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Space Science

Engineering From Science Fiction 155

Posted by timothy from the but-using-real-money dept.
An anonymous reader writes "NASA's long planning horizon today details a history of science facts and their sci-fi roots. The study is based on a collaborative European Space Agency project, 'Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications.' More than 200 technical dossiers are described--from holodecks to terraforming comets--but one of the fundamental questions posed is: what is the best communication device to scale-up expert opinion itself? Other than some future, expert version of the internet itself, is that a a collaborative Matrix? Other such interesting collections are from: MIT Media Lab's ThinkCycle, Da Vinci Institute, and the unpretentious HalfBakery of ideas."
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Engineering From Science Fiction More

Engineering From Science Fiction

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  • It WILL get /.ed (Score:5, Informative)

    by Suhas ( 232056 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @08:43AM (#6451676)
    Which gadgets can unlock the next technological revolutions? What is the next big thing?

    To propose answers to this question, the sixteen nations of the European Space Agency commissioned a project called "Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications" (ITSF). Their results were co-published with two supervisory foundations, the Swiss museum Maison d'Ailleurs and the astronautical society, or OURS Foundation. One aim was to discover what their study called the facts of 'hard science-fiction': literature that uses either established or carefully extrapolated science as its backbone.

    As Caltech physicist, author and visiting scholar for NASA's Exobiology Center, David Brin, described in his PBS interview for the special, Closer To Truth: "perhaps an alternative name could have been 'speculative history' because [hard science-fiction authors] deal in different pasts, alternate presents, extension of the human drama into the future...Einstein used the word gedanken experiment and he coined it, he said that just sitting on a streetcar in Bern, leaving the clock tower and imagining he was riding on a beam of light, was 50% of the work [of relativity].
    Augmented Science: Galileo's Ship
    The history of drawing inspiration from speculative literature is deep with success stories.

    As early as 1632, to advocate for his classical principle of relativity, Galileo used a fictional character called Salviati who while locked in a closed room below a ship deck, observes a small fish tank which remains quiescent and undisturbed unless the ship accelerates. In dialogue format, he answers all the common scientific arguments against the idea that the earth moves.

    Predating lunar travel classics by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne were Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1656), space travel in Voltaire's Micromégas (1752), and alien cultures in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). Even as the liquid-propelled rockets were first being tested by Robert Goddard in the 1920's, technical proposals had already appeared for planetary landers (1928) and aerodynamically-stabilized rocket fins (1929).

    Perhaps the most detailed and famous publication was Sir Arthur C. Clarke's 1945 paper, "Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?", that laid down the principles of modern satellite communications and geostationary orbits [Wireless World, October 1945].

    A half-century later, even a few hours of interruption in this global network today would seem catastrophic: crippled health care delivery, financial disruption including failed automated teller machines and credit card validations, grounded travellers for lack of airline weather tracking, and global TV blackouts. But in 1945, the idea of geostationary satellites had a different kind of reception, as Clarke wrote: "Many may consider the solution proposed [for extra-terrestrial relay services] too far-fetched to be taken seriously. Such an attitude is unreasonable, as everything envisaged here is a logical extension of developments in the last ten years..."

    The rocks inside a crater on the Asteroid Eros. Numerous small impacts on the asteroid show brown boulders visible interior to the less exposed (white) lip of the crater. False-color for emphasis. Credit: NEAR Project, JHU APL, NASA

    The European space study, appropriately timed for Clarke's "Space Odyssey" series, completed its first project phase in 2001. Altogether fifty fact sheets and technical dossiers were published to catalog the inventions that should be made real. In addition, more than two hundred technologies were outlined and graded for future feasibility studies. Ranging from astrobiology to propulsion, their complete 'what-if' list is available in broad categories online.
    Examples Pushing the Envelope
    One mission that has been described in the ESA study is soon to become closer to fact: a fantastic mission to a comet. Seventeen years ago, astrobiologist David Brin's "Heart of the Comet" [1

