County Offaly, Ireland;

alternate 1847CE timeline

Lord Rosse Exhibition temporary islet

The day begain normally – I had arrived at the official opening of the “Lord Rosse’s Leviathans” historical telescopes display that Troy McLuhan had commissioned from Avatrian and then added his riding tour to.  Judging from the clothing styles of the audience members from Desmond Shang’s Victorian Independent State of Caladon continent, we were in 1847, when William Parsons put his world’s-largest 1.8m (72 inch) ‘Leviathan’ into service.

Festive opening day crowd for Rosse Exhibition

Troy wrote about the opening day speeches and events here,  and the blogosphere’s initial reactions to the exhibit/ride in this followup post.

But Troy had left out some details and was wholly unawares of what plans were being drew by intellects vast and cool …

I was sitting in the audience of two dozen avatars, marvelling still at Lord Rosse’s achievements with them, astronomers, builders, Caladonians, and others.   The noonhour arrived, heralded by the nearby tower bells.

The sharp-headed metal tripod approaches

As the tolling bells ended, we suddenly heard splashing noises – water running off of wet metal onto more metal, and hollow, at that.  I turned to look and saw a dark shiny metallic sharp-edged something raising slowly and massively from the island’s bay, dripping seawater from its bulk.  The machine, or creature, for it moved deliberately and with purpose, had five hooded glaring eyes or lanterns set into the forward jagged edges of its conical body.  It had a pair of tentacles underneath, slashing back and fro swiftly, then still, then writhing again … 

Auctions ended Tues noon! Sponsor the Saturn V at International Spaceflight Museum!

SPNN News, Spaceport Bravo, the SciLands, Second Life – ISM is again auctioning off half-year sponsorship rights to the most noticeable and famed rocket in both Spaceports.  Also being auctioned separately on eBay are the crawler-transporter that took the 4500-ton gantry & stack out to the launch pad, and the gantry tower that cradled the 3000 ton 369 foot tall moon rocket.  [Update - Amazingly, U$82 captured all three auction items! Six months from now, the next winner isn't going to grab such a foresighted bargain at this low a winning bid.  Congratulations!  To ISM member Neit Tackleberry, as it turned out at the Wednesday ISM Planners meeting.]

Looking up at the underside of the gantry tower’s platform that the crawler carried out the pad.  The swirling disc around my head?  I’d just been at a MICA star simulations planning meeting, and was still wearing my slowly spinning Milky Way Galaxy.  :)

SciEye welcomes Phoenix lander to Mars!

Phoenix arriving!

Explorer isle, SPNN(SPindriftNewsNet), SciLands, Second Life – The rl [real life] earthlings got to watch Phoenix in parachuted descent after entry and from its camera after landing; we NASA JPL, Ames, & CoLab worker avatars, plus the independents of the ISM [International Space Museum] got a better view as we watched Phoenix arrive and land on Martian terrain at Explorer Island. 

Lander heatshield starts glowing red from entry heat

 A Phoenix explaining the Phoenix landing photo to me …  Since this is a still image, I have to add that Helios Eusebio’s burning feathers shimmer and glow as they renew.  :)

 

Jet’s narration is interrupted by one of the ever-present dust devils!

Here’s Ron Miller’s portrayal of dust devils and dust storm from the Spindrift Space Gallery:

 

 Visit the Phoenix exhibit at NASA-JPL’s Explorer Island in Second Life with this Landmark http://slurl.com/secondlife/Explorer%20Island/131/100/39

 The Phoenix lander team site for new pictures and science from northern Mars.

 In the interest of avoiding panic, SPNN wishes to clearly state that this following image from the surface of Mars has *not* been identified as a Martian tripod fighting machine!

SciEye meets Jules Verne at ISM’s ATV display

SPNN News, Spaceport Alpha, the SciLands, Second Life

Automated Transfer Vehicle, ISS, & Shuttle

The soft “ping!” of an incoming ISM group notice distracted me momentarily from the discussion at this Thursday’s SciLands Senate meeting.  Afterwards, I eventally got some time to go to Spaceport Alpha’s Low Earth Observation platform and celebrate the arrival of the real ATV – the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Automated Transfer Vehicle – named “Jules Verne,” by looking at modeller Gamel Goodfellow’s version approaching ISM’s ISS [International Space Station].

High above the world (well, 200 meters is high!), I got different views of the robot cargo ship.  Another timely display from -altogether now, “ISM’s not NASA!” – the International Spaceflight Museum.

The Magicians’ Apprentice & Clarke’s Third Law

I was at Kat LeMieux’s brand new office on Spaceport Bravo last Saturday discussing ISM [International Spaceflight Museum (not part of Nasa!)] business, like the spirited bidding on the latest eBay auctions for the half-year sponsorship rights for ISM AlphaPort rockets, when she got a call from Kim Anubis.  

We flicked to her home – and workplace as one of The Magicians (and the company founder) - on Abracadabra Island.  The isle was gripped in winter snow and cheered by brightly lit tree branches.

Yuri’s Night 2007

NASA CoLab’s management group decided at the end of Jan 2007 to link their realworld April 12th Yuri’s Night party at Ames/ARC in California with a multi-island SciLands Yuri’s Night party in SL.  A group chaired by Camden Mitchell was set up and went to work.  Cypress Rosewood handled scheduling 10 hours of live music, a subgroup including Oliva Delvecchio handled the fashion show, I helped with the art show, and Camden did most of the stage design and build.

Here’s a series of my engineering snapshots showing the growth of the stage over six weeks and disassembly afterwards.  Three shots here and the rest of the two dozen at flickr.

Spindrift Maya Metrics – visitors for the last halfyear by country

Remember the scene in the Graduate when Ben is being given career advice?  “One word, Benjy – plastics!”  Now the replacement word would be “metrics.”  :)

Here’s the cumulative top-20 piechart:

The last nation on the chart is one of 11 that have had only one visitor each out of 31 countries total.  [Officially, anyway.  The sensor limitations are that if an avatar leaves the arrival area within one minute, s/he isn't logged by country.  So 3/4s of our 1400 unique vistors don't register that info with us.  The sample size is large enough to give us usable percentages, though.]  And since wordpress compresses this piechart, here’s the readable version at flickr. 

I started using the pro paid version of Maya Realities metrics sensors on July 26th, 2007, so the traffic metrics start there.  [Disclaimer - I am a volunteer beta tester and installer for Maya Realities.]

Spindrift Space Gallery – Jan 2008

Here’s a look at the various wings of Spindrift Space Gallery:

*Spindrift Space astronomical art [Update Jan 2009 - SpinSpace Gallery acquired its own building in summer 2008.  Here's my flickr photo set of SpinSpace.]  And the slurl is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spindrift/89/84

*Ringworld Space Engineering illustrations

*Illustration Exchange incubator project