Answer to Frequently Asked Questions

I have received questions from various students wanting to become a yacht designer or a naval architect about how the five Science of Sailing books need to be viewed in relation to books with a seemingly similar subject, such as the books written by Marchaj, Larsson, Fossati, and others. This question was raised when the students involved were trying to determine whether they should buy the five books or not. The financial outlay is obviously not a minor issue for most.

The question of how these books are related to other books was addressed in a review by Associate Professor Michael G. Morabito of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he is the director of the Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering program. The review was published in Marine Technology, the magazine issued four times per year by The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. It is included below in its entirety.

In addition to the information about the cost of the books, as can be found on http://www.vanoossanenacademy.nl, we will apply a discount of 50% on orders received from students that can provide evidence of their enrollment at a college or university offering a degree in yacht design, naval architecture, marine engineering, or marine science.

I recently received a question about my reference to the terminator curve in the manuscripts of The Extraterrestrial and Extraterrestrial Domination. I realize that I should have perhaps provided additional information somewhere about what this is. In short, the terminator curve is the moving line across the globe that divides dark from light. Theoretically, it’s a well-defined curve, but in practice it’s a somewhat fuzzy demarcation because of what we refer to as the twilight zone in which we, when travelling in an aircraft across it, experience the transition from light to darkness, or vice versa, as a gradual transition. However, when an aircraft is flying at the speed that Sam Stanton’s aircraft is capable of (eleven thousand four hundred miles per hour), this transition is sudden. So, when Sam travels to Reethi Rah in the Maldives, leaving Los Angeles at seven p.m. to arrive an hour later when it’s eight a.m. of the following day in the Maldives, Sam crosses the terminator curve twice—when the sun dipped below the horizon just after departure, and when the sun rose a few minutes before arrival.

A consequence of flying across the globe at high speed during the day is that the sun, on its ecliptic trajectory in the sky, as seen by someone on Sam Stanton’s aircraft, is seen to change its location rapidly. On leaving Los Angeles in the evening at, say, eight p.m., to travel to Reethi Rah flying west across the Pacific Ocean, the sun is initially, within a few minutes after departure, seen to rise above the western horizon in front of the aircraft (not above the eastern horizon as observed by a stationary person), and when it lands, an hour later at nine a.m. local time, the sun has traversed some seventy-five percent of its visible trajectory to then be seen above the eastern skyline (behind the aircraft).

The four-available The Science of Sailing books have received considerable publicity. Naval architects, scientists, students, libraries, and sailors from all over the world have ordered the books. On noting that I spent considerable time in 2020-2021 in writing The Extraterrestrial, Extraterrestrial Domination, and Removal of the President, described elsewhere on this site, I have received questions from several people about the availability of future parts of the series. I have informed them that I am yet to take a decision in this regard. I firmly believe in finishing something I started, even if it is something that requires years to do. So, the simple answer to this question is to consider the three novels as an interlude in the writing of The Science of Sailing books. I wish life were that simple. The fact of the matter is that I enjoyed writing the novels much more than I enjoyed writing the last of the scientific books. But, as people around me have said, I should now be spending time finding a publisher interested in my novels before venturing in that direction again. I will therefore recommence the writing of Part 5 of The Science of Sailing before doing anything else.

I recently received questions about Sam Stanton’s aircraft—specifically, if a concept such as I have adopted in the three books set in a science fiction background, The Extraterrestrial, Extraterrestrial Domination, and Removal of the President, can actually fly.

A detailed description of the aircraft can be found in Chapter 5 of The Extraterrestrial. It does not possess wings. It utilizes four longitudinally rotatable thrust nozzles that allow for any desired distribution of thrust, dependent on the maneuver the aircraft needs to perform. I believe that the reason this concept hasn’t yet been adopted by aircraft manufacturers, apart from design and manufacturing difficulties, is the problem of determining the amount of vectored thrust each of these nozzles has to develop to perform specific maneuvers, while maintaining longitudinal and transverse stability. The Harrier Jump Jet is an example of an existing aircraft that utilizes vertical and horizontal thrust vectoring with just two nozzles (one on port and one on starboard). It’s a matter of time before the algorithms required for four of such units are developed. Once that has been realized, aircraft without wings become a reality. That will require a propulsion system that not only produces thrust in a horizontal direction, such as in the case of conventional aircraft, but also in the vertical direction. This requires a greater use of carbon-based fuel (since the lift produced by traditional wings does not require a power source). The air-breathing magneto-plasma jet propulsion system of Sam Stanton’s aircraft then becomes an interesting option. It is also presently the subject of research by several companies. It utilizes air and electricity only (not carbon-based fuel). Its problem is the significant amount of electric current required to develop the necessary thrust. The first scientific paper on this propulsion system was published in the Journal of Physics in 2017.

One of my proofreaders raised the question about the nature of the invisibility capability the hero in The Extraterrestrial possesses—specifically if there is a scientific basis for this capability.

While “anything goes” in a science fiction world, the concept of invisibility is not as fictitious as it may seem. The method by which Sam Stanton, the hero of the three books, The Extraterrestrial, Extraterrestrial Domination, and Removal of the President, can become invisible is by wearing clothing manufactured from metamaterial, by which light is bent around him instead of reflected. I had Sam explain this to Aimee in detail in Chapter 10 of Extraterrestrial Domination. I couldn’t explain it in a better way than that.  Serious research into this metamaterial is being carried out in several laboratories, particularly in the US. Various papers on the subject can be found on the internet, such as: “The Advent of Metamaterials: Hype or Reality and Possible Future Applications” by J. Orrick of Stanford University.