Rocket Science

So I'm rewriting 'In the Dark,' which is science fiction. This compels me to dust off my interest in all things sciencey. A while back I heard about this weird new form of propulsion that someone is experimenting with. It seems that a LOT of a rocket's power is used to get up off the ground and into space. Those bloody huge tanks that were attached to the space shuttle? They were dropped off after it got into orbit, because their job was done. So someone a lot smarter than me got the bright idea to leave all of that stuff on the ground, and just use the power itself to get the spaceship up where it belongs. They fire a laser at the bottom of the craft, which is shaped like a parabolic dish, and that burns the air inside the dish into plasma. If I'm interpreting the information correctly, they use a pulsed laser, getting individual mini-explosions that 'pop' the craft up like a machine gun. Take a look at them here: http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/

I found a video of one of their tests, and damn that thing took off. They were using a test craft about the size of a cantaloupe, and it shot into the air like so many of the experiments that I've seen on Mythbusters. Then I started to imagine what something ten times as powerful could do with a ship that was already in space, away from things like gravity and atmosphere. I didn't know what I might do with that thought, but later on I got this idea about a guy who is a cop in another solar system. Bingo.

I got 'Waste Not' sent out for a vengeance-themed anthology, and submitted 'Trolls' for another one about rediscovering fantasy. I'm also still looking for someplace to send my newer, leaner version of 'Roaming.'

By the way, if you ever hope to have another productive moment in your life, do not take a look at the Internet Anagram Server. (http://wordsmith.org/anagram/) It lets you punch in a word or string of words, and it spits out every single possible combination of the letters that could possibly exist. Before I ran away screaming, I tried it with my own name, and one of the results was, 'He pens Pepto.' Not sure if that will enhance my writer's mystique or not.

Still writing.