Icarus Falling Last Preparations

Preparations are getting set for the release of Parking Orbit Publishing's "Icarus Falling" novel. Layout is complete and with final editing still to be done. More information will be available, so keep reading here.

Warning: for your own safety keep watching the skies. You have been warned. Purchase the book when it comes out and find out why.

The "Icarus Falling" Story

They didn't come in peace.

David Hendricks is a former United States military officer trained to reverse engineer foreign technology. During a private consulting job with the FBI, he is recruited by a covert operations unit specializing in recovery of alien spacecraft. It is a job he might regret taking.

A Top Secret U.S. government agency plans to do more than look at UFO wreckage. They want to bring down a ship using a little ingenuity and lots of luck. Colonel MacKay, the mission commander, is an overachieving hard-nosed military expert who will stop at nothing to succeed. Starting intergalactic war is a small price to pay.

Cory is an alien abductee angry over his long years of insane torture. Finding out about the mission, he convinces the military to use him as bait. Dr. Sheila Brannan, who specializes in terrorist organizations, will use paranormal mind games to communicate. Both find themselves unprepared for the encounter.

For the laid back pragmatist Hendricks, getting along with his quirky colleagues is the first step of survival against an alien culture fighting to keep secrets. Deadly intentions guard wonderment and technological marvels. Success could bring the greatest discovery or the worst disaster.

Closer to Ready

This last week the book proof for Icarus Falling  arrived for preview. No date has been set for the release yet, but corrections are getting made. Most of the edits are word choices, grammar errors, and missed paragraph indention. After the book proof has been read and adjusted then a more solid date of publication can be announced. Of course, keep checking back here for new information and any schedules. Its all in the starting stages; a very exciting time.

If you know others that might be interested in science fictions, U.F.O. stories, or reading in general, pass this blog along to them.

What is Parking Orbit?

You might ask what Parking Orbit refers to? The answer is fairly simple; a temporary orbit by a spacecraft. The reasons for this maneuver, as explained in wikipedia is that:

• It can increase the launch window. For earth-escape missions, these are often quite short (seconds to minutes) if no parking orbit is used. With a parking orbit, these can often be increased up to several hours.^[1][2]
• For non-LEO missions, the desired location for the final burn may not be in a convenient spot. In particular, for earth-escape missions that want good northern coverage of the trajectory, the correct place for the final burn is often in the southern hemisphere.
• For geostationary orbit missions, the correct spot for the final (or next to final) firing is normally on the equator. In such a case, the rocket is launched, coasts in a parking orbit until it is over the equator, then fires again into a geostationary transfer orbit.^[3]
• For manned lunar missions, a parking orbit allowed some checkout while still close to home, before committing to the lunar trip.^[2]
• It is needed if the desired orbit has a high perigee. In this case the booster launches into an elliptical parking orbit, then coasts until a higher point in the orbit, then fires again to raise the perigee. See Hohmann transfer orbit. In this case the use of a parking orbit can also reduce the fuel usage of an inclination change, since these take less delta-V at high elevations.

For science fiction fans, it has been used to describe temporary visitation of a planet while members of the crew investigate the surface. An example would be the many times in Star Trek when the Enterprise comes to a new planet. It circles the alien globe while Kirk, Spock, and Co. beam down or land in a shuttle. After the mission is finished, they will leave the temporary orbit and go off to explore other strange new worlds.

The Adventure Begins

Hello and welcome.

This is a place where readers of all kinds can come to hear about the latest Parking Orbit Publishing news and interact. Coming soon will be the novel Icarus Falling about a secret government agency bringing down an alien spacecraft to discover hidden secrets. Follow the blog for character bios, other projects, sci-fi book reviews, author notes, discussions about the fantastic and scientific, and much more.

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