iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 11h

Integrated Interplanetary Vehicle (IIV), my own design for a Cold War era joint Soviet-US spacecraft. NASA would be in charge of the NERVA rockets, transfer capsule, and S-IVB workshop, the Soviets would be in charge of the other crew accommodations and scientific systems. (Made with Blender)

A spaceship with four rocket stages and space station-esque modules sticking out the front.

010129

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 12h

I recently got a short story published about a civilization that finds itself in a related and unusual situation: lots of detectable technosignatures, but no way to reach the civilizations sending them. perseidprophecies.ca/issue-10-sum...

perseidprophecies.ca

Ambient Radiation - Perseid Prophecies

by Zachery Brasier Data fell before Astrohistorian Cixyr’s eyes, stylized into streams of flowing mercury. The observatory’s circular wallscreen displayed the radio sky in this way, rendered from comp...

0130

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 16h

I do wonder what we'd actually do in a realistic first contact scenario. Interstellar travel seems to be extremely difficult if not impossible. So the two sides would never meet. And any civilization outside 50 ly makes one call-and-response cycle longer than a human lifespan.

2101

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Over on Twitter they are talking about solutions to the Fermi Paradox. Mine is that space is huge, we haven't been looking that long, and separating the hypothetical signatures of alien civilizations from random radio noise is significantly harder than most people think.

6322

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

You'd hope the NASA administrator would understand the difference between Congress funding his administration and him personally donating $3 million to a super-PAC supporting his boss.

You'd think running America's space program would be a position above politics.

@rookisaacman
, however, has given $3 million to MAGA, Inc. since being confirmed as NASA administrator.

This isn't illegal, experts tell me. But is it right?

Jared's response: Not sure what you mean by America’s space program being above politics. Leadership has been politically appointed since inception, national space policy is established by the executive branch, oversight and funding come from Congress, and industry lobbies everyone extensively. I would say it has always been very political, and if you love America’s space program, being politically savvy is an asset. I have also donated $30 million to charity this year, which is also not illegal.

2192

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Tongren space station, my design for a joint US-Chinese lunar orbiting station, roughly based on Hexagram 13 of the I Ching. (Renders made with Blender)

A cylindrical space station with moon behind it.

A three module space station with a Mengzhou and Orion attached to it.

06518

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Fluidic Lens Telescope: my design for a near future astronomical station based on the symbol for Earth, showing off some of the cool reflective geometry. The lens would be, as the name suggests, formed from a liquid. (Renders made with Blender)

A reflective telescope with trusses extending out of it and reflecting back on the lens.

02910

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A great thing about Bleeding Edge is seeing Pynchon reference 90s - early 2000s pop culture. It breaks my brain a little bit to imagine him watching The Phantom Menace.

"Let me buy you a cup of coffee or something."

"Better yet there's a bar right down the street's still got Zima on tap."

Maxine gives her a look.

"Where's your nostalgia, man, Zima's the bitch drink of the nineties, come on, I'm buyin the first round."

Fabian's Bit Bucket dates from the early days of the dotcom boom. The girl behind the bar waves at Driscoll when she and Maxine come in and reaches for the Zima tap. They are soon settled into a booth behind a couple oversize schooners of the once wildly popular novelty beverage. At the moment nothing much is happening, though happy hour looms, and with it the onset of another impromptu pink-slip party, for which the Bucket has begun to get a reputation.

The Singhs are up on the tenth floor, the elevators are all either busy or broken down from overloading, and Maxine, having heard fitness-benefit rumors, is OK with taking the stairs. The somber old landmark is certainly jumping tonight. Stairwells and corridors are thronged with all manner of pint-size Statues of Liberty, Uncle Sams, firefolks, cops and GIs in fatigues, not to mention Shreks, Bob the Builders, SpongeBobs and Patricks and Sandy the Squirrels, Queen Amidalas, Harry Potter characters in Quidditch goggles, Gryffindor robes, and witch hats. Apartment doors are all wide open, and inside you can hear a range of sound

130

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The Continuity of Individuality: Ensign Harry Kim and the Deadlock Incident

060

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

My favorite new reads from the Summer - Close Range - Annie Proulx - On the Calculation of Volume 1 - Solvej Balle - Moderan - David R. Bunch - Uncertain Empire - Edited by Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell

Uncertain Empire - Edited by Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell

030

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

FLT (Fluidic Lens Telescope), my design for a near-future crewed astronomical station, based on the astrological symbol for Earth. The lens is a bowl of fluid held together by surface tension. Some more details below. (Render made with Blender, NASA public domain backgrounds.)

A spacecraft that is like a big bowl with a camera pod sticking out. And it has a cylindrical habitation module.

A bowl of fluid reflecting space and floating over the Earth

15216

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

"Second comes right after first." - Buzz Aldrin

Buzz Aldrin guest staring in The Simpsons saying "Second comes right after first."

