Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Concept b

[Dreamer]

"First Ark to Alpha Centauri" - [A motion picture screenplay by A.
Ahad]

http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent/firstarktoalphacentauri.html

In this multi-generation voyage concept envisioned by Ahad, the 600
square km's of pine forests and lakes across the cylinder biosphere
will require nearly 2 million lights, each one has to provide solar
constant (1,350 watt per sq. metre) equivalent of flux.

"On a voyage spanning 50,000 years...", how much nuclear reserves would
be needed to carry onboard to meet just the lighting needs? Quite a bit
one thinks. Is there some electronic break throughs round the corner
for _low consumption_ and high durable _LED_ based lighting that could
be use? We have 170 years to go before Ahad's epic starship is launched
to the nearest star... So what is the outlook for this super-lighting
technology in the next few decades?

Jav

 

[James Meyer]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 21:52:08 +0000, John Woodgate <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk>
wroth:

Indeed. Even though 'the stars are there', there would need to be a VERY
good reason to attempt the journey at subluminal speed.

Before I would undertake a trip like that, I would want to have received
an invitation from someone at the destination. Radio waves travel at pretty
close to the speed of light.

Jim

 

[Clarence_A]

"Jim Thompson" <thegreatone@example.com> wrote in message

"Kryten" wrote:
"Dreamer" <javidhussain@hotmail.com> wrote in message
"First Ark to Alpha Centauri" - [A motion picture screenplay
by A.
Ahad]
snip

IIRC, Tucson's Biosphere 2 Human Greenhouse was a flop.
...Jim Thompson

This one? http://www.bio2.com/index.html

Hope it wasn't build with tax monies.
Great place to raise tomatoes!

 

[Ken Taylor]

"James Meyer" <jmeyer@nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:101ht0tuv2svm0pu759nha42325ook9qtv@4ax.com...

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 21:52:08 +0000, John Woodgate
jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk
wroth:


Indeed. Even though 'the stars are there', there would need to be a VERY
good reason to attempt the journey at subluminal speed.

Before I would undertake a trip like that, I would want to have received
an invitation from someone at the destination. Radio waves travel at
pretty
close to the speed of light.

Jim


"Dear Entity:

You are cordially invited to a Colonization. Please BYO food and drinks.
Formal attire only."

Ken

 

[Kryten]

"Ken Taylor" <ken@home.nz> wrote in message
news:%c0Cd.4569$mo2.269660@news.xtra.co.nz...

"Dear Entity:

You are cordially invited to a Colonization. Please BYO food and drinks.
Formal attire only."

"Dear humans,

You've ruined your own planet.
If you expect a welcome to our planet you're even dumber.
Stay home and sort your own damn mess out.

How many anal probings does it take to persuade you to stay at home?

Don't come here, even if you are edible."

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jim Thompson
<thegreatone@example.com> wrote (in <k9rgt0pn6abgccogl3pibuff0ccsa8c5nd@
4ax.com&gt about 'Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture
Concept by A. Ahad', on Sun, 2 Jan 2005:

IIRC, Tucson's Biosphere 2 Human Greenhouse was a flop.

But that was only the second prototype. If such projects are continued,
they will work after a while.
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Svein Ove Aas]

start quoting John Woodgate :

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jim Thompson
thegreatone@example.com> wrote (in <k9rgt0pn6abgccogl3pibuff0ccsa8c5nd@
4ax.com&gt about 'Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture
Concept by A. Ahad', on Sun, 2 Jan 2005:

IIRC, Tucson's Biosphere 2 Human Greenhouse was a flop.

But that was only the second prototype. If such projects are continued,
they will work after a while.

IIRC, one of the reasons it flopped was because curing concrete sucked up a
number of useful gases (like, say, oxygen?).
That's one thing we'll know not to do again; iterate until done.

 

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

"Jim Thompson" <thegreatone@example.com> wrote in message
news:k9rgt0pn6abgccogl3pibuff0ccsa8c5nd@4ax.com...

IIRC, Tucson's Biosphere 2 Human Greenhouse was a flop.

No, I was an experiment; Lessons were learned - mainly that building a
running eco-system is harder than previously thought (and that living things
have their own agenda's)!

 

[Rich Grise]

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 13:13:05 +0100, Svein Ove Aas wrote:

start quoting John Woodgate :

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jim Thompson
thegreatone@example.com> wrote (in <k9rgt0pn6abgccogl3pibuff0ccsa8c5nd@
4ax.com&gt about 'Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture
Concept by A. Ahad', on Sun, 2 Jan 2005:

IIRC, Tucson's Biosphere 2 Human Greenhouse was a flop.

