It’s the 10th Day of SPS and apparently no one spotted it.
If you look close at the picture we’ve been using since the start, you’ll see there are SUNSAT Space Power issues for Volumes 1, 2, 3… all the way up to Volume 13. So how were we going to do 12 Days of SPS?
Look again, there’s no Volume 9. We were going to jump over it.
The Space Studies Institute recently moved the historical collections of the Archives from Silicon Valley to new storage in the Seattle area, this being a growing, vibrant hotspot for the “NewER Space” activities. We are hoping to get a nice new place to unpack things for access soon enough, but with the collections currently in their climate-protective cases not everything is immediately at hand. The missing Volume 9 issues were going to eventually be found and made a later ‘Giftsmas in July” offering,
And that is how the 13 would become 12.
But then…
We mentioned the missing issues offhand to Dr. Gay Canough and she sent another box priority mail with her very own issues of that volume. If you don’t know Dr. Canough, you can read just some of her background on the feature’s main page, she is an awesome Senior Associate and generations of SSI all truly appreciate her.
That box showed up just a few days before Volume 9 was on deck and we dove in to do the conversion of its issues from real world analogs to compiled web views, and got them out yesterday after an all-nighter with just seconds to spare. We would be at 13 but one more for free is a good thing.
All Good. An exciting behind-the-scenes story, right? Then came the silly twist:
With our eyes on that ball we missed two more hiding issues: Volume 10’s Number 3 and 4. Darn.
We could have jumped Volume 10 – we were going to do that with 9 – but we do have the two issues and they’re worth using, so instead we are going to do a combo day with what we have of 10 added to all of Volume 11.
What’s in this big bonus day? A gamut.
Peter Glaser, Bill Brown, Makoto Nagatomo, David Criswell, Rashmi Mayur, Geoffrey Landis, Seth Potter, and more with topics including: Lunar Resources (Thoughts of an Economic Geologist), The Space Power Programme of the European Space Agency, Countermeasures for Mitigating the Effects of Global Environment Changes, How “Third Force” Psychology Might View Humans in Space, Experimental Radiation Cooled Magnetrons for Space Use, Impact of the Space Program on the U.S. Economy: National and State Analyses, Optimization of Stirling and Ericsson Cycles Using Solar Radiation, The Energy Crisis and SPS for the Third World’s Future, and, you got it: Much, Much More.
We are sure that you will find more than one title that will speak to you, more than one article or paper that will give you good data for the work that needs to be done for SPS today.
And that is the reason for all of this work and for all of the behind-the-scenes nail-biting drama.
At first glance these are just old books, with “Who Cares” and “Obsolete” being easy dismissals by folks who don’t do professional space tech every day. But to those who have learned that physics hardly changes, that the economics often simply need a factoring for inflation, these Space Power volumes contain data and information just waiting to be put to real work, giving an edge that few people have had access to for years.
Long story short? Click here.