  • Maybe I just don't have a sense of fun (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Transient0 ( 175617 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @08:45AM (#6451677) Homepage
    But this seems pretty stupid to me. I've never really understood the idea of science fiction authors as inventors. Asimov no more invented humanoid robots or neural networks than Da Vinci did helicopters. The job of science fiction writers is to speculate about what might happen and write an interesting story which supposes that it does. The job of inventors is to find useful things that no one has yet made but which are possible with current technology. It may sometimes happen that a science fiction writer imagines something and twenty years later an inventor creates it, but trying to make this process a matter of policy seems like foolishness of the highest kind.
    • But this seems pretty stupid to me. I've never really understood the idea of science fiction authors as inventors.

      Of course there is something to be said for the fact the dreamers suck at doing and doers suck at dreaming.

      • NO (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Dreamers do suck at doing but doers are "dreamers" that do stuff.

        Look at Thomas Edison or Einstein all the best inventors and scientists were major dreamers.
      • Quite often, the doers and the dreamers are the same person. (Asimov, Brin, Benford, ect...)

        We just see that there are some things we can't do right now.
    • I agree with you really. These acts of alleged prescience on the part of sci-fi writers are noted retrospectively, and in many cases the fit between the idea and reality is only very vague in most cases (as with most long-term predictions in general). You also have to remember how many cracks at guessing science fiction writers get; all those writers, all those books, all those pages. It shouldn't be surprising that occasionally, taken as a group, they guess right-ish. Furthermore, the vast majority of sci-
    • Before doers become doers and inventors become inventors they go through a lot. The read and see a lot. How many of the people who become inventors do so at least in part because something throttled their imagination in a movie, or ignited it in a book or story.

      Neither inventors nor writers do their work in a vacuum(well, some inventors do, but... gah, you get the point). Many science fiction writers are those are those without either the ability or the wherewithal to actually build or solve the things
  • You mean to tell me all of those billions of dollars over the past 30 years have gone to nothing more than unimaginative uses of existing techology?

    Perish the thought.

    • You mean to tell me all of those billions of dollars over the past 30 years have gone to nothing more than unimaginative uses of existing techology?

      Sad, but true. All the imaginative uses have been bought by SCO, and we're left with nothing but Service Packs.
      -

  • The Millennial Project (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr2cents ( 323101 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @08:49AM (#6451699)
    Has anyone read this book [amazon.com]? The author describes a plan to colonise the oceans, space, the moon, mars, the Kuyper belt,... All this in a way that sounds 'doable'. An interesting read, I wonder if they read it and what they thought of it.

    • Re:The Millennial Project (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <{yoda} {at} {etoyoc.com}> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @08:58AM (#6451749) Homepage Journal
      Kind or like a project I had up on Auxons (machines that can build copies of themselves.) It's a great Idea, now where do you get the capital outlay, engineering knowhow, and government permits.

      We still haven't gotten a human out of this planet's orbit. The expendibles required for a space journey increase geometrically with the distance (or rather duration) of the journey. A moon colony is doable, arguably more doable than a space station, you can use local material. A mars colony is fantasy barring some radical new technology that provides abundant power in a small package, that doesn't require a large fuel tank. Okay, a conventional nuclear reactor would do it. Hey wait a minute...

      • machines that can build copies of themselves

        Careful, there are kids reading this.

      • Re:The Millennial Project (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Nefrayu ( 601593 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:30PM (#6453439) Homepage
        A moon colony is doable, arguably more doable than a space station, you can use local material
        Well, it's a little more complex than that. Entirely new technologies would have to be developed for manufacturing processing in zero/low-G. You'd be surprised at how much of our materials processing and refining capabilities are dependent on bouyancy, a gravity driven effect. For example, fire does weird things in low-G because it's affected by bouyancy. NASA used to have a fun page up on the subject but I can't seem to find it, so you'll have to be content with the dumbed down Scientific American. [sciam.com]
        Spinning things may offer a different approach, but developing the centrifuge technology to completely replace gravity for the scale of processing you'd have to do to mine ore, smelt, refine, extrude, and finally construct a structure out of the finished product is insane.
        Build the space station. It's cheaper.

