D – Deep Space Exploration, IWSG and #AtoZChallenge

Folks, we’re going into Deep Space sooner rather than later. Governments and private industry such as SpaceX, Virgin Atlantic and Blue Origin are gearing up to make a deep push to place humans past our moon to Mars and into the asteroid belt and beyond. 

People are already volunteering and training to make a one-way trip to Deep Space and work and live there without returning to Earth. But first colonies will need to be built. We can send water and supplies years ahead of people. 

But we will need construction materials. Some will be readily available. Capturing asteroids and crashing them to the surface to mine is another option. 

Deep Space travel will not be limited to Governments and companies led by Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezoz. Commercial flight is in the drawing board. Virgin Atlantic is billing itself as the world’s First Commercial Spaceline. SpaceX is planning on sending two private civilians on a trip around the moon in 2018. 

Inevitably, we will see a team of college students launch someone into space. The volunteer will probably be a frat boy drunk off their @$$ and wake up to find themselves orbiting the earth. Who knows, maybe in the near future a kid will win a science fair somewhere in rural Indiana by sending a classmate into space, orbit the earth, then land safely. 

IWSG Do you ever feel a sense of urgency to finish a project because you think someone else is doing something similar and will bring it to market before you and it will be a smashing success? I deal with this about once a month. Sometimes more. I wonder if other people experience the same concern? 

Question if you had the opportunity, would you take a commercial space flight? Ever think someone will beat you to market with a similar story?

Thursday E is for Extinctions on the Horizon

Friday F is for Floating Skyscraper 

C is for Cyborg #AtoZChallenge

What Is A Cyborg You have seen them on TV. You’ve seen in the movies. But you’ve also seen cyborgs in real life. In fact, you might even be a cyborg. 

A cyborg is a being made up of organic and biomechatronic body parts. Cyborg was coined by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in 1960. A cyborg can be human, mammal, alien or really any kind of living organism. 

Bionic arms and legs. Artificial eyes. Ear implants. All operated in part or in whole with technology such as microchips. And folks, ten years from now our world will be so different than today. People and even mammals walking around and performing everyday tasks with body parts they were not born with will be so common place. There might even be a Cyborg Olympics. How cool would that be! 

Here is a video that is definitely worth checking out. If you’re busy running the A to Z circuit come back and watch this later. People, we truly live in amazing times!  

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Wednesday D is for Deep Space 

Thursday E is for Extinction and don't forget it's also Insecure Writers Support Group too.

Question Are you a cyborg? Do you know anyone who is a cyborg?

B is for Blindness Cures #AtoZChallenge

Blindness Progress And the blind shall see. Really? Folks, there is truly amazing progress in this field. Nearly 300 million people considered legally blind in this world. Science is progressing in numerous fields to bring eyesight, in part or in whole, to these people. Here are just a few ways we could see (no pun intended) during our life time. 

Stem Cell Research Scientists are developing a method that generates key types of eye tissue from human stem cells that could help repairing or regenerating the lens, cornea and conjunctiva. Yes, this is a very complex research that is not a one size fits all. But it is moving forward. There are obstacles like clinical-trial design, therapy manufacturing and regulatory compliance. 

Microchip Implants MIT researchers are developing an implant that could bypass damaged retinal cells. This method will offer a path of visual input directly to the brain. 

Helping the Blind to See in India’s Hard-to-Reach Villages

Gene Therapy Treatment XLRP is a leading cause of inherited, progressive vision loss. Mutations in the gene RPGR cause about 70 of the 15,000 people in the United States and tens of thousands more around the world. Injection of healthy copies of RPGR underneath the retina is designed to readily penetrate retinal cells to deliver the therapeutic genetic cargo. Researchers hope that a single injection of the XLRP gene therapy will slow or halt vision loss for several years. Reference

Tomorrow C is for Cyborgs

Question Are you excited about the incredible progress science is moving forward with? Or do you think humans as a species will somehow screw everything up in the long run?

A is for Asteroid Mining #AtoZChallenge

Folks, we live in very exciting times! Private industry and governments will certainly expand our economy into space where a treasure trove of raw materials wait to be mined. 

Why? Because we are going to set up colonies on the moon, Mars, the asteroid belt and even minor planets like Ceres and possibly certain moons of Jupiter and Saturn. And we’ll need construction material to build the colonies. 

Asteroids consist of oxygen and silicon which are the two most abundant elements in the Earth's crust. Asteroids also contain metals: up to 80% iron and the rest a mixture of nickel, iridium, palladium, platinum, gold, magnesium and other precious metals. 

Soon, we will be able to capture asteroids and bring them into an orbit around Earth or crashed into the moon or Mars for easy mining.

