More believable 'hard' sci-fi content, please: a rather lengthy request.

12357

Comments

  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,543
    edited June 2017

    Here is a concept model proposed by NASA.  I got the model from a free site and retextured it.  I think this is what you would like to see in the Daz3d store.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

    Nasa Warp Ship

    Post edited by tkdrobert on
  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,543

    Here is another one I did using G2 male spacesuits that work on G2 females as well.  The suits are in the store.  The colony and lander I got for free.

    Mars Colony

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,828
    edited June 2017

    I always wanted a space suit styled like the "Clavious mooon base suits" in the classic " 2001 a space oddessy"

     

    So I made myself one for the G2 malecheeky

     

    Post edited by wolf359 on
  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,543

    One more of astronaughts exploring a moon like object.  Rover and ship were free.

    Explorers

  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,543
    edited June 2017

    I think the "Expanse" is a good place to look for ideas.  I really love that show.

    Post edited by tkdrobert on
  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,828
    tkdrobert said:

    I think the "Expanse" is a good place to look for ideas.  I really love that show.

     

    Indeed the second season just zipped by
    so quickly it seems.sad

  • Blind OwlBlind Owl Posts: 501

    Here is a concept model proposed by NASA.  I got the model from a free site and retextured it.  I think this is what you would like to see in the Daz3d store.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

    tkdrobert said:

    Nasa Warp Ship

    That would hit the spot, all right. Presumably the afterbody rotates while the pilot nacelle/bridge section maintains a constant orientation. Sweet texturing job!

    I've been eyeballing those G2 suits, since they're among the very few so-called space suits that don't have an open visor. I'd want it mostly for the helmet, because my heart is still set on a hypothetical 'adjustable semi-fluid nano-mesh garment, one-piece, female'. Now that would be easy even for a thumb-fingered beginner like me. Plus it would look sensational.

  • tj_1ca9500btj_1ca9500b Posts: 2,057
    edited June 2017

    So I'm guessing this suit is out then?

    There are so many things wrong with this suit, in this context (the aliens in the background imply an atmosphere of some sort, which makes this slightly more believable), but I have to admit that the B Movie fan in me likes it.

     

    @ wolf359

    Nice job on the 2001-inspired space suit!

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • Blind OwlBlind Owl Posts: 501

    So I'm guessing this suit is out then?

    There are so many things wrong with this suit, in this context (the aliens in the background imply an atmosphere of some sort, which makes this slightly more believable), but I have to admit that the B Movie fan in me likes it.

     

    @ wolf359

    Nice job on the 2001-inspired space suit!

    No, no, those cute little aliens are argon breathers and the atmospheric pressure is at least 5 psi, so the suit is perfectly adequate for the toon cutie's needs. wink

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,828

    @ wolf359
    Nice job on the 2001-inspired space suit!


    Thanks!
     Here is a shot of the rear of the suit
    with Different  PBR materials, Both rendered in Blender via the free teleblender Daz scene conversion script

     

  • Blind OwlBlind Owl Posts: 501
    wolf359 said:


    Thanks!
     Here is a shot of the rear of the suitwith Different  PBR materials, Both rendered in Blender via the free teleblender Daz scene conversion script

    That's a pretty stylish suit, all right. I can almost hear his heavy breathing through the suit's radio.

    Hey, I especially like the chunks of broken parmesan in front of the character. wink

  • wsterdanwsterdan Posts: 2,344
    edited June 2017

    So I'm guessing this suit is out then?

    There are so many things wrong with this suit, in this context (the aliens in the background imply an atmosphere of some sort, which makes this slightly more believable), but I have to admit that the B Movie fan in me likes it.

    I've actually used the helmet and tank as props on some males and females for some retro space picts, I love it.

    As a kid I read that Science Fiction allowed you to break one natural law (or add one item that doesn't yet exist), but breaking two or more made it fantasy.