    • Re:The Millennial Project (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nefrayu ( 601593 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @08:58AM (#6451754) Homepage
      Yes I have read it. As an engineer, I can tell you that this guy has some pretty crazy ideas. Most of the author's ideas are based off of having many generators that use the temperature difference of the surface waters of the tropics and the water 40 feet below it. From this he proposes floating cities be created around the generators. While the generators are possible, he gives no thought to the havoc this will create with the weather patters or the life in the oceans themselves. To colonize space but destroy the Earth in the process really isn't something that I'd like to see done in the near future...

      • Re:The Millennial Project (Score:5, Informative)

        by bourne ( 539955 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:30AM (#6451916)

        Books in a similar vein which tend to be better-respected by engineers are Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization [amazon.com] and The Case for Mars [amazon.com] by Robert Zubrin. He's also the founder, IIRC, of The Mars Society [marssociety.org].

        • Re:The Millennial Project (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Mr2cents ( 323101 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:09AM (#6452177)
          Thanks for the link. From a review of "entering space": What really shines through is his passion about humanity's potential. We could do so much, he argues, if we could just get beyond the petty fighting that bogs us down on earth.

          It always boils down to this, doesn't it? Either we continue fighting until we destroy ourselves - or a meteor does it for us, OR we just stop fighting alltogether and focus that energy on space. Just imagine what Nasa could have done with the price tag of the War on Iraq!! Think of all the people dying of war, famine or aids in Africa, possible great scientists and engineers whose lives are lost forever! But then again, who cares?
          • But then again, who cares?

            That's the Slashdot spirit!
          • Thanks for the link. From a review of "entering space": What really shines through is his passion about humanity's potential. We could do so much, he argues, if we could just get beyond the petty fighting that bogs us down on earth.

            It always boils down to this, doesn't it? Either we continue fighting until we destroy ourselves - or a meteor does it for us, OR we just stop fighting alltogether and focus that energy on space.

            The root cause of this, i believe, is underpopulation, *gross* underpopulation. B
      • Well then, straight to the far future I go.

    • Re:The Millennial Project (Score:5, Funny)

      by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:24AM (#6451878) Homepage Journal
      The underwater sealab is going to be completed in 2021. Based on what I've seen on TV, you wouldn't want to live there.
      • [Squishface Ref] Dammit! They Taste Like CANDY! [ br ] [ br ] BIZARRO! [ / Squishface Ref ]

        I don't know about you, but I think I could be more prodcutive down there than I am in Corp. America. Yeah, I just got outta one of _those_ kind of meetings. The ones where nothing gets done, so people just keep talking about it?

        Mind you, I'm also posting to /. but that's just because I need a sanity break.
      • you wouldn't want to live there.
        Yeah, with those jerks in pod 6.
    • I own it, and its worth a read. I do have to say that the author overestimates how much acceleration a human can take by more than an order of magnitude, though.

  • Enders Game (Score:4, Interesting)

    by paradesign ( 561561 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @08:56AM (#6451739) Homepage
    Has my interest with the Ansible (sp?). Point to point instantanious communication. Across lightyears! Build it NOW, get it done, I want it... for $20 a month.

    But in all seriousness, i think the future of the 'net' is going to be something like Tad Williams's "Otherworld". The quality of your experience will be limited by your hardware, and sprouting 'netboys' will lose all contact with whats real. The future will be good, except for the bad parts OC!

    • Ancible networks are very bandwidth constrained, and troubles arise when two sides of the conversation are in different frames of reference.

      My nearest CO is Epsilon Centari, and the bill per month is enough to choke a horse. But hey, Andorian porn cannot be described, it has to be experienced.

      • Ancible networks are very bandwidth constrained

        Well, that's because the signal attenuation is horrible beyond a few million light-years. And that's assuming you have your quanta properly entangled.
        • Ancible networks are very bandwidth constrained

          Well, that's because the signal attenuation is horrible beyond a few million light-years. And that's assuming you have your quanta properly entangled.