Companies are also factoring in how to mine asteroids cleanly. We’ve done a pretty good job of trashing the Earth mining raw materials. Fortunately, this generation of deep space explorers want to make sure we don’t trash our solar system as we will certainly begin mining asteroids, comets and minor planets like Ceres. 

Question Do you have any concerns about capturing an asteroid and bringing it into orbit near Earth?

Here are a couple fun article to further expound on mining asteroids: 

Asteroid Mining Sounds Hard, Right? You Don’t Know the Half of It 

NASA is dreaming about creating a trillion-dollar industry from asteroid mining for precious metals

The Great and Powerful A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal!

Well, I missed the great reveal. I thought it was March 27th but it was last week. 

Major derp. 

Anyway, here it is. My theme for the 2017 Blogging A to Z Challenge is:

Amazing Scientific Breakthroughs We Are On The Cusp of Discovering

Yes indeed people, there are so many truly incredible scientific breakthroughs in the fields of physics, chemistry, astronomy, medicine, biology, technology, and such. 

You will probably see in your life time (for better or worse) breakthroughs that will change your world in ways never imagined. Just think how much our world has changed in the last ten years. 

Folks, what we will see in the upcoming years will dwarf the changes we’ve seen in your lifetime! I’m looking forward to connecting and reconnecting with as many bloggers as I can! 

Question Are you participating in A to Z? If so, what is your theme? Best wishes to you for a smashing success!!!

Get Ready To Celebrate National Pi Day 2017!!!

On March 14, 1879 Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. We all recognize the iconic face and hair as well as his famous equation E = mc 2. 

Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159. 

Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point. As an irrational and transcendental number, it will continue infinitely without repetition or pattern. While only a handful of digits are needed for typical calculations, Pi’s infinite nature makes it a fun challenge to memorize, and to computationally calculate more and more digits. Reference 

National Pi Day is celebrated annually on March 14th. The earliest known official, or large-scale celebration of Pi Day was organized by Larry Shaw in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium. The Exploratorium continues to hold Pi Day celebrations. 

Freaky!!!

And since science nerds rule the world, we are still celebrating National Pi Day and will continue to do so for all infiniti (no pun intended). 

Even if you hate math, you'll love Pi Day. Why? Because there's pie. 

Saw This At A Local Grocery Store Today

14 Pi Day Deals That Are Irrationally Good Do you love a good pizza pie or fruit centered pie? Like to save money too? Well, national Pi Day is for here. For deals on all sorts of pies CLICK HERE . 

Pi Day Fun Fact Pi Day is celebrated around the world on March 14 or 3.14 and officially kicks off at 1:59 pm. Now do the math: when combined the date and time results in 3.14159, the approximate numerical value of pi.

Question What's you favorite pie? I know, I know, that's a tough one. Me, I'm going for the pizza pie from an Italian mom and pop restaurant with pepperoni and sausage.

March IWSG, Adventures of Chase Manhattan Box Set Trilogy, 2017 Blogging A to Z Challenge

IWSG This month it’s brought to you by Alex Cavanaugh, Tamara Narayan, Patsy Collins, M.J. Fifield, and Nicole Christopherson. 

This time I remembered to look up the question of the month. March 1 Question: Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it? Did it work out? 

The closest I have done is to take out sections and put them in my Junk Yard. I tend to overwrite and as I’m going through my final drafts I will delete sentences, paragraphs and entire sections that just don’t seem to flow or is a good fit. But I often use them to plug a gap somewhere else. I visit my Junk Yard often and find a perfectly good piece and use it, just not in the original section it came from. 

Oh By The Way I have placed numerous short stories in my books. The first chapter in my first book Breakthrough: The Adventures of Chase Manhattan is a stand-alone short story. I thought the book needed to begin with action so I plugged it in. 

Blogging A to Z I’m working on this really cool project. It’s ginormous and demanding a lot of time and resources but hopefully I’ll wrap it up by the end of March. I do have a theme and will participate in the Theme Reveal later in March. However, if the situation demands I need to focus my energies with this project then so be it. I’ll have to wait until next year for A to Z. 

Finally I’ve put together the three books in the Adventures of Chase Manhattan series into a Box Set. I just set it up on Amazon Kindle and will begin promoting it later this month. For now I’ll throw out a few Tweets here and there. 

Ha! I have to get a kick out of the original Kindle Ranking: 4,431,665.

Question Are you participating in blogging A to Z this year? Do you have a theme yet? Have you put together a trilogy or participated in an anthology?

Ugh! I see Google is losing comments again. Is this happening to anyone else. Every post it's like 25 comments mysteriously disappear?