I do remember seeing Wrath of Khan in the theater on opening night. It was a strange day, Raining heavily when we tried to go to the matinee at a multiplex (4 theaters Wonder of Wonders!) in Orange CT. Ultimately that attempt failed as we didn’t quite make it to New Haven as my 1974 Duster was having alternator problems with the belt slipping due to the rain and splashing. We limped it back to my Buddies house grabbed a snack and hopped in his family’s ancient Suburban. Went to the 6 PM showing and watched the movie. We were enthralled (and nearly teary eyed at the “I am and always have been your friend” line as well as playing of Amazing Grace). We had noticed the rain was LOUD at times almost drowning the dialogue. Got out to Monsoon level rain and a parking lot with 3-5″ of water/ Getting home was a challenge, Rt 95 was closed in Branford due to several accidents and deep water. We were diverted eventually choosing a path along the coastal roads. Came to a bridge over a normally gentle stream running out to Long Island Sound. The bridge is normally about 4′ above the stream. The stream was now a 2′ deep torrent over the bridge. Being young stupid guys (college age) we decided to forge on. I got out and walked ahead of the Suburban to check the depth (I hope you realize this was a very bad choice and I am lucky to be writing this some 40+ years later: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DO THIS !!!). As we came off the bridge there was a low spot ahead and so I was still the depth gauge. Shortly I felt my knee bump something. It was the bumper of a Ford Taurus wagon submerged such that maybe 6″ of its roof was sticking out of the water ahead of me. Needless to say we turned around and spent a couple hours fishing about for a way back to my buddy’s home that would be passable with the 2′ or so of clearance the Suburban had. That said Wrath of Khan was well worth the journey.
Category: Guest Contributors
Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 12FEB2026 – LOR OR VOR
There are 3 basic strategies to get to the moon. Direct is the is the first, the ship/capsule takes off from Earth goes to the moon, lands and then some part of that capsule/ship takes off from the moon and returns to earth. Because you’re carrying LOTS of weight you don’t need at various points (e.g. the reentry shield on the capsule is dead weight as you land on the moon) the whole thing is VERY heavy. The rockets to do this are immense (e.g. the early NOVA concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(NASA_rocket) later repurposed but never used for mars exploration). The other two alternatives are Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) or Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). In EOR, you go up to a waiting lunar specific lander board it and use it for the earth to moon trip land and return to your Earth/space vehicle. This is the Von Braun/2001 model. It’s one weakness is it usually requires in space refueling of your lunar transit/lander vehicle. This is kind of what I suspect the initial SpaceX model SEEMS to be headed for with a combination of Dragon Crew, Starship cargo/fuel ferry, and Lunar Starship for transit and landing. The Apollo (and current Artemis) use LOR, with Apollo sort of used a mixed model to keep the LEM as light as possible (for a great dramatiztion of this find episode 9 of From the Earth to the Moon, also good discussion of LOR vs EOR). I think SpaceX/Musk have realized lunar Starship is overkill for the task presented, thus making EOR more feasible. They also know Starship overall depends on refueling; if they can’t do that it is kind of game over for Starship for any purpose other than LEO delivery of cargo/ satellites.
Tom’s World – 11FEB2026 – Red Planet Blues
Getting to and from Mars is easy as long as you have Delta V. You need a velocity of approx. 7 mile/second to break earth orbit and around 20m/s to get to mars and more to match mars orbit. And that’s minimum energy, you’d probably want to double that at minimum to get the total ET down to something humans could handle.
I’ll leave it up to you to calculate the total energy requirement in joules or whatever to accelerate that much mass and fuel to a total Delta V of around 50-60 miles/second and how to do that with chemical reactions.
We got Voyager out of the solar system and up to 25-30 miles/second total energy but that’s when you have years to hop from planet to planet sling shotting around each to gain velocity.
Practical Mars will have to wait on fission at minimum or fusion and you still need reaction mass.
The moon is cool.
Back in the Apollo days of the early 70’s, I met a couple of students from U of Wisconsin on sabbatical traveling around the country and working odd jobs for cash. They were only here (Atlanta) for a couple of months before moving on and we got along save several heated debates on the Apollo program. It was their position that Apollo and all similar projects be immediately defunded until human perfection was achieved, though they didn’t state it in such stark terms, the implication was such had they the desire and ability to extrapolate. Even at the time I knew that was absurd and the purest fairyland fantasy because that condition would never be met and the net effect would be to condemn the planet to the darkness. It was my 1st exposure to hard-hard idealistic leftism. I had already left the Marine Corps but that train of thought and logic not common there then or now, I suspect.
Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10FEB2026 – The Lunar Option
And now he should change his name to D. D. Harriman. I’ve also always felt the Moon was a better choice. Mostly because with basic chemical rockets, it’s 3-5 days away and there are LOTS of windows to reach it. Mars is 140+ days, and that window is only roughly every two years. If you have a small initial Mars colony, no matter how many ships you have and the Stuff hits the fan, you’re on your own for on average 18 months away from outside help. With Luna its 3-5 days depending on lunar phase and you may be able just to lifeboat back to earth orbit.
Looking the 140 day or so timeline is like the early Europe to American colonies distance from Europe and America had air and food and water. And yet we still had Roanoke and lost 1/2 of Plimouth Colony the first year. Luna lets you learn in a slightly harsher environment with at least some safety net. Mars really has to wait until there are constant thrust engines (be they Nuclear Thermal, Fission/fusion pulsed or straight up fusion) so we can have .01 or .1 g constant and not have to use Hohmann (minimal energy) orbits and have 14 or 4 day transits to Mars/ Nearly every thing Elon (pardon me Delos) had planned for Mars is useful on the moon and can be further refined for future Mars work.
Also, if we’re going to do this, it should be done as G*d, Von Braun and Arthur C. Clarke intended with an orbital station to fuel lunar Starship-like beasts and send them on to the moon. We need the infrastructure. Maybe not immediately but once we try to start moving large quantities back and forth. the division of labor would help.
Bad Bunny Review
Tyler over at the Portly Politico has bravely watched the Super Bowl Halftime in order that others could be spared the horror. If you follow the link back you’ll find out what he thought.
I applaud his courage but I would not copy it. Leaving organized sports in the rearview mirror was a wise move for me. My stomach lining has benefitted magnificently from the decision.
Tom’s World – 07FEB2026 – For the Birds
Tom’s World – 05FEB2026 – Bald Eagles
Tom’s World – 04FEB2026 – Photo
Here’s a shot I got of a contented looking gull trolling the beach a few years ago.
Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 23JAN2026 – Often Unreliable
I think the fondness for first person (often unreliable) or third person limited viewpoint comes from a fundamental aspect of modernist philosophy. That aspect is that in modernist thought there is NO absolute truth. There’s my truth and your truth and (heaven help us) Kamala Harris’s truth. The Omniscient narrator belies this point, for that story, their narrative is the truth. They deny that such can exist in support of their raging relativism. I think the second issue is the types of “stories” they write. Plot is limited or irrelevant, the characters aren’t characters but more archetypes or mouthpieces for their viewpoints. They view the whole purpose of literature to essentially be propaganda. The more traditional is that we are telling a story. There is probably meaning there but in general rarely is allegory the prime purpose. Not to say this doesn’t happen, e.g. Starship Troopers is a polemic on Duty, but honestly, it is also a hell of a good story. Thirdly, the modern literature folks are oddly like what the Puritans were alleged to be. They’re afraid someone might be having fun somewhere and they must prevent that at all costs.
Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 19JAN2026 – Star Trek Decline
I’m an old line Star Trek fan. I remember it live on TV when I was a kid. I was young enough that when it went to Friday night at 10pm in the third season I had to get a bedtime dispensation. Luckily, it was Friday night so leniency prevailed. I then watched them repeatedly out of WPIX from NYC who ran them twice a day 5 days a week
Recently we’ve been watching Enterprise Honestly, it is pretty good (although I think they abused the T’pol character and being first officer/XO gets her compared with Spock)
Strange New World was also not half bad although it plays havoc with continuity and characters from Star Trek and Next Generation. I tried Discovery and Picard and disliked both. Lower Decks is a gem and cleverly makes many things from the original animated series, particularly the Caitian and Kzinti species canon. It always feels like the best of the humorous original Trek (e,g, A Piece of the Action) episodes. I was hoping for a Horta crew member but no such luck.
You say they spent $100 million on the Starfleet Academy series? Well they probably gotten a better return if they had taken that to Vegas and bet it on roulette or simply just burned it. Other than Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks the Modern Treks haven’t gotten much attention with occasional exceptions (Picard’s Ending). The recent movies (Kelvan time line) varied from meh to worth watching at home (and #4 apparently justifiably gone into permanent development hell).
Like Disney with Star Wars they seem to have gone out of their way to find a producer that dislikes the original material. This never works well as seen by Kathleen Kennedy wrecking the Star Wars movies and then moving on to wreck the Acolyte when the TV side had been showing her up. Honestly there are a WHOLE bunch of Scifi properties that could be acquired and developed for say 20 million each. that’s five of them and I bet 2-3 succeed at some level maybe even take off. Thats not something that this 90120 in space series is going to do. Who was the target? Young teens? Are you even going to get them to watch something based on a 60 year old premise? 20-30 something affluent women (the Karen/AWFL Demographic, I want that watching my show)?They’re busy picking on various folks Throwing it into the weird far future of Discovery which had pretty dismal numbers just baffles me. I can tell you the target demographic ISN’T me.