    When thinking of making cool stories about zipping around the Solar System, I have a 50's kid's love of Heinlein-styled torchships. If we had a good, clean power source that would allow us to accelerate constantly at 1 gravity, we wouldn't have to worry about artificial gravity except for a few minutes at the turnover point; travelling to Mars or Venus would take less than a couple of days each way (depending on where in our respective orbits things are, that would vary) and a trip to Pluto -- where it is today -- would take just over two weeks, one way.

    I grabbed 3djoji's Toon Rocket:

    https://www.daz3d.com/toon-rocket-and-moonscape

    and absolutely love it. I made one minor adjustment in a texture map and phased out all of the yellow "windows/bubbles" and suddely it's not so toony anymore. The three hatches in the fins open and close, there's stairs in each fin to walk up to the first deck, the outside laddres go up and down, each fin has a pod foot that's adjustable for levelling the ship on uneven terrain, etc. The ship's hull is also split into different levels, so you can turn off a piece of the hull to make setting up cameras super easy. The picture attached just has the hull material's opacity knocked down to see the insides.

    3djoji's modelling is, as always, excellent.

    Using some Davorama parts I've added 12 decks -- each seven feet apart -- and knocked a hole in each deck floor near the hull, then added ladders running the entire length of the ship. I've just started populating it with equipment and life support. I'm still deciding on the deck layout and how large a crew it should have.

    -- Walt Sterdan

    ToonShipTest.jpg
    1024 x 768 - 166K
    Post edited by wsterdan on
  • tj_1ca9500btj_1ca9500b Posts: 2,057
    wsterdan said:

    So I'm guessing this suit is out then?

    There are so many things wrong with this suit, in this context (the aliens in the background imply an atmosphere of some sort, which makes this slightly more believable), but I have to admit that the B Movie fan in me likes it.

    I've actually used the helmet and tank as props on some males and females for some retro space picts, I love it.

    As a kid I read that Science Fiction allowed you to break one natural law (or add one item that doesn't yet exist), but breaking two or more made it fantasy.

    When thinking of making cool stories about zipping around the Solar System, I have a 50's kid's love of Heinlein-styled torchships. If we had a good, clean power source that would allow us to accelerate constantly at 1 gravity, we wouldn't have to worry about artificial gravity except for a few minutes at the turnover point; travelling to Mars or Venus would take less than a couple of days each way (depending on where in our respective orbits things are, that would vary) and a trip to Pluto -- where it is today -- would take just over two weeks, one way.

    I grabbed 3djoji's Toon Rocket:

    https://www.daz3d.com/toon-rocket-and-moonscape

    and absolutely love it. I made one minor adjustment in a texture map and phased out all of the yellow "windows/bubbles" and suddely it's not so toony anymore. The three hatches in the fins open and close, there's stairs in each fin to walk up to the first deck, the outside laddres go up and down, each fin has a pod foot that's adjustable for levelling the ship on uneven terrain, etc. The ship's hull is also split into different levels, so you can turn off a piece of the hull to make setting up cameras super easy. The picture attached just has the hull material's opacity knocked down to see the insides.

    3djoji's modelling is, as always, excellent.

    Using some Davorama parts I've added 12 decks -- each seven feet apart -- and knocked a hole in each deck floor near the hull, then added ladders running the entire length of the ship. I've just started populating it with equipment and life support. I'm still deciding on the deck layout and how large a crew it should have.

    -- Walt Sterdan

    Nice!

    Reminds me of one of many indie movie projects I've been keeping loose tabs on.  I've been wondering for a bit now if these guys would be able to get off the ground.  The vessels and some of the other 'style decisions' in it invoke the 'old days'.  Maybe we'll see something later this year?

