Star Ship Luna
by
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Henry (never "Hank") James, Ph.D., Astrophysics, Harvard University 2015, now Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of New Mexico, poured his first cup of coffee and padded across the living room to the front door.
"Drat," he said to himself as he opened the door and took in the early morning vista. It had rained the night before, and he had harbored a faint hope that the day would be drizzly, or at least overcast. Instead, he was confronted with one of those early spring days that makes it nearly impossible to think about anything having to do with work. The cold front had moved in, leaving behind clear skies and the fresh scent of moisture from the overnight rainstorm. The low sun was already shining brightly against a brilliant blue, cloudless sky, making sharp outlines of the distant mountains to the north.
He toasted the fine spring New Mexico day with his coffee cup, mumbling "We slaves who are not yet, but are about to be, free salute you! "
As he turned around and closed the door, he reached down to pet the large, nearly black Chesapeake Bay retriever that had slipped up behind him.
"Sorry, pooch," he said, "our trip to the lake will have to wait one more day while your master makes his sacrifices on the altar of his master, that Great God of Administrative Crip Crap. I hate to waste a day like this on something so infinitely boring, but there''s nothing for it. At least this is the end of it for another semester. If I take care of the grades today, tomorrow you and I will be free for a whole month. On to the first task, that it may soon become but an unpleasant memory to be dissipated with every bass I land!"
That first task awaiting him was grading the final test from his class in astronomical imaging. Resigned to his fate, he sat down at his computer with a stack of 73 mini-disks, representing his students'' submissions of the course final. He noted with some satisfaction that, because of his brilliant design of the final test, this part of his day’s work would be relatively easy. The assignment was straightforward enough. The students were provided with a digitized, high- resolution picture of Mars taken from an Earth observatory, together with the parameters of the optics of the telescope used. Their job was to produce the same image as it would be seen with the naked eye from the appropriate distance in outer space. This meant that they had to correct the image from earth for any atmospheric or optical image distortions, and for color filtration by the earth''s atmosphere, set the angle and distance of viewing, etc. The test just happened thereby to require correct application of every one of the algorithms taught in the introductory astronomical imaging course.
As he inserted the first mini-disk, Henry declaimed, "And now, Christopher, you get to see style in action. Observe how my carefully designed program effects a point-by-point comparison of a four terabyte image in a matter of seconds, assigning the well-deserved ''A'' in the unlikely event that there is a perfect match. And, in the much more likely event that there are differences, my analysis program will almost as quickly respond with an unquestionably accurate objective grade, together with a running commentary describing exactly what errors were made."
Because he had used the same test for a number of years, his error analysis program was capable of accurately detecting and detailing the occurrence of each of the 300 or so typical errors that a student might make. When the only errors were those known to the program, this could be accomplished in something like 30 seconds, allowing him to grade the tests at the rate of about a minute per student.
As he activated the program, he murmured, "Let us fervently pray that we don''t have one of those really innovative students in this class."
The ''innovative'' students he feared at this point were ones who could somehow find yet another way to screw up the process, producing an image
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About the Book
When astrophysicist Henry James discovers by accident an impending cataclysm that threatens all life on Earth and tries to inform his former mentor, he finds out that the threat is not only known, but already being worked covertly by an elite team whose seemingly impossible mission is to convert the moon into a space ship, populate it, and fly it out of harm’s way. The result is Henry’s recruitment into an effort that will take him and his dog, Christopher, on a roller coaster ride through political maneuvering and assassination attempts, during which he uncovers some of the darkest secrets of the US government, and takes a trip to the moon to unravel the ultimate mystery of mankind’s origins.
About the Author
William C. Hardy, PhD is by profession an operations analyst. His experience in describing real-world high technology in terms that can be readily understood by its users is transformed into lucid descriptions of future high technology in his works of fiction. That experience includes: publication of two technical, but very readable, books on evaluating communications services; a four-year stint as a regular columnist in a technical trade journal; and invention descriptions for patent applications that have earned him 17 patents for innovations in the technology of testing. Star Ship Luna represents and attempt to capture through writing some of that sense of wonder and awe that captures his imagination when he reads the science fiction classics.