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Way over 50 fast. Thanks to the dreadfully named Mag-beam Propulsion, we’re talking 11.7 km/s (that’s 26,172 mph for those playing at home), at which speed a round trip vacation for three to Mars would last only 90 cozy (cramped) days and 90 luxurious (still cramped) nights. And I guess however long they decide to look at rocks and play golf once they get there.

You could go to Jupiter, but why? Jovians are very rude to tourists. Also, you would die.

With all of this talk of Mars, though, people are failing to look at the smaller picture. There’s a very nice planet named Venus a mere 26 million miles away, half the distance to Mars. At the proposed speed of the Mag-beam whatsit, a round trip to Venus would only take a month and a half! Granted, the surface temperature is 740 Kelvins (hot enough to melt lead), the surface pressure is 90 atmospheres (strong enough to crush lead), and the air is full of sulfuric acid (sulfuric enough to… really annoy lead), so that may not work out so well. Let’s think smaller still.

I hate to burst your moon bubble, Stanton A. Coblentz.

The moon. We haven’t been there in a while. We haven’t called in years. What, are we too good for the moon? Well no more! The moon is a mere 240,000ish miles away. Traveling just over 26 thousand miles per hour, we could put an intrepid group of moonologists on the surface of our favorite orbit-buddy in nine hours!! That’s faster than a non-stop plane trip from San Diego to London!! Is my increased use of italics and exclimation marks getting my point across?! It’s the moon, people! Not to be confused with “the moon people” which, sadly, do not exist. I suppose the reason we haven’t gone back to the moon is probably the lack of moon people. That and it’s unspeakably dull. Let’s work with this London idea.

Let’s say I live in San Diego. I set up my magical beam propulsion system, and have my friend Tony set another up somewhere in London. I hop in, hit play, and I’m off to England, and all the fog I can eat! Time for some math. If I am moving at 34 times the speed of sound, and London is about 5500 miles away, how long ’til I get there? Twelve minutes. That’s all! If you weren’t totally blown away by the answer, see me after class. I could be playing cricket and dining on bangers and mash on my lunch break, without missing a minute of work! This is what science is all about. Too bad all of the “scientists” are busy trying to figure out how to play golf on Mars.

That’s the title of my NaNoWriMo novel. Now, I know that the word “megalomania” is not defined as “a desire to take over the world,” but one who desires to take over the world could be called a “megalomaniac.” Also, it’s a really cool word. If it turns out that I don’t like it, then I shall strike it from existance. Until then, here’s the synopsis of my novel in easy to use back-of-the-book format!

Megalomania is sweeping the galaxy!

After the advent of superluminal travel, the quest to colonize the stars was quickly followed by the quest to dominate them with an iron fist. Those so taken realized that with infinite worlds came the prospect of infinite world domination! The rich, smart and generally evil found that little resistance awaited their attempts to take over the world- any world! From tropical planets to terraformed moons, nothing was safe from the complex machinations of the evil geniuses that desired them.

To combat this problem, the first spaceside military force was hastily thrown together by the countries of Earth to help protect newly colonized planets from being usurped. With limited resources, the fleet did its best, but many planetary takeovers went by unnoticed.

Enter Roger Plotnik, a scientist with delusions of granduer and a few planets already under his belt. Sadly, the planets ranged from unihabited to unihabitable. Undeterred in his quest for world domination that someone would actually notice, he set his sights on Centaurus, the most inhabited and heavily gaurded planet besides Earth. His peers thought him mad… and he appreciated the compliment.

Plotnik was not alone, however, since the equally mad yet far more evil and successful Victor Segue had also decided that Centaurus was to be the next stop in his domination tour. With two mad scientists vying for control of a planet, what else could go wrong? It just so happens, plenty!

Okay, I just realized that the synopsis was heading into short-story territory. Man that was long. It’s still a work in progress (a WIP if you will) and will be for at least the next two months, at which point it will be the first draft of a much larger WIP that is my novel.