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/58936338/space-command

  • While we're on the suject of retro-future stuff... I've kinda lately had a hankering for a Space: 1999 sorta look.  All those big, white corridors with featureless, backlit translicent panels in the walls, with the walls curving at the edges, and having powered, sliding doors inset into the walls periodically.  That was what passed for futuristic when I was a child.  It also clearly took a lot of inspiration from 2001: A Space Odyssey.  I found Sci-Fi Passageway has a look SOMEwhat remeniscent of Space: 1999 and 2001: A Space Odyssey (those doors at the end remind me very much of the ones inside the Eagles, and the corridor itself reminds me of one of the crew corridors aboard that Pan Am passanger rocket in 2001) but I still want something resembling Moonbase Alpha's corridors.

    Oddly enough, off in a different direction of retro-future, I found some sets on 'Rocity that was clearly Jetsons inspired that I've fallen in love with too, called Moon Modern, that I'll probably pick up later, too.

     

  • tj_1ca9500btj_1ca9500b Posts: 2,057

    Just had to share this.

    I miss the 'heady optimism' of the 1950's/early 60's... Journey To The Seventh Planet is on Comet as I type this.  The intro made me chuckle:

    Paraphrasing here:

    "The year is 2001.  Mankind has moved past perpetual wars..."

    Something like that (can't find the exact quote), that implies that we wouldn't still be killing each other en masse in 2001.  Anyways, I chuckled as they rattled off the opening monologue, then it made me nostalgic for the days of heady optimism.

    Sure, we are advancing dramatically technologically, but what we have right now is certainly no utopian society.  But yeah, according to Hollywood, we should have already sent manned missions to the moons of Uranus by now, let alone just nearby Mars!

    We haven't found the monolith orbitting Jupiter yet either, or at least not that they've told us...

    laugh

     

  • Blind OwlBlind Owl Posts: 501

    I miss that optimism too, and the possible futures many of us imagined. Back in the mid-1960s, when I first got hooked on sci-fi, I certainly didn't expect that 2017 would roll around without one human ever having set foot on Mars, and no immediate prospect of anyone doing so.

    Sure, the technical challenges turn out to be tougher than anyone excpected (including even Wernher von Braun, famous rocket engineer and former SS officer), but I think the biggest obstacles have been a lack of political wiill and public support, and—in the U.S. at least—NASA's insane 'cost-plus' contracting system.

    Oh, for the good old future. wink

  • wsterdanwsterdan Posts: 2,344
    edited June 2017

    I miss that optimism too, and the possible futures many of us imagined. Back in the mid-1960s, when I first got hooked on sci-fi, I certainly didn't expect that 2017 would roll around without one human ever having set foot on Mars, and no immediate prospect of anyone doing so.

    Blind Owl said:

    Sure, the technical challenges turn out to be tougher than anyone excpected (including even Wernher von Braun, famous rocket engineer and former SS officer), but I think the biggest obstacles have been a lack of political wiill and public support, and—in the U.S. at least—NASA's insane 'cost-plus' contracting system.

    Oh, for the good old future. wink

    Too true. sad

    I remember grabbing a copy of "FRONTIERS OF SPACE" by Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland back in 1969. It mentioned "Project Deimos", a hopeful mission to Mars in 1986 -- the artwork is awesome. Based on a lot of the technical info in the rest of the book, it really seemed like we had the technology then, even without extrapolating 15+ years of advancement.

    -- Walt Sterdan

    Post edited by wsterdan on
  • IsaacNewtonIsaacNewton Posts: 1,300
    edited June 2017
    wsterdan said:

    I miss that optimism too, and the possible futures many of us imagined. Back in the mid-1960s, when I first got hooked on sci-fi, I certainly didn't expect that 2017 would roll around without one human ever having set foot on Mars, and no immediate prospect of anyone doing so.

    Blind Owl said:

    Sure, the technical challenges turn out to be tougher than anyone excpected (including even Wernher von Braun, famous rocket engineer and former SS officer), but I think the biggest obstacles have been a lack of political wiill and public support, and—in the U.S. at least—NASA's insane 'cost-plus' contracting system.