But that was only the second prototype. If such projects are continued,
they will work after a while.

IIRC, one of the reasons it flopped was because curing concrete sucked up a
number of useful gases (like, say, oxygen?).
That's one thing we'll know not to do again; iterate until done.

In other words, it's not a good idea to build interstellar ships out of
concrete?

;-)
Rich

 

[Hop David]

Spehro Pefhany wrote:

I think it was set up from the beginning to make money as a tourist
attraction. I recall lots of billboards along the freeway from Tucson
to Phoenix. Can you do serious science like that? Maybe.

Hopefully entertainment and tourism can finance research. James Cameron
seems to be doing this. Jaques Cousteau comes to mind.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

 

[Rich Grise]

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 14:04:00 -0800, Dreamer wrote:

Earl wrote:
"Dreamer" <javidhussain@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:1104767710.113105.102830@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:



So after accelerating to a decent velocity they divert to the
Oort Cloud, slow down to add more reaction mass?

The Oort cloud is circling in a belt all the way round the sun, you
encounter it when travelling out in all directions from our solar
system.

His point was, it's a pretty crappy choice for a refueling stop, "Stop"
being the operative word here.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[John Savard]

On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 21:43:39 GMT, "Kryten"
<kryten_droid_obfusticator@ntlworld.com> wrote, in part:

I mean, you could just park it somewhere and get in it.

Unfortunately, you would also have to find a way to uninvent the can
opener.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

 

[John Savard]

On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 06:14:36 GMT, Rich Grise <richgrise@example.net>
wrote, in part:

Yeah, well, I think that's the point of the discussion - define "fail".

If they had made a more accurate calculation of how much supporting
plant life a human population requires, then considerably more
information would have been obtained from whether the experimental area
could remain isolated indefinitely.

Proving a ridiculously low estimate wrong isn't really something we
learn much from.

So it failed in the other sense too.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

 

[John Savard]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 07:34:11 +0000, John Woodgate
<jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> wrote, in part:

Even more. Positive results are just confirmation. Negative results are
doorways to new knowledge.

But if their numbers were very badly off in terms of what we already
knew, then the experiment was a waste of time and money.

Given the state of the Earth with *its* current population, we have an
example of an overstressed ecosystem close at hand.

Even a replicated Earth in miniature might fail over time if things are
left out. We learn from experiments whose results, positive or negative,
cannot be anticipated in advance.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Ben Bradley <ben_nospam_bradley@mi
ndspring.com> wrote (in <esrmt05jm26gh3vnpvp35rjn586mdcvv1q@4ax.com&gt
about 'Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Concept by A.
Ahad', on Wed, 5 Jan 2005:

"OPEN THE POD BAY DOOR, HAL."

"Say 'please'!"
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Rich Grise]

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:22:07 +0000, Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

Rich Grise wrote:

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 07:39:31 +0000, John Woodgate wrote:


I read in sci.electronics.design that Ben Bradley <ben_nospam_bradley@mi
ndspring.com> wrote (in <esrmt05jm26gh3vnpvp35rjn586mdcvv1q@4ax.com&gt
about 'Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Concept by A.
Ahad', on Wed, 5 Jan 2005:


"OPEN THE POD BAY DOOR, HAL."

"Say 'please'!"


Or get blown out into vacuum, and hold your breath. Yah, right. Ever
ascend from 30 feet with scuba? If you try to hold your breath with a
differential pressure of a whole atmosphere, in the first place you
couldn't hold it, and if you could, you'd get pneumothorax. I think if I
was going into vacuum, I'd first hyperventilate until I got woozy, then
expel my breath as hard as I could, so my lungs don't explode. Of course,
you'd have to keep your eyes shut real tight.

IIRC you get around 15sec of consciousness in vacuum. Which is quite a long time
if all you have to do is open a door.

And close it behind you, and turn the "AIR NOW!" valve, and so on. ;-)

I wonder what it would feel like on your eyes, if you, like, peeked?

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Dirk Bruere at Neopax]

Kryten wrote:

"Rich Grise" <richgrise@example.net> wrote in message
newsan.2005.01.06.06.30.13.992685@example.net...

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:22:07 +0000, Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:


Rich Grise wrote:


expel my breath as hard as I could, so my lungs don't explode. Of
course,
you'd have to keep your eyes shut real tight.

