Rockets, Rhymes
&Recipes

Novels and Noshes for the New Millennium

What is it? Find the answer at The Beginning of the End.

Recipes

Rockets, rhymes & recipes
Ribbons flutter in the breeze
Flaring colors, feelgood times
Rockets, recipes & rhymes

It's a lie, it really is, I know as much about cooking as my daughters know about interplanetary navigation, and yet ... and yet ...

Mmmm-mmmm, plunk in a spoon and pluck out a tasty lookin' eyeball lookin' up at you. Savor the texture of those crispy-fried maggots and smooth-sliced monkey brains. Here's a fine tasting meal with all natural ingredients that's easy to fix and makes the kids holler for more!

... check out my Eyeball Slop, and after that you won't be able to resist going on to the Deviled Eggs and Collard Greens. I make it a point to add at least one new culinary delight every decade.

Here's the first string of pearls. Touch them, roll them between your fingers, admire the luster:

Millennial Pearls

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
— Robert Louis Stevenson

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing
they like.
— Abraham Lincoln

A pretty girl is like a malady.
— Found in Esquire magazine

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
— Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love"

Some people stay longer in an hour than others do in a month.
— Mark Russell

Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.
— Freud

MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts.
— Winston Churchill

It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.
— Prof. Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best
he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and
not make messes in the house.
— Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love"

The future is all we have to look forward to.
— T. Taylor

Rockets

	Hot exhaust of fluted fires
	Rockets roaring life's desires
	Rockets sounding rocket's songs,
	Rockets pushing life along.

Space is a big part of my life, and that's where the "Rockets" part of this site comes in. I've been a space cadet since before there were space cadets, before Sputnik and Mercury and Apollo and the Star Trek, back when even mentioning the word "space" invited goofy looks and snappy put-downs from your high school buddies. Back then I dreamed the dream, but never quite believed we'd actually send spacecraft to other planets in my lifetime. Then we really DID it, and even better, I got to hitch a ride. So far I've visited every planet in the solar system except Mercury, Jupiter, and Pluto (yep, that includes Earth) -- not physically, but personally and emotionally as a navigator for the Voyager, Cassini, and Mars Polar Lander interplanetary missions. Here are some of the voyages I've taken lately:

The Cassini launch in 1997 was spectacularly successful, notwithstanding the efforts of its enemies to turn it off. After a false start on the 13th of October, Cassini lifted out of a caldron of smoke and flame two days later and roared into the sky atop our most powerful launch vehicle, the mighty Titan IVB/SRMU/Centaur combination. As a member of the Cassini Navigation team at JPL with almost eight years of my life invested in this mission, I watched with more than a little interest as this beautiful rocket climbed into the air on pillars of flame and prayers. After the Titan assembly fell away, there was a short coast in low earth orbit, and then the Centaur kicked in and put Cassini on course for it's first rendezvous with Venus, which occurred on 26 April 1998. There was intentionally little publicity about the Venus flyby, but you can bet that there would have been if we had HIT the planet instead of skimming only a little over 100 km above the atmosphere. As one of the spacecraft's navigators, it was my job to make sure we MISSED. Venus was only the first waypoint of a seven year cruise to Saturn. There was another Venus swingby, and then ...

Here's an explanation of what that second picture is about:

The Moon was a pearl at the throat of Mother Earth. In the last few days before the Earth swingby, this was the scene from spacecraft Cassini. The Moon entered from the left and slid across southern Africa, exiting a few hours later at the right side of the Earth's disk. Unfortunately, this is a scene that was never recorded except in simulation, since the project could not/would not change its complicated flyby sequence so close to a critical event -- the swingby itself. There were also some technical impediments mainly concerned with thermal input from the Sun, had the spacecraft turned to the correct attitude to take the picture.

Nevertheless ...

Carl Sagan must be spinning in his grave, knowing that NASA missed the photo-op of the millennium. You can bet that he would have knocked on the administrator's door, or maybe even the president's, and somehow the project would have found the wherewithal to surmount the technical and staffing difficulties and taken a picture that has never been seen before. Other space projects would have turned handsprings for this opportunity, but not Cassini. The modus operandi was, and always had been, to hunker down until after the controversial Earth swingby. In so doing, we missed a picture that would have graced our magazines, television screens, and textbooks well into the third millennium.

Thus are opportunities lost. Not with a bang but a whimper. You never knew you missed it, did you?

... and onward! Cassini flies past Jupiter this December and arrives at Saturn in July 2004 to begin a series of looping encounters with Titan and other Saturnian moons.

I abandoned the Cassini ship shortly after the first Venus swingby (returning briefly for the Earth swingby) in hopes of going to a comet. I joined the Space Technology 4/Champollion project, perhaps the most challenging mission in the history of interplanetary exploration. We would launch in 2003 on a spacecraft driven by an array of three solar powered ion engines. After arriving at Comet Tempel 1, ST4 would orbit for about three months, mapping the surface of a new world, then descend to the surface for a soft landing to take close-up pictures and analyze samples of pristine comet material to learn about early conditions in our pre-adolescent solar system.

For me, it was an opportunity to add another sticker to my solar system suitcase, this time to comet Tempel 1.

Thus are opportunities lost. Not with a bang but a whimper. You never knew you missed it, did you?

Whatever happened to that Mars Polar Lander? Truly I haven't a clue, but I can tell you definitively that it was NOT a navigation error. We (the JPL interplanetary navigators) nailed the delivery of that sucker as well as could be done, given the constraints we were working under. Not that it wasn't touch-and-go ... it WAS, right up until the last week. It wasn't until then that the trajectory solutions began settling down and I began to think that maybe ... just MAYbe, we weren't facing another Newtons versus pounds-force fiasco a la Mars Climate Observer.