    Oh, for the good old future. wink

    Too true. sad

    I remember grabbing a copy of "FRONTIERS OF SPACE" by Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland back in 1969. It mentioned "Project Deimos", a hopeful mission to Mars in 1986 -- the artwork is awesome. Based on a lot of the technical info in the rest of the book, it really seemed like we had the technology then, even without extrapolating 15+ years of advancement.

    -- Walt Sterdan

    We have the technology to go to Mars, what we don't have (or don't want to afford) is the money. Ironically, if such a trip were to be sponsered by soft drinks manufacturers (yes there are more than one) and sports sponsers then there would be plenty of money. I just hope they don't make the trip into a "Reality Show".

    As for the loss of feeling for a Utopian future, this seems to have been replaced by an enthusiasm/facination for Dystopian futures. I think this says a lot about the general mental state of the world population. The rich get richer and the poor stay poor, this leads to a subliminal level of depression. I suspect that a manned Mars mission might go a long way to restoring the global level of optimisim of the 1960s and 70s. I would also expect the trip to globally pay for itself in raised productivity due to increased levels of optimism. Maybe a global tax is needed, probably an average of 0.001% for 10 years would do it (the richer nations could pay a bit more so the poorest nations would not have to contribute). Is one-thousandth of one percent too much to ask? Compare that to how much we pay to be entertained!

    Post edited by IsaacNewton on
  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,543
    wolf359 said:
    tkdrobert said:

    I think the "Expanse" is a good place to look for ideas.  I really love that show.

     

    Indeed the second season just zipped by
    so quickly it seems.sad

    Yes too fast, but that's the way of TV now, we are lucky if we get 13 episodes, but I guess that's how they can make more expensive shows.

    wsterdan said:

    I miss that optimism too, and the possible futures many of us imagined. Back in the mid-1960s, when I first got hooked on sci-fi, I certainly didn't expect that 2017 would roll around without one human ever having set foot on Mars, and no immediate prospect of anyone doing so.

    Blind Owl said:

    Sure, the technical challenges turn out to be tougher than anyone excpected (including even Wernher von Braun, famous rocket engineer and former SS officer), but I think the biggest obstacles have been a lack of political wiill and public support, and—in the U.S. at least—NASA's insane 'cost-plus' contracting system.

    Oh, for the good old future. wink

    Too true. sad

    I remember grabbing a copy of "FRONTIERS OF SPACE" by Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland back in 1969. It mentioned "Project Deimos", a hopeful mission to Mars in 1986 -- the artwork is awesome. Based on a lot of the technical info in the rest of the book, it really seemed like we had the technology then, even without extrapolating 15+ years of advancement.

    -- Walt Sterdan

    We have the technology to go to Mars, what we don't have (or don't want to afford) is the money. Ironically, if such a trip were to be sponsered by soft drinks manufacturers (yes there are more than one) and sports sponsers then there would be plenty of money. I just hope they don't make the trip into a "Reality Show".

    As for the loss of feeling for a Utopian future, this seems to have been replaced by an enthusiasm/facination for Dystopian futures. I think this says a lot about the general mental state of the world population. The rich get richer and the poor stay poor, this leads to a subliminal level of depression. I suspect that a manned Mars mission might go a long way to restoring the global level of optimisim of the 1960s and 70s. I would also expect the trip to globally pay for itself in raised productivity due to increased levels of optimism. Maybe a global tax is needed, probably an average of 0.001% for 10 years would do it (the richer nations could pay a bit more so the poorest nations would not have to contribute). Is one-thousandth of one percent too much to ask? Compare that to how much we pay to be entertained!

    SpaceX may be the 1st do it.  Musk seems to have the drive and so far, the money.

  • tj_1ca9500btj_1ca9500b Posts: 2,057
    edited June 2017

    Yeah, reaching Mars has been a money/political will issue for a while now, not necessarily a technological one.  Sure improving technology makes this easier and easier as the years pass, but sending a mission would have been possible in the 1980's, IF the political will had been there at the time.

