Radiation Hazards In Space

Continuing my previous post about Space Habitats, here is a video about how Radiation is the most prohibitive hazards to life in space.

Life In Space

While the thought of living on a space station can, and has been romanticized with visions of Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds, Stanford Torus Rings, and other shaped habitats where we recreate Terran eco-systems to give the illusion that we are still living on Earth.

The problem with this is where do you get all that dirt and rock? You can't take it from Earth, since it's most likely still needed there. Water can be harvested from comets and other areas in the solar system, but fertile arable soil is not a common resource in our solar system.

Still, by the time we need to seriously consider constructing these types of space habitats, we might have the ability to create large quantities of arable soil.

Carousel Space Habitat


Ringworld


Habitat Fly-Through


Space Habitat by Uzi Berko


Eric Bruneton Space Station


Island One Space Station

Mai, Mai... What Have We Here...

The recent news of a possible Mai: The Psychic Girl movie reminded me that I had long ago lost a the third volume in my compilation of the manga.

eBay to the rescue. Luckily, I found someone who was selling his copy of Vol 3 Mai: The Psychic Girl, and I now have it in my hands.

Glee...

Those who fail to learn from history...

Mai, The Psychic Girl

Why is it that I have only now heard that someone was trying to make a movie based on Mai, The Psychic Girl?!

Mai was one of the first manga series that I followed back in the late 80s along with another series called Grey.

Unfortunately, it's Tim Burton who has been trying to get this movie made, and I'm not that keen on his recent movies.

A Short Story Titled "Manna"

Several months ago I came across a short story about how machines would take over the Human society. It was a good read, but I never blogged about it, nor did I save a link to it. However, I finally tracked it down again and will link to it here.

Manna, by Marshall Brain

Depending on how you want to think about it, it was funny or inevitable or symbolic that the robotic takeover did not start at MIT, NASA, Microsoft or Ford. It started at a Burger-G restaurant in Cary, NC on May 17, 2010. It seemed like such a simple thing at the time, but May 17 marked a pivotal moment in human history.

Story Idea

One evening a long, long time ago, while staying at with my grandparents, I was playing with my uncle's typewriter and typed out the following story idea outlined in a Table of Contents of three books. I remember very little of the details behind the various chapters, but what I do recall was that it took place in a post-apocalyptic setting with the main character making his way home after surviving a plane crash.

In HOME BOUND, the main character survives a plane crash and find himself in a world turned upside-down. In the first chapter he has to survive a trek through the wilderness as he tries to make it to civilization, only to find that it has fallen. I forget what was going to happen in chapter two, but chapter three was where the hero is accused of some crime and has to face a joke of a trial. Obviously, the hero survives and continues, on foot, on the road back home.

Book 1: HOME BOUND

Chapter 1 - Survival
Chapter 2 - Friends will be Friends
Chapter 3 - A Day in Court
Chapter 4 - Highway Home

The hero makes it home to his rural town in chapter one of HOME FRONT, but finds out in chapter two that his wife had given up on him and was living with another man. The hero is given the job as the town sheriff in chapter three, and soon finds out that something is stalking the town and attacking its citizens in chapter four. In chapter five, the stalker--wearing some form of advanced tech power armor--wreaks havoc through the peaceful town but falls to the hero in the end. Unfortunately, his ex-wife and Johny are among the casualties from the battle.

Book 2: HOME FRONT

Chapter 1 - Honey, I'm Home
Chapter 2 - Here's Johny
Chapter 3 - A Gun and a Badge
Chapter 4 - Terror in the Night
Chapter 5 - Last Rights

I can't recall any details of what was to happen in BATTLE FRONT (originally FRONT LINE), other than the hero was going to be thrust into a war that he didn't want any part of. I remember that it was going to involve some mecha and other advanced weapons that were hinted at by the power armor from the previous story.

If I were to write it today it would have be more about the hero and the town fighting against some mercenary military force wanting to forcibly draft all the citizens to fight in some faceless battle. The town would fight back to maintain their independence and, in the end, set the building blocks for a new nation.

Book 3: BATTLE FRONT

Chapter 1 - War Stories
Chapter 2 - Role Call
Chapter 3 - This Land is My Land
Chapter 4 - Fortress
Chapter 5 - Battle Hymn

The thing I remember most of this was that I wanted to slowly bring in a lot of future tech in the form of power armor, robot tanks, and futuristic VTOL aircraft, while sticking with conventional firearms. No laser guns. I also wanted to eventually move into space.

I doubt I'll ever do anything with this, but at least I have it in a place I won't easily lose it.

NASA Puffin Personal Air Vehicle

I do so want to get my hands on one of these!

The Rings of Earth

When I came across this video, the first thing I wondered was how the moons gravity would affect the rings.



Another question posed in the videos comments is how the rings would impact telecommunications and satellites. While it is possible that the rings may have delayed our venture into space due to the increased risk of collisions with space debris, we would most likely have a better time with communications since we could just bounce radio waves off the rings.

However, there are hundreds of what-if's that would need to be taken into account if the Earth had rings, most of which we probably don't realize need to be considered.

1929 Fordson Snow Machine

Lykke Li - I'm Good, I'm Gone

I came across this artist back in October and fell in love with this odd-ball music video.

Fin out more about Lykke Li at their MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/lykkeli

2030 Sci-Fi Military of the Future

Enhanced soldiers have been a common part of science fiction. However, while the idea can be rather fun and interesting in fiction, I find the thought of surgically enhancing members of the military to be a very disturbing idea in reality.

In an article published on NavyTimes.com [link], Andrew Tilghman writes:

Once a far-flung date considered solely by science-fiction writers, the year 2030 is now a potential retirement date for many of the Navy’s youngest sailors. So the Navy’s changes between now and then will affect sailors’ jobs, missions and careers.

What will the Navy look like in 20 years?

What new technologies will emerge?

Who will be the primary enemy?

And how will tomorrow’s sailors — and Navy culture — change?

Currently the sailor's senses are augmented by technology that is outside their body, but as the author points out, pilots have been undergoing LASIK surgery to correct vision problems. So how far a step is it until, as Tilghman puts it, "special warfare troops may get surgery that improves their night vision."

The thought of surgically enhanced special warfare troops troubles, because it begs the question of what do you do when you're done with them, or you no longer have need for their specialization? Do you send them back to the operating room to be modified for the next contingency?

How about when they retire. Does the military pay to have the more specialized augmentations removed? This was a question posed in the manga/anime Ghost in the Shell where the only thing left of the main characters was their ghosts (souls) since their bodies had been replaced with cybernetics to do their job, and therefore owned by the government.

Once we go down the road of surgical augmentation of troops, how long until genetic augmentation?

How long until we breed our soldiers, clone them, grow them, or build them?