          You also have the fact that a lot of telco providers are piggybacked on the same ancible. Essentially between here and Tau Ceti is one giant broadcast storm. Granted My provider has been running a few parallel feeds, but trying to pull pages from Sol III across AUNET is painful at peak times.

          There are some d

    • Re:Enders Game (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The word Ansible was invented by U.K. LeGuin, and the word has been used by countless science fiction writers ever since.

  • Piror Art (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cyberllama ( 113628 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @08:57AM (#6451747)
    So heres a silly question. If I'm a sci-fi writer, and I describe a non-existant device in such away that it CAN Be engineered from my description, could that count as prior art in a patent dispute?

    I mean, I know it seems silly. But if a sci-fi writer did come up with the idea first, should NASA get all the glory for making it real?

    I don't know. . . Maybe that's a dumb thought. . .It's too early in the morning.

    • Re:Piror Art (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Malcolm Chan ( 15673 )
      I believe you've got to have a working implementation of the idea for it to count. So, if the sci-fi writer actually had no idea how it could be implemented in practice he's got no claims to the patent anyway!

      IANAL. :-)

      • Re:Piror Art (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I take it you haven't seen the latest USPTO offerings, have you?
      • Problem is not to patent idea from sci-fi book,
        but to prevent implementor to patent the idea becouse it was widely published before.

        Patents suuuck!
      • No, you don't need a working implementation. And if the writer describes the thing "in such away that it CAN Be engineered from my description" then clearly he _does_ have an idea how it could be implemented in practice.

    • Robert Heinlein (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The patent for waterbeds [vt.edu] was turned down because of one of his books.

    • Re:Piror Art (Score:3, Informative)

      by sfsp ( 655361 )
      I have heard anecdotally that when someone tried to patent the waterbed, they were refused because it had been fully described by Robert Heinlein in "Stranger In a Strange Land".

      Arthur Clarke has also been quoted as saying he wished he had patented his geosynchronous orbit idea.

      Cheers!
    • If I'm a sci-fi writer, and I describe a non-existant device in such away that it CAN Be engineered from my description, could that count as prior art in a patent dispute?

      IANAL.

      Yes, it could be used as Prior art--but only to the extent that it's described in your book. A good example is a Space Elevator--no one's going to get a patent on the idea of a really long cable to get to space, but they can patent the methods of raising that cable or the materials to make that cable.

    • Re:Piror Art (Score:3, Informative)

      by mlush ( 620447 )
      If I'm a sci-fi writer, and I describe a non-existant device in such away that it CAN Be engineered from my description, could that count as prior art in a patent dispute?

      from here [johnbarber.com]

      Dog Bell

      A boon for dog owners everywhere. Put your dog out in the garden to do whatever... then let him press his own bell to be let in.

      So thought Paul Usher, a design consultant of Harpenden, Herts. He designed a small (12" x 8") scratch pad that was fitted to the back door. This was connected to an electrical circuit and

    • If you knew the difference between patents and copyrights you wouldn't be asking this question. If you come up with a device, anyone can build and proffit from it unless you patent it. Writing a book about it gives you no claims to it without the patent.
    • If you describe a device in such a way that it can be engineered, then you're not a science fiction writer... because it wouldn't be fictional.

      Very often science fiction authors are scientests as well, and help NASA (or some similar organization) get all the glory.
    • But if a sci-fi writer did come up with the idea first, should NASA get all the glory for making it real?

      To the moment a Sci-Fi writer makes a story out of their idea, it has probably already came up to other people who just didn't bother putting it down on paper.

      What would count is a working implementation or a viable design.

  • Life imitating art (Score:4, Interesting)

    by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:13AM (#6451822)
    Or at least technology imitating art. It has always been the case. You need real free thinkers to come up with some ideas. These people are best not knowing the technical "boundaries" of the current state of the art. If the worried about these boundaries techology would never move on.