    Of course, in my mind the bigger hurdle right now is radiation protection.  Even when astronauts were sent to the moon, for a good portion of their journey they were shielded by Earth's magnetic field.  They will not have that 'free' protection once they leave that envelope, and spending MONTHS in those conditions could be fatal without adequate protection.

    I chatted with a guy for a bit a while back who's job it was to test satellites, etc. for their resistance to hard radiation, both in orbital environments and in interplanetary situations.  This is actually one reason that NASA was continuing to use the larger semiconductor nodes/older processors.  As die sizes shrink, which allows transistors to be squeezed together much more closely, the more vulnerable these processors are to glitches, etc. when energized particles pass through the processors... This is one of those times when having more space between transistors is actually a good thing (fewer transistors are influenced simultaneously by said particle interactions).

    Yeah CPU surface area plays into this too, but having 2 transistors 'glitch' at a time is much less disruptive/much easier to recover from than say 20 or 200 at a time...

    Radiation shielding adds to the weight of the craft/satellite, and how it is configured/positioned/angled matters as well, so it's very much a tradeoff situation.  Space probes, and to a lesser extent satellites generally only shield the critical components, rather than the entire satellite, to save weight and space.  In a crew habitat, you'll have a LOT more area that will require adequate shielding.

    Post edited by tj_1ca9500b on
  • Blind OwlBlind Owl Posts: 501
    wsterdan said:

    I miss that optimism too, and the possible futures many of us imagined. Back in the mid-1960s, when I first got hooked on sci-fi, I certainly didn't expect that 2017 would roll around without one human ever having set foot on Mars, and no immediate prospect of anyone doing so.

    Blind Owl said:

    Sure, the technical challenges turn out to be tougher than anyone excpected (including even Wernher von Braun, famous rocket engineer and former SS officer), but I think the biggest obstacles have been a lack of political wiill and public support, and—in the U.S. at least—NASA's insane 'cost-plus' contracting system.

    Oh, for the good old future. wink

    Too true. sad

    I remember grabbing a copy of "FRONTIERS OF SPACE" by Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland back in 1969. It mentioned "Project Deimos", a hopeful mission to Mars in 1986 -- the artwork is awesome. Based on a lot of the technical info in the rest of the book, it really seemed like we had the technology then, even without extrapolating 15+ years of advancement.

    -- Walt Sterdan

    We have the technology to go to Mars, what we don't have (or don't want to afford) is the money. Ironically, if such a trip were to be sponsered by soft drinks manufacturers (yes there are more than one) and sports sponsers then there would be plenty of money. I just hope they don't make the trip into a "Reality Show".

    As for the loss of feeling for a Utopian future, this seems to have been replaced by an enthusiasm/facination for Dystopian futures. I think this says a lot about the general mental state of the world population. The rich get richer and the poor stay poor, this leads to a subliminal level of depression. I suspect that a manned Mars mission might go a long way to restoring the global level of optimisim of the 1960s and 70s. I would also expect the trip to globally pay for itself in raised productivity due to increased levels of optimism. Maybe a global tax is needed, probably an average of 0.001% for 10 years would do it (the richer nations could pay a bit more so the poorest nations would not have to contribute). Is one-thousandth of one percent too much to ask? Compare that to how much we pay to be entertained!

    I had to laugh at that, because if & when there's a humans-to-Mars mission it will certainly be turned into a 'reality' show. And if a sponsor is paying part of the shot, you can bet there will be plenty of scripted bogus drama to keep viewers coming back.

    As for 'dystopian' futures, I'm appalled by how the term is overused. Make an urban scene, add some litter and broken masonry and suddenly it's 'dystopian'. Tack on some rivets and it's 'steampunk'. Give the characters some funky haircuts and headgear and it's 'cyberpunk.' How dreary, predictable, and clichéd.