IIRC you get around 15sec of consciousness in vacuum. Which is quite a
long time
if all you have to do is open a door.

And close it behind you, and turn the "AIR NOW!" valve, and so on. ;-)

I wonder what it would feel like on your eyes, if you, like, peeked?



Dunno, but I'm pretty sure your eyes are under no pressure to pop out of
your head on stalks (as shown on Total Recall) or your head pop like a messy
balloon (as in Outland). Unless of course your head is full of compressed
air.

It is true that blood contains dissolved gases, but a decrease of 1
atmosphere is only about the same as ascending 407 inches (10.3 metres) in
water. I don't think you get the bends unless you have been down a fair bit
deeper or longer.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

From the now extinct page http://medlib/jsc.nasa.gov/intro/vacuum.html:

How long can a human live unprotected in space?

If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so
is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage
your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and
you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but
theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to
vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil.
You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.

Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends", certainly some [mild,
reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) start after ten
seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen.
Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits
are not really known.

You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect
of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because,
although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer
away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has
depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct
sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can
get a very bad sunburn.

At NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson Space Center) we had a
test subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an
incident involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber back in '65. He
remained conscious for about 14 seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2
deprived blood to go from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not
reach a hard vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds.
The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude.
The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and
his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil.

Aviation Week and Space Technology (02/13/95) printed a letter by Leonard Gordon
which reported another vacuum-packed anecdote:

"The experiment of exposing an unpressurized hand to near vacuum for a
significant time while the pilot went about his business occurred in real life
on Aug. 16, 1960. Joe Kittinger, during his ascent to 102,800 ft (19.5 miles) in
an open gondola, lost pressurization of his right hand. He decided to continue
the mission, and the hand became painful and useless as you would expect.
However, once back to lower altitudes following his record-breaking parachute
jump, the hand returned to normal."

--
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org

 

[Erik Max Francis]

Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

From the now extinct page http://medlib/jsc.nasa.gov/intro/vacuum.html:

I have a set of links regarding this here:

http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/science.html#Explosive_decompression__vacuum_exposure

Included is Geoffrey Landis' summary of the literature on the subject:

http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/vacuum_sf.html

--
Erik Max Francis && max@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
Custom reconciles us to everything.
-- Edmund Burke

 

[Kryten]

"Dreamer" <javidhussain@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1104767710.113105.102830@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

No, no. There's some comet and Oort cloud icy resource mining going on.
Read Chapter 6. Mining on an ice world by the illumination of pure
"star light"
The "tank" needs replenishing along the way. Also, its a _huge_ tank,
six miles in radius and nine miles in length, enough to have a
minitaure ecosystem and a small town inside with river, lakes and
forests. More on AA's FAQs:-

This Ahad guy is just jerking off, IMHO.

Even for a sci fi movie it is pretty lame.

If you manage to get up the massive speeds, you can't just slow down for a
bit of mining like you were a truck.

And what about human nature?

Humans can't seem to go one lifetime without having at least one major
conflict over.
Most wars are over limited resources, and they're going to be pretty damn
limited there.

Not to mention inbreeding.
Better take a big fridge of sperm and egg samples,
or start playing those banjos now...

Ah, but even though all spaceflight in our solar system is exciting,
there is no life anywhere except on earth. All the NASA probe looking
on Mars, Cassini mission to Titan, future Europa probes, etc. to what
end? All lifeless chemical worlds.

That's only looking at one system though.
If the colonists head somewhere that might suit them,
chances are it already suits beings who won't be fobbed off
with a few beads and a dose of smallpox.

The nearest habitable place is "New Earth"
in the Alpha Cen system as in this story.

Erm, what makes you think that?

We strain to detect massive gas giants around relatively near stars.

Earth masses are tiny in comparison.

Ahad's spirit is already gone there.

Along with his common sense?

 

[J. F. Cornwall]

John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that J. F. Cornwall <JCornwall@cox.net
wrote (in <HG1Cd.32258$F25.20907@okepread07&gt about 'Colony ship to
Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Concept by A. Ahad', on Sun, 2 Jan
2005:


Nah, it was a successful experiment that pointed out a lot of
technologies that did not work as intended. Negative results are as
important as positive ones.


Even more. Positive results are just confirmation. Negative results are
doorways to new knowledge.

True. I should have gone with my initial thought of "...at least as
important..." :-/

Jim