Adrian Mann has done it again, as witness his illustration of a gas mining operation on Uranus, reproduced below. The idea, as explored by Adam Crowl on Discovery News this morning, is to acquire vast amounts of helium-3 to supply not only Earth's energy needs but the fusion engines of the Project Icarus star probe. I love Adrian's work and particularly his Project Daedalus images, on display along with much of his other work in his online gallery. What he manages to do is to take an engineering concept and translate it into images that are both accurate yet stunning. It's easy to forget, until he reminds us, that hard-nosed equations and their resulting designs can lead to extraordinary vistas, a result that reawakens the sense of wonder. Image: Balloons, like those shown here in the atmosphere of Uranus, could be used to harvest helium-3 as starship fuel for Project Icarus. Credit: Adrian Mann. Adam Crowl is a frequent Centauri Dreams contributor, but he's also deep in the Project...