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.

SUPER Pressure Suit Test Today!

Longer report later, but today a fantastic test proving out a few final technological solutions! On board were scientific balloon builder and industrial designer Mathew Lippincott, professional mariner W. Magruder and yours truly. I have tremendous -- and well-founded -- belief now that we can build the 3rd-generation suit for high-altitude flights. You can always find the most recent updates on twitter.

New Iceland Drawing

Wrapping up an essay for BBC3 Radio recently, I was reminded of visions of stars refelected in glacier ice in Iceland. Here's a drawing, and a sketch of some text describing the scene, for my Iceland book.

"I picked my way through canyons and towers of ice and gravel, my supply sled scratching or screeching as its skis crossed pumice or ice. My feeble headlamp bobbed along. Most of the light was in the sky, the moon illuminating tilted terrains that extended into darkness, their geometries not always making sense in my half-seen world. A thousand other celestial lights burned in the sky--planets, stars, galactic clusters, meteorites... The brightest were reflected by the black ice, the photons from those stars bouncing up at my eyes after--well, who-knew how many millions or billions of years in transit? On such cold, clear nights I was stripped down by the terrain and such thoughts, stripped right down to being a life form trying to get from one point to another. It was a pleasant simplification."

Christmas 2015

Visiting family in California, after an intensive year of talks, pressure suit developments and writing. Also a new illustration for my Iceland book, which was written over several years and which I am editing at the moment. Back to flight training now, for testing and certification in January 2016 so that I can start flying my pressure suit!

From the book, and related to the drawing below:

"It is known that each Icelandic valley ('dalur') is attended by some ghoul; from trolls to witches, giantesses, ghost-sorcerers....elves and goblins...As I scurried along a frozen river that ribboned down the bottom of the Hofelsdalur--my headlamp just a spark in the night-- hurricane-force wild winds whipped snow from the peaks and then avalanched down on me in bizarre vertical downdrafts. I imagined a great ghoul up in the crags, thrilled to have discovered a plaything in his lonely valley. The steep black basalt valley walls were snaked with frozen waterfalls that terminated half way down, acres of ice crust spattered below on near-vertical rock."

Happy Holidays!