    Besides being more hopeful compared to now, the hypothetical future of the sci-fi past was a lot cleaner, and a lot less stupid (on average, OK? cool).

  • Blind OwlBlind Owl Posts: 501
    edited June 2017

    Yeah, reaching Mars has been a money/political will issue for a while now, not necessarily a technological one.  Sure improving technology makes this easier and easier as the years pass, but sending a mission would have been possible in the 1980's, IF the political will had been there at the time.

    Of course, in my mind the bigger hurdle right now is radiation protection.  Even when astronauts were sent to the moon, for a good portion of their journey they were shielded by Earth's magnetic field.  They will not have that 'free' protection once they leave that envelope, and spending MONTHS in those conditions could be fatal without adequate protection.

    I chatted with a guy for a bit a while back who's job it was to test satellites, etc. for their resistance to hard radiation, both in orbital environments and in interplanetary situations.  This is actually one reason that NASA was continuing to use the larger semiconductor nodes/older processors.  As die sizes shrink, which allows transistors to be squeezed together much more closely, the more vulnerable these processors are to glitches, etc. when energized particles pass through the processors... This is one of those times when having more space between transistors is actually a good thing (fewer transistors are influenced simultaneously by said particle interactions).

    Yeah CPU surface area plays into this too, but having 2 transistors 'glitch' at a time is much less disruptive/much easier to recover from than say 20 or 200 at a time...

    Radiation shielding adds to the weight of the craft/satellite, and how it is configured/positioned/angled matters as well, so it's very much a tradeoff situation.  Satellites generally only shield the critical components, rather than the entire satellite, to save weight and space.  In a crew habitat, you'll have a LOT more area that will require adequate shielding.

    Yes, none of this was known for sure when Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley proposed Die MarsProjekt (with stunning illustrations--painted not rendered--by Chesley Bonestell) back in the 1950s. No one knew about the Van Allen belts then, or Jupiter's deadly magnetic field (adios, Farmer in the Sky). Now, thanks to unmanned probes, we know that terraforming the Red Planet will be much harder than anyone imagined, and maybe even impossible...unless someone can figure out how to give it a significant magnetic field.

    And Gerard O'Neill's grand dream of solar power stations in Lagrangian orbits, complete with shielded habitats housing productive & happy populations numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands, is likewise improbable in the extreme.

    But in my humble opinion, none of this should stop us 'hard' (say, 3 or more on the Mohs scale) sci-fi addicts from dreaming of a relatively optimistic, technically feasible future based on known science.

    ...or prevent talented PAs from providing Daz content of the sort we crave.

    Post edited by Blind Owl on
  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,543
    edited June 2017

    Mission to Mars by tkdrobert

    Speaking of Mars.  Now this is a ship from the Babylon 5 show, but it's free and I think it has the right look.  There are a lot of good freebies out there if you are willing to look.  Sharecg.com ia good place to start.

    Post edited by tkdrobert on
  • IsaacNewtonIsaacNewton Posts: 1,300

    Well, BlindOwl, I was thinking more "Big Brother" than litter and broken masonry (and I'm not talking about Reality Shows here!!), nevertheless I take your point.

    tj_1ca, given that a single stray cosmic ray photon can potentially wreck a CPU by taking out a single transistor, why don't they just redesign the chips so they have quadruple redundancy for every transistor, like a kind of WWW style CPU? Oh wait.. I know... money!

    As for radiation protection for the crew in interplanetary space, the answer is ice. Cover the living quarters with a meter or two of ice (perhaps with boric acid dissolved in it). Sure it would greatly increase the energy required to get the ship moving and to slow it down, but that's better than fried people!

     

  • Blind OwlBlind Owl Posts: 501

    Well, BlindOwl, I was thinking more "Big Brother" than litter and broken masonry (and I'm not talking about Reality Shows here!!), nevertheless I take your point.

