Monday, 26 June 2017
Tuesday, 20 June 2017
Visualizing a decent life on the moon.
NASA Judged, Moontopia Competition - Winner
These images kind of make me want to sign up as a pioneer...
OK, scratch that. Realistically, I guess I mean write a SciFi story about somebody else signing up.
"The Testlab settlement is based on the idea of the Russian Babushka Doll — one layer protects the next. On the very inside of the settlement are the Pods, which inhabit the private sleeping quarters, the communal rooms, the greenhouse, as well as the experimental labs and the necessary machinery to sustain life on the moon. Between the pods and the outer most protective membrane is the void that acts as yet another protective layer between livable and unlivable space."
https://pionic.org/moontopia-lunar-colony-visions-revealed
I actually think I like the Runner up even more:
"The moon has abundant resources on the moon... [but] it is has always had a significant meaning to us, and therefore its original state must be highly respected and preserved as much as possible. Therefore we propose a space station not built directly on the surface but orbiting around the moon with a cable linked to the surface"
OK, scratch that. Realistically, I guess I mean write a SciFi story about somebody else signing up.
"The Testlab settlement is based on the idea of the Russian Babushka Doll — one layer protects the next. On the very inside of the settlement are the Pods, which inhabit the private sleeping quarters, the communal rooms, the greenhouse, as well as the experimental labs and the necessary machinery to sustain life on the moon. Between the pods and the outer most protective membrane is the void that acts as yet another protective layer between livable and unlivable space."
https://pionic.org/moontopia-lunar-colony-visions-revealed
"The moon has abundant resources on the moon... [but] it is has always had a significant meaning to us, and therefore its original state must be highly respected and preserved as much as possible. Therefore we propose a space station not built directly on the surface but orbiting around the moon with a cable linked to the surface"
Tuesday, 13 June 2017
Everything is a story...
A very interesting article on Larping (Live Action Role Playing) which highlights something buried deep down near the roots of the human condition.
One of the key messages of the book Sapiens is that we live in a world of stories. Companies are stories; countries, currencies, governments, and religions too.
Base reality is physics and chemistry, everything else is a story...
...even ourselves. This is rarely clearer than in this article.
"So much of adult life is about LARPing, whether or not people realise it. When you take on a new job, you have to learn how to play that part, you have to learn how to act as that job."
https://www.wired.com/2017/06/geeks-guide-larping/
One of the key messages of the book Sapiens is that we live in a world of stories. Companies are stories; countries, currencies, governments, and religions too.
Base reality is physics and chemistry, everything else is a story...
...even ourselves. This is rarely clearer than in this article.
"So much of adult life is about LARPing, whether or not people realise it. When you take on a new job, you have to learn how to play that part, you have to learn how to act as that job."
https://www.wired.com/2017/06/geeks-guide-larping/
Sunday, 28 May 2017
Singularity's Children, Sci-Fact Behind the Sci-Fiction, Part 9 — Asteroid Capture
With Singularity's Children, scientific accuracy and technical consistency are the ingredients I rely on most to bake a plausible SciFi world. To 'keep it real' and the story grounded in an authentic universe, the Science and Tech—at least in the first two books—is based on established fact, any developments are mostly incremental upgrades to our current capabilities.
Fiction:
Fiction:
Excerpt from Book Two:
Fact:
"While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the actual financial and technological barriers are far lower."
Noah Poponak, Goldman Sachs.
"Caltech has suggested an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft could cost $2.6bn...
... [this] is only about one-third the amount that has been invested in Uber."
NASA is taking the idea seriously, fast tracking their mission to a 10,000 Quadrillion USD lump of platinum and gold—perhaps they want to stake a claim before other prospectors turn up?
http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-just-fast-tracked-their-mission-to-explore-a-10-000-quadrillion-metal-asteroid
http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-just-fast-tracked-their-mission-to-explore-a-10-000-quadrillion-metal-asteroid
Monday, 15 May 2017
Brain Scanning will deliver Thought Crime OR Mental Superpowers
I am less optimistic than this article is. Not about the technology, which seems solid, but in Singularity's Children, Spex are ubiquitous and the scanning and insights they deliver are used by governments to sell ideology, rather than by the wearer to elevate consciousness.
Friday, 5 May 2017
MIT fires a rocket motor made using 3D-printed plastic
If you're going to 3D-print rocket parts , you'd want to make them out of metal to handle the stress, right? Not necessarily. MIT has successfully…
May 5, 2017 at 04:00PM
https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/30/mit-fires-3d-printed-plastic-rocket-motor/
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