Got the research done--I posted some nifty photos I got out of it here on the forum, like this one of liquid methane seas on Saturn's moon Titan
image by NASA (source)
--and over half of the script for episode 11 written today, I think. Actually after much hand-wringing ("Why why won't science let me do this?") I realized that I'd already lit upon--or come to peace with--the same solution I settled on today, months ago. So at least it's nice that I agree with myself! It was good to get a little more in-depth on spaceship limitations, though. One particularly neat site I found today was Atomic Rockets, a rocket science site written specifically with an eye toward science fiction writers.
Keen stuff, and some of the equations and tables on their Space War: Weapons-Conventional page even confirmed that the plan I cooked up a while ago for this episode would produce a sufficiently large boom--I didn't know I was this good at estimating huge space detonations! I mean sure, we've set off a few nuclear explosions so far here in A*, knocked around an asteroid and some big ships a bit, but them's small potatoes compared to episode 11! See, this time, we're going after a whole darn planet. ;)
Also, I came across the name Geminga, a neutron star, or pulsar, specifically, in the direction of the constellation Gemini, and just a bit over 800 light years from Earth; that's relatively nearby, and it's thought that it might be the remnant of the supernova that blew the low-density "bubble" in the interstellar medium in which our solar system currently resides. Funky name! According to this page, "its name is both a contraction of 'Gemini gamma-ray source' and an expression in Milanese dialect meaning 'it's not there.'"
Oh and we need our traditional script line leak, don't we? See if you can guess who this is:
"R-really, sir, you've been listening to too many ghost stories. I'm sure it's someone much more mundane."
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