     

    Sorry, Isaac, I may have been unclear. I meant laughing in agreement at the points you made in your post. In today's economic & social climate, I can easily imagine a permanent settlement being named something like 'The Red Bull(tm) Valles Marineris Colony'.laugh

  • nomad-ads_8ecd56922enomad-ads_8ecd56922e Posts: 1,949
    edited June 2017
    Blind Owl said:
    wsterdan said:

    I miss that optimism too, and the possible futures many of us imagined. Back in the mid-1960s, when I first got hooked on sci-fi, I certainly didn't expect that 2017 would roll around without one human ever having set foot on Mars, and no immediate prospect of anyone doing so.

    Blind Owl said:

    Sure, the technical challenges turn out to be tougher than anyone excpected (including even Wernher von Braun, famous rocket engineer and former SS officer), but I think the biggest obstacles have been a lack of political wiill and public support, and—in the U.S. at least—NASA's insane 'cost-plus' contracting system.

    Oh, for the good old future. wink

    Too true. sad

    I remember grabbing a copy of "FRONTIERS OF SPACE" by Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland back in 1969. It mentioned "Project Deimos", a hopeful mission to Mars in 1986 -- the artwork is awesome. Based on a lot of the technical info in the rest of the book, it really seemed like we had the technology then, even without extrapolating 15+ years of advancement.

    -- Walt Sterdan

    We have the technology to go to Mars, what we don't have (or don't want to afford) is the money. Ironically, if such a trip were to be sponsered by soft drinks manufacturers (yes there are more than one) and sports sponsers then there would be plenty of money. I just hope they don't make the trip into a "Reality Show".

    As for the loss of feeling for a Utopian future, this seems to have been replaced by an enthusiasm/facination for Dystopian futures. I think this says a lot about the general mental state of the world population. The rich get richer and the poor stay poor, this leads to a subliminal level of depression. I suspect that a manned Mars mission might go a long way to restoring the global level of optimisim of the 1960s and 70s. I would also expect the trip to globally pay for itself in raised productivity due to increased levels of optimism. Maybe a global tax is needed, probably an average of 0.001% for 10 years would do it (the richer nations could pay a bit more so the poorest nations would not have to contribute). Is one-thousandth of one percent too much to ask? Compare that to how much we pay to be entertained!

    I had to laugh at that, because if & when there's a humans-to-Mars mission it will certainly be turned into a 'reality' show. And if a sponsor is paying part of the shot, you can bet there will be plenty of scripted bogus drama to keep viewers coming back.

    As for 'dystopian' futures, I'm appalled by how the term is overused. Make an urban scene, add some litter and broken masonry and suddenly it's 'dystopian'. Tack on some rivets and it's 'steampunk'. Give the characters some funky haircuts and headgear and it's 'cyberpunk.' How dreary, predictable, and clichéd.

    Besides being more hopeful compared to now, the hypothetical future of the sci-fi past was a lot cleaner, and a lot less stupid (on average, OK? cool).

    Ah, the "Glue Some Gears On It And Call It Steampunk" approach.  :D

    There's a youtube video about that. :)

    Post edited by nomad-ads_8ecd56922e on
  • Blind OwlBlind Owl Posts: 501
    Blind Owl said:
    wsterdan said:
    Ah, the "Glue Some Gears On It And Call It Steampunk" approach.  :D

    Thanks for that, nomad...although I almost peed myself laughing when I watched the video.

    The seminal 'steampunk' novel, by I-forget-who, struck me as mildly clever and not to terribly improbable. Give Charles Babbage outside financing and/or a deeper purse, give Ada a longer lifespan, and who knows what that future might have held?

  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,145

    Well, BlindOwl, I was thinking more "Big Brother" than litter and broken masonry (and I'm not talking about Reality Shows here!!), nevertheless I take your point.

    tj_1ca, given that a single stray cosmic ray photon can potentially wreck a CPU by taking out a single transistor, why don't they just redesign the chips so they have quadruple redundancy for every transistor, like a kind of WWW style CPU? Oh wait.. I know... money!