1202

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Renders of Apollo Missions: 5, 9, any mission's Loss of Signal, 13 (Renders made with Blender, Earth background in 5 and 9 from NASA public domain)

An Apollo CSM and LM separated and in Earth orbit.

An Apollo CSM/ LM stack slipping behind the moon.

Apollo 13, the full stack plus a bunch of debris around it following the explosion.

38621

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The KH-11 is the current generation of NRO spy satellites. They are heavily classified. Sightings and descriptions show that it is relatively similar to the Hubble Space Telescope. It just points at Earth. (Render, Blender. Background NASA public domain)

A satellite that looks like the Hubble Space Telescope point towards the Earth, which is above it.

02711

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

An Apollo CSM awaiting its Lunar Module. (Render made with Blender)

An Apollo CSM over the moon with the Earth in the background.

13814

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

My favorite Pynchon joke, cracks me up every time.

4 The Counterforce What? - Richard Nixon

140

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Incidental minimalism in astronaut photography (NASA public domain images)

The atmospheric limb (blue) with a sunburst against the deep black of space

A tunnel in a spacecraft, it's mostly white with two yellow stripes.

The end of the Space Shuttle in which the outline is glowing in orange.

07926

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

KH-8 Gambit 3, a series of National Reconnaissance Office spy satellites operated from 1966 to 1984. Its film canisters were dropped from space and picked up in mid-air by modified cargo planes. (Renders made with Blender, backgrounds NASA public domain)

A pencil-like satellite over blue waters

26919

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The Space Shuttle Enterprise (OV-101) was originally named "Constitution" but Star Trek fans convinced them to rename it Enterprise after the NCC-1701 and now Enterprise (OV-101) is canonically considered to be in the lineage that led up to the NCC-1701. Temporal mechanics...

2254

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

KH-11 KENNEN, a classified NRO satellite type. There are only a few descriptions and a handful of lo-fi pictures, so this is my extrapolation of what the earlier Blocks might look like. (Render, made with Blender.)

A gold satellite that kinda looks like Hubble.

1259

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Gravity's Rainbow might be the only major novel that just expects you to know a little bit of calculus and rocket design.

As some gamblers on the stock market know when to place stop orders, feeling by instinct not the printed numbers but the rates of change, knowing from first and second derivatives in their skin when to come in, stay or go, so there are engineering reflexes tuned always to know, at any moment, what, given the resources, can be embodied in working hardware—what is "feasible." On the day that a 2000 m/sec exhaust became feasible, the A4 itself suddenly came in reach.

suddenly came in reach. The danger then lay in being seduced by ap-
proaches that were too sophisticated. No one was immune. Hardly a
designer there, including Pökler, didn't come up with at least one
monster rig, some Gorgon's head writhing with pipes, tubes, compli-
cated folderol for controlling pressures, solenoids on top of pilot
valves on auxiliary valves on backup valves—hundreds of pages on
valve nomenclature were printed as appendices to these weird propos-
als, all promising huge pressure differences between the inside of the
chamber and the nozzle exit—beautiful, as long as you didn't care
much about those millions of moving parts behaving together too re-
liably. But to get a dependable working motor, one the military could
use in the field to kill people, the real engineering problem now was to
keep things as simple as possible.

2130

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

My designs for interplanetary spaceships based on the symbol of their destination: Mars ♂, Mercury ☿, Venus ♀, the sun ☉

A spaceship with big metal petals and a torus, it looks like the symbol for Mars

A spaceship with cruciform radiators and a big torus with magnetic field generators at the front.

A spaceship with a big ring and a tethered space station

A spaceship that has a torus and a big heat shield protecting it.

29023

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Some of my favorite parts of the Apollo transcripts are when the boys get a little silly with it.

177:37:46 Young (LM onboard): You look right on to me. My optical sight is coming right into your docking window.
177:38:05 Young (LM onboard): Don't hit my arm, Charlie.
177:38:07 Duke (LM onboard): I'm sorry.
177:38:08 Young (LM onboard): [Garble.]
177:38:35 Young (LM onboard): How would you like to do a EVA transfer?
177:38:39 Duke (LM onboard): How would you like a kick in the behind?
177:38:42 Young (LM onboard): Hot mike to Houston. [Laughter.]
177:38:48 Duke (LM onboard): No, we're normal voice. But we got our tape recorder running. [Laughter.]
end of LM transcript for mission.

2225

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

KH-11 KENNEN Block IV, one of the 21st century versions of the highly classified KH-11 spy satellite operated by the National Reconnaissance Office. (Rendered in Blender)

A reflective satellite with a big optical tube floating in space.

2335

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

KH-11 KENNEN, a highly classified type of NRO spy satellite currently in operation. We have no pictures of it, so I thought I'd take a swing at a conceptual render, based on the general description of it being like stubby Hubble Space Telescope.

A space satellite similar to Hubble, but it's gold.

