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Oh, I'm alternating between making story notes, reviewing  and doing Unrelated Things, and drilling and cutting and threading and grinding for the physical design of project TopOfStack.  I'll have to find another photo hosting service so I can put some pictures up.  It's gonna look like Cousin It (in Lovecraftian Color) crossed with an hour-slot TV show's idea of a mad scientist's doomsday lottery machine.

No, definitely an alpha level test.

But I started in yesterday.

On horses and humans: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-foundatio … nship.html

But scale changes call for different engineering solutions.  Surface area vs. volume, multiplied by higher energies that can be sustained in larger volumes.  Structural forces needed to hold the thing together versus the distance over which the forces must be fransmitted.  (See 'buckling' and 'deflection' in Structural Mechanics.)  Ordinary metal conductors in smaller weapons vs. superconductors necessary for the larger volumes compounded by higher energies.

Scaling is a frighteningly simple matter.  But if you make it simpler, the results can be frightful, costly, catastrophic failures.  The sort that ACME likes to hush up.

Writing analytical reviews can make you a better writer, too, as you learn from other people's work.

I was thinking of the phone operator ... but the driver is very good, too.

Yes, but it really does take off before the end.  And burn.  And crash.  And then the roof caves in.  Just your mug of coffee.

It's an old but oft-neglected principle that you should expect less than you paid for--and more than you bargained for.

You're welcome, glad to help.

Per last review: -homo economicus-.

'economic' is derived from a Hellenic Greek word meaning household management.

Searching for info about 'Heinleining', I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative)  .

Ms. Ye, in response to your last review reply and your difficulties in writing action,

You're going to need some action to establish jeopardy.  It's a skill to be learned (says the guy who's facing a big hurdle of the same sort soon).  In the visual arts, artists do studies, trying out a technique, effect, or tableau  in isolation before incorporating it into their planned work.  M.C.Escher left a huge number of studies, now in museums and private hands, for his major works.   And the first couple of chapters I put up here were studies to see if I could reach some minimum standard.

People are attracted to YuFu's chapter, I think, because there is physical jeopardy involved, and because disaster has befallen at chapter's end.

I offer you a suggestion--or a challenge: Take YuFu's first chapter and rewrite it with just the action and implied jeopardy, absolute minimum of character and near-zero background--but with elements establishing the danger in that chapter.  Put it up as a short story with an appropriate title and explain what you're trying to do.  You can even put a barely illustrated outline up first.  I promise to review at least three revisions.  I think you'll get other reviewers as well.

I'm guessing that with some practice you can get the action and necessary background/milieu down to about 600 words.  But a good first try might run about 1,300.