Moonlight in Iceland

A sketch for my book-in-progress about my Winter expeditions to Iceland -- moonlight on an unusually clear night, throwing shafts of light through a cloud and down onto the snowscape that I was travelling across!

Preparing for Flight!

For the test flights of our pressure suits we'll be flying in remote desert terrain near the Oregon/Nevada border. Today I started assembling essential survival gear for our balloonists; flameproof coveralls, helmet, gloves, hat, knife, firestarter/knife sharpening stone, compass, VHF radio, signal mirror, whistle, space blanket and so on. Incomplete -- just a first look at what we're going to need for each flier (for some time we will fly with two people aboard as we design the high-altitude, single-person flying system).

Some of my first outdoor & survival training experiences were in California's Anza Borrego desert with the Boy Scouts; I remember a lot of lessons I learned there, and ones I learned in North Kenya in 1987 and 1988, as well as what I researched for my Desert Survival chapter in Wilderness Survival for Dummies. This all feels natural and I'm excited to get outside again, now taking the technical world of space-suit building to the outdoors, in space-suit testing in challenging balloon flights!

Essay for BBC Radio 3

I've done a talk for BBC Radio 3's 'The Essay', one of five there regarding space exploration, space settlement, and even interstellar dispersal.

Click here for a link to these essays.

A New Publishing Venture -- "À BORD D'UN VAISSEAU MONDE"

A recent short-format book is out, derived from an interview with me on space anthropology and the astounding conception of human dispersal to planets beyond our solar system -- long the ultimate dream of space exploration, today so recognized by NASA and other space agencies. This is the long game, the long goal. It is a fascinating and thoroughgoing challenge!

Many are working toward it; one part I play is in my work at Icarus Interstellar, on both the genetic and cultural issues involved in multigenerational space voyaging.

À BORD D'UN VAISSEAU MONDE is one in a series of books on space exploration and settlement distributed by noblishing/ATCM media, Geneva.