A space satellite that looks like Hubble

4448

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I agree with this. Another question I keep asking (in my head) is: Where are the HLS prototypes? We're 9 months out from the mission, we've seen the SLS and Orion getting ready, but nothing of the landers, not even a shot of them getting built, or even the crew in a sim training for docking.

2153

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

The Petrel, an interstellar survey vessel from my short story "Skipping Ahead", during the four phases of its mission: Earth departure, interstellar cruise, in orbit over Gliese 667 Cc, and returning to a changed Earth. Technical details and link to the story below.

A white cylindrical spacecraft over the Earth.

A spacecraft in interstellar space, with glowing engines that look like two parenthesis.

A cylindrical spacecraft in orange and red light

A cylindrical spacecraft with Earth in the background

27024

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

If I had to boil down Gravity's Rainbow to one theme/phrase it'd be "a counter-narrative of the dawn of the Space Age."

181

Reposted by Element115Art

ToughSF @toughsf.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

One of the earlier versions of the Space Shuttle, meant to be used alongside a crewed, reusable flyback booster. #space #art by @element115.bsky.social www.artstation.com/artwork/rlLO9G

05710

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Besides the linguistic joke, I wonder if the reason Pynchon habitually writes "says" as "sez" is a reference to the unit vectors of the topocentric-horizon coordinate system (SEZ), which gives coordinates for a person standing on the Earth observing an object in space.

140

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Took some pictures of the partially-abandoned North Truro Air Force Station on Cape Cod.

An abandoned area with the radome in the distance.

A mural of the world on a beat up building.

1182

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Skylab, America's first space station.

Skylab over the Earth with the moon in the distance.

26318

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Rise and shine it's another day in Raketen-Stadt.

020

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

On each Gravity's Rainbow reread I appreciate more the "why" behind the book's famously difficult style, especially in Pt. 1 and Pt. 4. It's a stream of consciousness technique adapted to a world where the stream can end at any given moment, without warning...

142

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire (1974)

It is true that they do use rocket engines and have boosted missiles, but probably launch vehicle is the most accurate label to pin on these huge slim cylinders we have all seen rising majestically up our television screens. They are mostly empty after their fuel burns out, but historically they are of supreme importance because without them there would be no space age. Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, Von Braun—these chaps never dreamed about simulators or recovery systems or mission planning, but about the raw rocket power which would be required to put men into orbit, onto the moon, out beyond Jupiter, or wherever. In my own view, the pendulum has swung; rockets are about as interesting as the powder which propels a bullet. To be fascinated by them is to prove McLuhan’s point that the medium is the message, or perhaps it is a more Freudian thing.

161

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Nocturne Magazine nominated my story "You Who Dwell in the Dust" for Best of the Net. If you haven't, check it out. (Link below) It's about a near-future Mars mission and the isolation physical hardship the first colonists would have to survive, in contrast to the current corporate advertising.

A picture of the Mars sky highlighting Earth with the caption "You are here"

1249

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

A personal #startrek design: the USS Corvid, Oxcart-class light attack cruiser. Designed during the Dominion War, it is optimized to get as close to Warp 10 as possible to quickly respond to Dominion attacks. It is roughly Defiant sized (a little bigger, though). #ds9

A Star Trek ship with an integrated secondary hull and a very elongated primary hull. It has three warp nacelles.

27616

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

"Whatever it is that's just about to happen, once it's over we'll say, oh well, it's history, should have seen it coming and right now it's all I can do to get on with my life. I don't care to know more than I need to about the mysteries of time." Shadow Ticket, Thomas Pynchon

170

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Veganized an ancient Roman recipe.

270

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

An infographic comparing two Cold War concepts for a crewed Mars mission: the American IMIS and the Soviet MEK. Skylab for scale.

IMIS Country: USA Crew: 6 Engines: 5 x NERVA stages Mission Time: 460 Days Length: 582 ft Stage Diameter: 32 ft Mass 2.7 million lbs. MEK Country: USSR Crew: 3-6 Engine: Nuclear Electric Mission Time: 630 Days Length: 574 ft Diameter 55ft Mass 330,000 lbs Skylab Country: USA Crew: 3 Engine: N/A Days in Orbit 2249 Days Length w/o Apollo CSM: 82 ft Diameter: 21 ft Mass: 168,000 lbs Cold War Mars Concepts

36015

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Shadow Ticket and The Grand Budapest Hotel are spiritual cousins. Also, Madame D.'s family name is Desgoffe-und-Taxis.

040

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Thanks to Thomas Pynchon I now know that the moonwalk was originally called "The Buzz" in the 1930s, which is one of the stranger historical coincidences I've come across.

1152

Element115Art @element115.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

IMIS over Mars. This was a 60s design to launch a Mars landing in the mid 80s. The front part contains the crew module, the lander, and its Earth return module. Attached to that is a NERVA nuclear rocket stage for the return journey.

A spacecraft over Mars. It takes the shape of a rocket stage attached to a sort of conical laboratory module that's open at the froont.

1389