Signal Moon: A Short Story

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The strength of this story is in the characters. The author sketches us a complete picture of Lily and her wartime service with just a bit of description and a whole lot of Lily’s internal monologue as she goes through her day pretending that everything is going to be alright even though she’s scared right down to her not-nearly-warm-enough fingertips that all is already lost. Perhaps, you remember the movie, The Final Countdown which came out in 1980. It was about the battleship Nimitz, which was propelled into the past and appeared in the fight in World War 2. It was one I did like. This short story is definitely a fun read and it was very interesting to learn about the Y stations which were so important to the codebreakers at Bletchley Park. Kate Quinn is known for her thrillers set with real individuals. That changes a little with Signal Moon. Here’s our review of Signal Moon by Kate Quinn.

Infact, you wouldn’t even have these extraneous items on your lunar module as it would add to the Mass of the craft which would make it harder to accelerate.

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They develop a strong and emotional long-distance friendship. She gives him suggestions on techniques to mask the ship and divert it from enemy fire. She is desperate to save his life and prevent a future war. Matt assures her that her work is very important and the outcome of her present war favours the allies. He is under a desperate timeline to save his life while preventing enemy fire from destroying his ship. Across an eighty-year gap, Lily and Matt must find a way to help each other: Matt to convince her that the war she’s fighting can still be won, and Lily to help him stave off the war to come. As their connection grows stronger, they both know there’s no telling when time will run out on their inexplicable link. In this novella we learn about the “signal intelligence hot spots” which were dotted all over Britain”, called Y stations. Even if all of this worked, there is no need to prioritize. All of this would weigh about 300 pounds on Earth, so 50 pounds on the moon, and you can carry it all. Recently a group of students from the College of New Jersey are attempting to bounce signals off the moon using the LoRa modulation scheme. LoRa is a modulation scheme designed to be used with IoT devices, however it also has great performance when signals are weak so it's a good candidate for moon bounce.

They have less than 24 hours to analyze the transmission that Matt hasn’t sent yet, in the hopes of figuring out what is about to go wrong so that he can prevent it. Or save his ship. Whatever it takes to prevent yet another war. It's certainly a shot in the dark and thus begins a short friendship among two young people, living eighty years apart. Lily's always tried to lighten the mood with jokes, although this is no joking matter, war is no joking matter. Matt is from Texas and you can tell he is even though he's never roped a cow and never wants to do so. These two are funny but also desperate to stave off the destruction that is coming in the future, if only it's possible. In this short novella Lily Baines is a 20 y/o petty officer in the Women’s Royal Naval Service posted to a Y station in Yorkshire. She spends hours every day just listening and tuning through frequencies in the hopes of finding German intelligence to pass on to Bletchley Park. All of the women wrote down everything they heard and these messages were passed on to the codebreakers at Bletchley periodically throughout the day and night. This was an engaging, suspenseful and emotional story. I was wishing that there was some way Matt and Lily could meet in person through time and space, but their radio connection with its dual storyline, one from the past and one from the near future, was compelling and worked very well. The team, some of whom were licensed radio amateurs, consisted of Jan van Muijlwijk (CAMRAS); Tammo Jan Dijkema (CAMRAS); Thomas Telkamp (Lacuna Space), and Frank Zeppenfeldt (ESA). To achieve the transmission, the team used the Dwingeloo radio telescope, operated by the CAMRAS foundation in the Netherlands. The radio telescope has a history of being used in amateur radio experiments and is now often used for Moon bounces.

Comments from the archive

The stellar map is useless as I don’t think the stars are bright enough to be visible in daylight, even on the moon. If at night, see point 1). Crafter by nature, customer service manager by trade, Wisconsinite by blood, sports enthusiast by choice. Using the LR1110 RF chip, the team also measured the frequency offset due to the Doppler effect caused by the relative motion of the Earth and the Moon.

Hall, J., & Watson, W. H. (1970). The effects of a normative intervention on group decision-making performance. Human Relations, 23, 299–317. This story was so beautiful it just about broke me. It was gorgeous and glorious and heartbreaking all at the same time, and I was in tears at the end. A short story that is crammed with all sorts of goodies. I liked it from beginning to end. Both characters despite their different timelines were likable and interesting. Across an eighty-year gap, Lily and Matt must find a way to help each other: Matt to convince her that the war she’s fighting can still be won, and Lily to help him stave off the war to come. As their connection grows stronger, they both know there’s no telling when time will run out on their inexplicable link. My thoughts You are a member of a space crew originally scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship on the lighted surface of the moon. Due to mechanical difficulties, however, your ship was forced to land at a spot some 200 miles from the rendezvous point. During the crash landing, much of the equipment aboard was damaged and, since survival depends on reaching the mother ship, the most critical items available must be chosen for the trip. Below are listed the 15 items left intact and undamaged after landing. Your task is to rank them in terms of their importance in allowing your crew to reach the rendezvous point.We know Quinn for her novels set in the past. There’s always some sort of thriller to the tale, but the focus is always on real individuals from the past. Whether it’s a German Nazi trying to live free in the 1970s or a mystery surrounding codebreakers in the 1940s, there’s something that connects us to a very real past. I want to say this is a timeslip story but that isn’t quite right. It’s more of a time-merging story, or a bit of technological SF sleight of hand story. It’s best to just say that it works. It all works marvelously, and let the how and why of it remain a bit nebulous. After all, our two principals don’t completely understand the why of it themselves. They just know that it happened. And that it saved them both.

Kate and Matt’s characters are easily the most well-sketched. Each has dialogues where joviality intermingles with tension, which isn’t easy to write. LoRa is one of the low-power wide-area network communication technologies and is Semtech’s proprietary ultra-long-distance wireless transmission technology. On 5 October 2021, the team transmitted the signal with a Semtech LR1110 RF transceiver chip (in the 430-440Mhz amateur band), amplified to 350 Watt, using the 25-metre dish of the telescope. 2.44 seconds later, it was received by the same chip. When Matt gets the radio, he’s sure it’s a prank, but he dials the frequency anyway. Even when Lily starts talking, he STILL thinks it’s a prank – at least until that night, when an event that she predicted comes true. Yorkshire, 1943. Lily Baines, a bright young debutante increasingly ground down by an endless war, has traded in her white gloves for a set of headphones. It’s her job to intercept enemy naval communications and send them to Bletchley Park for decryption. Lily is startled one day to hear an American transmission, very clear, and the information that she learns is terrifying. The date of the transmission also doesn’t make sense – it’s in the future!!Yes, ma’am.” Lily blew on her mittened fingers. No one bothered to take off the coats bundled over their uniforms; it was far too cold. One of the advantages of joining the Wrens was supposed to be that sleek, dashing, brass-buttoned uniform (designed by Molyneux!), but no one ever saw the uniform here; Lily and her fellow Y Station listeners spent every shift bundled.