Ron Miller's discussions

"I make this distinction because there was ancient mechanical video dating back to the 1910's and I became excited thinking that this might have been an even earlier version of mechanical video. Alas, film." Read more

Don't know what's making all the gaps in the rings in the illustration. Unless the earth has gained a few new sizable satellites... Read more

If one reduces stories to such basic ideas as "boy meets girl", well, then, of course nothing is "original". It seems rather like saying that since all artists use the same three primary colors how could anyone paint an original painting? Read more

PS: Not every innovation listed in the Cracked article was originated by Serviss. For instance, a spacesuit appears in Edward Francesca Burney's "Q.Q. Esq.'s Journey to the Moon" (1815), which even included a drawing. And while Andre Laurie didn't exactly provide his lunar explorers with real spacesuits in his… Read more

Cracked dismisses Serviss as a "hack". This does him a real disservice (pun more or less intended). Garrett Serviss not wrote some seminal works of science fiction—-such as "A Columbus of Space", "The Moon Metal" and "The Second Deluge", but was a prolific and widely read author of books of popular science,… Read more

"If it's done really well"...yeah, that's a real hurdle for Hollywood, as we know all too well Read more

Many of these sound cool...and will probably be improvements on the originals. For the others...one can only ask: Why? Read more

The central ridge does indeed have a possible explanation, but it's not similar to how Iapetus got two different-colored hemispheres. There are several theories regarding what is probably the weirdest mountain chain in the solar system. One of these is that Iapetus once had a ring of its own that collapsed, creating… Read more

My bad. Read more

This was my first impression after reading about the avalanches last night...

I was at JPL when the very first Voyager image of Mimas arrived. The picture was projected in the news room line by line...and as when the crater appeared the place when dead quiet. Finally someone broke the silence. "Is that the engine?" they said. Read more

Calling this "live action" seems tad disingenuous since all of the SFX are accomplished through computer animation. Read more

Godwin's book is incredible! Highly recommended! Read more

Bonestell's painting was perfectly accurate in 1944. What is even more important than the fact that it is most recognizable painting is that a painting of Titan was so instrumental in inspiring scores—-if not hundreds—-of careers in astronomy and space sciences. Carl Sagan, for instance, credits his initial interest… Read more

Did this picture of an electrical storm on Saturn a few years ago. Guess I underestimated how big these things can get!

Let me think...Pluto is closer in size to the earth than the earth is to Jupiter. Pluto resembles the earth in composition, where Jupiter could hardly be more radically different. Earth has one moon, Jupiter as a zillion and Pluto has five. Read more

The IAU's rules are a lot more arbitrary than they at first sound. At one time I campaigned to have features on Titan named for Chesley Bonestell and Gerard Kuiper. Kuiper discovered Titan's atmosphere in 1944 and shortly afterward Bonestell created the iconic painting of Titan, which may be the most recognizable and…