    As for radiation protection for the crew in interplanetary space, the answer is ice. Cover the living quarters with a meter or two of ice (perhaps with boric acid dissolved in it). Sure it would greatly increase the energy required to get the ship moving and to slow it down, but that's better than fried people!

     

    The IBM Power7 cpu (rs-6000 and as-400) featured dynamic instruction retry on a failed instruction - primarily to cope with the one-off failures from cosmic rays. It can be done.

  • tj_1ca9500btj_1ca9500b Posts: 2,057
    edited June 2017

    @ IsaacNewton

    As newer CPUs are validated, yeah some of the newer designs do eventually get approved, but the validation process is a slow one, NASA being a government agency and all.  NASA is also all about tried and true, up until the point when the technology is truly obsolete, and a few of the more recent CPU designs have flunked the rad testing process (for interplanetary use), at least according to the guy I was chatting with.  This conversation was several years ago btw.  And, yes, redundancy is something that NASA likes to incorporate where feasable.

    The Space Shuttle's processing power was positively tiny compared to the computers available to consumers even in the late '90s.  What continues to impress me is those two Voyager probes that were launched in the 70's.  They continue to send back limited amounts of science data.  Voyager 2 was launched an August 20, 1977, with Voyager 1 launched 16 days later, on a shorter trajectory to Jupiter than V2, hence V1 beat V2 to Jupiter by about 4 months, a mere 40 years ago.  PBS will be airing a Voyager 40th anniversary special entitled 'The Farthest" on August 23rd of this year (2017), but I digress...

    I should also clarify that when I stated 'fatal' I wasn't necessarily meaning that we'd have astronauts turning into rotisseries, I was referring to the mid and long term effects, as cancers, etc. eventually surface due to the prolonged exposure.  The human body can resist radiaton to a point, which is why people can enter higher radiation environments for short periods of time (shorter and shorter periods as levels increase) with an acceptable risk.  But yeah, the longer the exposure, the more likely it is for radiation-related illnesses to surface.

    I did look up a few of the Apollo Astronauts on Wiki recenly, to see if a bunch of them had been dying prematurely.  Most of them have had very long lives, so apparently the short amount of time they spent around/on the moon resulted in doses of solar radiaton that were within acceptable levels.  As for living on the moon for longer periods, well that may be a different story, and I'm sure the experts have been looking at that.

    I have a theory that the only a primary reason that Earth is so well suited to higher life forms right now is because our moon keeps our magnetic field so active, as the moon keeps deforming the core, thus exciting the elements which produce the magnetic field,  This results in lower radiation levels overall, which in my mind makes it a safer environment for complex DNA chains and such.  Venus, by comparison, has a much smaller magnetic field, and Venus is roughly the same size as Earth.  While it's proximity to the sun plays a role in it's hellish environment, the weak magnetic field allows more energized particles to penetrate it's atmosphere, hence heating it up further.  If Venus had an Earth-sized moon, assuming that Venus wasn't 'tidelocked' to it's moon, I think that it would be a much different place.  Hotter yes, but not the inferno that it is today.  That's my theory anyways.  I'm sure a few scientsists have looked into this, but I haven't seen any papers on this.  I haven't looked very hard though...

    So in my mind, the best places to look for higher life forms elsewhere in the universe are going to be planets in the 'goldilocks' zone WITH significantly sized moons in orbit.  Deimos and Phobos aren't going to get the job done, obviously...

    Edit:  Made a correction:  I meant 'a primary reason Earth is..., not 'the only reason'

    Post edited by tj_1ca9500b on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    tj: It's an interesting question. There may be a negative effect but if there is it may be swamped by other factors. Such as the fact that being an astronaut selects for health, exercise, and a number of other factors that may have large statistical correlations with longevity.

     

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