Did I say I hadn't been to Pluto? Actually, I have. My life is fraught with deep space adventures, but this one I would have foregone, given the choice. Nevertheless, in its own strange way, it was an adventure, filled with danger, excitement, and pain as well. If you're not into prostate cancer, you can skip this next little episode.

Millennial Pearls

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
— Napoleon Bonaparte.

Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.
— Robert Louis Stevenson

... stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is
death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically
and without pity.
— Robert Heinlein

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
— Robert Frost

Life is over, life was gay: We have come the primrose way.
— Robert Louis Stevenson

Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
— R. Geis

Always store beer in a dark place.
— Robert Heinlein

By Chelsea Taylor

& Rhymes

Hot exhausting trying times
Wrathful rockets trying crimes
Bloody banners in the breeze,
Rockets, rhymes & recipes.

The "Rhymes " part of the title alludes to my writing. Although I don't do poetry, I like to get a lyrical, rhyming flavor into my prose, repeating themes and images in various guises, analogous to the repetition of sounds in poems. I try to write realistically, staying within the boundaries of physical law and human nature, but I also like the larger aspects of my stories to touch on the mystical -- transcending localized reality with a touch of the globally impossible, a little like the surrealistic paintings of Dali and Magritte.

Finished works

The future is all we have to look forward to ...

But first, a detour to the past:

(What's that strange object to the right of the moon?)

Steve Mylder -- young fighter pilot and hometown war correspondent -- fights for his life in the skies over Vietnam, but battles for his soul against an internal Red Baron. Steve and his friends -- Sub-Lieutenant Sam, a collie who thinks he's a fighter pilot, and Avery, a master of combat seduction who falls in love with an enemy woman -- illuminate a brooding but whimsical theme about the hormones and warmones that impel young males to war and stupidity. In the end, Steve Mylder discovers his Wylder side.

Sample chapters:
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders,
give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new
problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
— Robert Heinlein

... the specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving
toward the grand fallacy.
— Marshall McLuhan

Vision works and plans don't.
— James Flanigan: L.A. Times

When your cart reaches the foot of the mountain, a path will appear.
— Chinese peasant saying

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will
not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the
world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone
are omnipotent. The slogan "Press On" has solved and always will solve
the problems of the human race.
— Calvin Coolidge

If it isn't worth doing, it isn't worth doing well.
— Donald Hebb (Psychologist)

Genius requires obsession.
— T. Taylor

... a story about vision, disaster, and survival on Earth and Mars.

Here are a few chapters for your reading pleasure.

A smattered, soulful vision
	slept through her eyes
She warmed me coolly
I longed for — her thighs
	And
Her autumn, august, auburn
	brown hair
August long kept by the wind
	blown hair

Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
...
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
— Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary

She hasn't a humble bone in her body, nor has she need for one.
— T. Taylor: said of his daughter

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
— Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
— Mark Twain

We know who
Made the birds
to fly.
We know who
Made the food
to buy.
We know who
Made the weeds
to grow.
We know who
Made the stars
to show.
We know
We know...
— Unknown: Witte Museum, Children's Exhibit, San Antonio, circa 1967

There's something wonderful about the thought that a piece of ourselves
is somewhere out there on a winding journey between the stars on its way
to eternity. It's like having immortal children.
— T. Taylor: On the Voyager spacecraft

Cartoon by Jan Taylor

Works in Progress

Mitch Harris and Diana Muse-Jones, an engineer and a scientist, work together at "The Lab" -- a place remarkably like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but populated by an entirely different cast of characters. After they discover an earth-crossing asteroid that might hit the earth in nine years, they clash as they face the dilemma of whether to announce it or not. Raising the stakes on the decision, Mitch is stalked by a religious fanatic who wants to kill him.

In the course of researching the topic of asteroid impacts on the Web, I ran across some interesting links. Worried about getting smacked by a big one? Relax, the odds are no worse than dying in an airline accident.

Here are some sample chapters from the first draft version:
Chapter 1: Earth Crosser
Chapter 2: The Lab
Chapter 3: Religious Experiences

(co-authored by Kate Altunin)

Miranda Malacroix, screenwriter wannabe, discovers something unusual behind a new door cut into her office hallway. She and Jonas Whitney, jazz composer, meet behind the door and discover that they've been abducted onto an alien spacecraft by the affable yet sinister Jack Nielson. Their challenge -- if they decide to accept -- or even if they decide not to accept -- is to write and score a drama that will turn into reality. (A certain whimsy accompanies this piece.)

First cut, as a screen play.

Her August longed, autumn blown
	auburn brown hair
August swept combed by the wind
	blown hair.

Millennial Pearls

Always remember: Wherever you go .... there you are!
—Buckaroo Banzaii (movie)

Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
	The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
	the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety
	percent.

Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
— Unknown

The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second
half by our children. 
— Clarence Darrow

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.
— Chinese fortune cookie

When you're a kid, you don't GET to do anything; 
When you're a grownup, you don't WANT to do anything. 
— T. Taylor

Frontiers of any type, physical or mental are but a challenge to our
breed; nothing can stop the questing of man, not even men and if we
will it, not only the wonders of space but the very stars are ours.
— Andre Norton

A man's duty is to soar in the heavens, 
And a woman's duty is to bind him to the earth. 
— T. Taylor