  • imagination (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vargul ( 689529 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:16AM (#6451834) Journal
    i assume imagination is the most important thing via sf (ie. some kind of fiction) is able to give new ideas to sience. by imagination i dont mean to invent new things out of the blue but to make people look at things on a new and motivating way. this is always the hardest thing: to change your point of view concerning already known facts, models and so on.

    • Re:imagination (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <{yoda} {at} {etoyoc.com}> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:33AM (#6451935) Homepage Journal
      Don't mix science fiction and pulp fiction. True science fiction uses fancy devises to tell a story about people. Pulp use people to tell a story about fancy devices.

      What made Asimov's stuff great (IMHO) was not that it was about robots, it was about how robots affect people. The entire Foundation series was ALL about people (granted there were a lot of really cool devices.)

      Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 was so compelling because of the interaction between the crew of the Discovery and the ship (embodied as HAL). Lem Stanislaw's Solaris has humans trying to understand a completely foriegn intelligence. Even Heinlein's Starship Troopers was more a book about humans in war than about the technology they battled with. And while we all thought the Simulator was cool in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, the story was really about Ender Wiggins and his experiences growing up as a genious.

      • Re:imagination (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Gyl ( 318790 )
        I agree entierly, and I think that is the best thing these authors have to offer to people coming up with new technology. Probably most of the ideas in sci-fi will never be implemented, but of the ones that do, we have some people that have though long and hard about how that new technology will affect and be used by people.
      • i agree but we are talking about two different things. u are obviously right saying that "true sf ... tell a story about people": i mean all true fiction does! but in sf the story and the persons are set in a context which built of quasi scientific elements at a certain degree. the whole story (mainly the actions of the persons) then organizes itself (and the context) and forms a certain view. in this view one can sees new sides of the scientific details (this is true about all the other elements as well, b
      • How about (IMO) THE seminal work; Shelley's Frankenstein?

        The interaction between science and human morality, perhaps even the difference between morality and ethics.

  • Hold that interdimensional portal! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:25AM (#6451883)
    The problem with this kind of thinking, where you look back at the body of scifi and pick out the present-day technology that mimics what was imagined therein is that you are ignoring all the shit that was just plain wrong. This is the same logic that John Edwards, Sylvia Browne, and your local carnival psychic depend on. They vomit fifteen tons of guesses on you and the credulous are amazed that there are a few chunks mixed in.

    Somebody go back and tally up, per author, perhaps, all the predictions and see which have become feasible.

    Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for my spacesuit so I can travel.

    • Somebody go back and tally up, per author, perhaps, all the predictions and see which have become feasible.

      Flying cars. I was promised affordable family-owned flying cars for the commute to work. Until I get my flying car all this other technology is fluff.

    • Jules Verne, by far. He was a Science Fiction writer back before science fiction was even a Genre.

      He predicted nuclear submarines, including most of technologies (like CO2 scrubbers) that are used in them. Granted, he was a little off on the battering ram type of attack.

      He predicted man would go to the moon atop a specially designed cannon shell. Okay, we didn't end up using a cannon, but all of our modern rockets decended from ICBMs. The Apollo lander was a glorified bomb payload atop a specially desig


      • Maybe, but that idea of getting around the world in 80 days is just nonsense. The check-in at Logan is three hours.
        • (Check in desk at Logan)

          Desk Attendent: Can I have your passport and body fluid sample please...

          Phileas Fogg: (Grumble)

          Attendent: I'm sorry Mr. Fogg, you seem to be on our don't fly list.

          Phileas Fogg: How on Earth? I just landed here!

          Attendent: I'm sorry Mr. Fogg, the authorities should be here in a minute or two to hopelessly delay you...

          Phileas Fogg: (Muttering to himself) Sure, take the airplane Phileas, it'll be faster than the train, he said. NO, I've got to see Boston. Couldn't be content to cut

      • Well Actually, the original combat sub, the H.L. Hunley, was basically a battering ram with a bomb on the end.

