Galileo, Issue 5

Welcome to our March issue of the GALIEO.

Our June issue has just been released and is available for our full members. In the meantime, for visitors, our last issue is now available for you to enjoy.

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Heelix's Kitchen: Targh Thlom Chum

Loosely translated as ‘targ into the sunset’, this recipe was given to me by an elderly Klingon lady while I was visiting Qo'noS. She taught me that not all Klingons were warriors, but that behind every great Klingon warrior was a mother that had made him strong, and she must have been right. All five of her sons were highly revered Klingon warriors.

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 4 targ (or pork) loin chops or steaks, boneless
• 300ml chicken stock (a chicken stock cube in 300ml of water is fine)
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 tbsp gravy granules
• 80g dried apricots, halved or quartered (about 10-12 apricots)

Method

1. Trim the loin steaks and flatten a little with a mallet so that they are about 1cm thick.
2. Rub the pork with oil and add a little freshly ground black pepper.
3. Put the chicken stock and cinnamon stick into a pan and simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, heat a griddle pan until hot and then add the steaks. You will cook them for 3-4 minutes each side.
5. After the chicken stock has simmered, add the gravy granules and apricots. Simmer for a further 5 minutes.
6. Once cooked through, arrange the pork steaks on the plates and drizzle over the gravy and apricots (but remove the cinnamon stick).

Serve with potato wedges and your choice of vegetables.

Klingon Sudoku!

For those that really love a challenge, how about Klingon Sudoku!

If you've never played sudoku before, it's worth a try. You don't need to be good at maths, because maths doesn't come into it. There are lots of places to find out how to play on the internet, but as a quick guide, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with the digits 1 to 9, so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3 × 3 sub-grids (highlighted in red on the right) contains all of the digits from 1 to 9 but only once. The gird is partially filled for you to begin with, so you just have to work out the other squares using logic.

However, those numbers could just as easily be a set of nine shapes as opposed to numbers. So, on that basis, do you fancy having a go at a Klingon sudoku?

When Science Fiction Becomes Science Fact

The science fiction of yesterday can very fast become the science fact of today. It's as if science fiction throws down a challenge to our scientists: Hey, have you seen this? Bet you can't make this one! But before we know it, it's been made. Here are just five such examples.

Computer Discs

Remember in The Original Series, the record tapes? Those coloured cubes or rectangular pieces of plastic were data storage devices. Inserting them into a desktop computer console or terminal, they were used to store all manner of information on the Enterprise.

Well, not too long after the original Star Trek came out, the floppy disc was born. Originally developed in an 8" format, 5¼" and 3½" soon followed as data storage means improved. When double-sided disks were introduced, it was a big deal for business users.It wasn't long before these disks were superseded by CD and SD cards, but those old floppy disks bore a huge resemblance to those old Star Trek record tapes.

Communicator

Of course, one can't mention any of these developments without thinking of the iconic Star Trek communicator.

Surely this device inspired the flip-phone. I wonder how many of us enjoyed opening our flip-phones Kirk-style?

The Communications Earpiece

Whilst Uhura's communications earpiece wasn't copyrighted as 'Bluetooth', it certainly did much the same job as a Bluetooth headset today!

* * * * *

Those are just three of the inventions we take for granted, but what about more significant developments? Here are two.

Solar Sails

In science fiction terms, this technology is old, arising countless times in novels and short stories. For example, in his 1865 science fiction classic, "From the Earth to the Moon", Jules Verne speculated about light-propelled spacecraft.

In 1951, Carl Wiley (under the pseudonym Russell Saunders) wrote an article called "Clipper Ships in Space" for Astounding Science Fiction about how solar sails could be built in orbit and used for space travel.

Cordwainer Smith also published a science fiction story "The Lady Who Sailed the Soul" in Galaxy Magazine in 1960. Although more of a romance, the story also describes a solar sail spaceship.

Then we have Pierre Boulle’s novel, "Planet of the Apes" in 1963, in which he describes Jinn and Phyllis's sail craft as "a kind of sphere with a shell—the sail—made of amazingly thin material, and it would move through space, just pushed by the pressure of light beams."

So, by the time Star Trek: Deep Space 9 utilised the theory in Explorers, when Jake and Benjamin Sisko create such a craft in a father/son bonding exercise, it was old hat in sci-fi terms.

Today, solar sails have been developed and used in a raft of projects in varying guises, but on 21 May 2010, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the world's first interplanetary solar sail spacecraft "IKAROS" (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun) to Venus. Using a new solar-photon propulsion method, it was the first true solar sail spacecraft fully propelled by sunlight, and was the first spacecraft to succeed in solar sail flight.

Transparent Aluminum

In the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the crew of the Enterprise is assigned the task of traveling back in time to 1986 to capture a pair of humpback whales, and bringing them back to the future. However, to construct an adequate tank for the whales on board their borrowed Klingon spaceship, good old Scotty goes to a plexiglass maker and gives him the extremely valuable recipe for "transparent aluminum" in exchange for the first batch.

In 1986, this sounded fanciful, but aluminium oxynitride, aka ALON, is the real-world transparent aluminum. It's a transparent ceramic composed of aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen. Four times harder than glass it is optically transparent, and bulletproof to anything up to and including a 50-caliber round.

 

The Honour is Mine

Watching the-magnificent Klingon, in awe

Raising his Bat’leth and drinking blood wine,

The antagonist is poised, to slay his prey

But-if-he-dies, he’ll shout “THE HONOUR IS MINE” …

The logical Vulcan, glides past the Klingon

Who-has no desire, to die today

So he does not acknowledge this warrior

Just raises his eyebrow and moves away.

Three Starship Captains and Data…

Pass by-him, with weapons galore

They will NOT be intimidated

To start, another Klingon war.

A Kai and her Vedek assembly

Feel safe as they walk on and pray

There’d be no honour to slay them …

So he lets them go on their way.

Now, the-Klingon is coming towards me

Says “Qapla” as he hits his chest

“Would you drink a blood wine with me?

As I really could do with a rest”

Thank goodness I’m at a convention

A place where we all can reshape

A wonderful voyage into fantasy

A place where I go … to escape

CMDR Erika Stroem

As published in "The Galileo, Issue 01"

Galileo, Issue 04

December 2025: THE GALILEO is distributed to our full members first. Now, though, you can grab your copy here!

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Galileo, Issue 03

September 2025: THE GALILEO was distributed to our full members first. Now, though, you can grab your copy here!

** DOWNLOAD HERE **