        For those that are unfamiliar with it, the Hunley was used by the Confederates during the US Civil War. It was the first submersable vehicle to sink an enemy ship, a feat that was not repeated for another 50 years. It was lost at sea in 1864 and finally found 3 years ago. Link [cnn.com]
    • I know what you mean. I recently read a collection of short stories by Phillip K. Dick and it's amazing how wrong he turned out to be.

      1) everyone doesn't smoke
      2) computers got smaller, not bigger
      3) we don't have space colonies or civilian space transportation

  • Missing technology (Score:5, Funny)

    by cyclist1200 ( 513080 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:26AM (#6451893) Homepage
    After reading entries like "Fatser-than-light communications" and seeing a number of misspelled words ("socendly"), I'd say the one technology they desperately need is a spellchecker!
  • I'll say it right now - yes, probably some kind of thought->thought enviroment, over an FTL link. Figure something like the matrix which uses gravity as the transmission medium.
    • One problem - gravity propagates at the speed of light. It is not an FTL phenomenon.
    • as someone else pointed out, gravity is not FTL. However, quantum teleportation is. The only problem, is that in order to send information over this medium, some non-FTL communication is required.

      Basically, the effect of quantum teleportation can be observed instantaneously, but in order to decode the effect into useful information, some more information must be transmitted via non-teleportation means.

      This means, there are non-local (FTL) effects, but information is not one of them.

    • What do you mean by "thought->thought"? Do you mean the transfer medium? My thoughts are your thoughts simultaneously, sort of thing? I was pretty sure that we used thought->thought communication already. I put my thoughts into speech or writing (of some sort) and you read them. You provide me with your thoughts about my thoughts using a similar process.

      The human will always be a bottleneck in information processing as we cannot perceive faster than light. Supposing we could transmit the inform

      • I put my thoughts into speech or writing (of some sort) and you read them

        Except that this is a terrible form of communication. It's slow, inaccurate, and subject to interpretation. What if we could transfer thoughts directly, without having to transform them into words (with their inherent drawbacks) and then back again.

        • You are absolutely correct. It can be slow, inaccurate, and in most cases is certainly subject to interpretation (relative to how well-formed the communication is). I would argue however that so are memories (thoughts). Studies have shown that memories degrade or can change over time.

          There are many questions to be answered before we can begin to consider direct thought transfer. Here are some that immediately come to my mind, you might think of more.

          • how to "write" the memory (transfer of working mem
  • I like how sometimes popular science fiction can change the direction of where science is headed, or at least influence the design of futuristic devices. I really cannot wait until we have computers like the ones in (the movie) Minority Report, or the "docking scene" in the Matrix... and I'm sure Steve Jobs is salviating at the mouth do be able to do those clear glass screens too =)
    • A clear glass screen is not very useful but if you could combine those flexible plastic circuits with an OLED display then you could probably put an overlay on the back of a piece of glass.

      Contrast, however, becomes an issue. Take a look at a front projection television sometime and realize that the color you look at when it is off becomes your black. Obviously this is only black in a dark room and there is always light spillage.

      This would be even worse since whatever is behind it - and this can change

  • *Collaborative* Matrix? (Score:5, Funny)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:34AM (#6451948) Homepage
    A collaborative Matrix, eh?

    Dr. Boydston: And with this coefficient, the wave function collapses.

    Dr. Mannheim: Ah, but you've neglected the least-squares product, here.

    Dr. Boydston: Oh yeah? [bullet-time leap-and-kick]

    Dr. Mannheim: [high-speed parry]

    Dr. Boydston: [firing-dual-automatic-weapons]

    Dr. Mannheim: [dodging-like-an-agent]

    Dr. Boydston: Just because your girlfriend wears PVC don't think I'm going go easy on you!

    Yeah. Real collaborative.
  • I suggest reading the book Aristoi [amazon.com] by Walter Jon Williams. Full of nanotech and all that, but one of the big technologies in his world is a fairly perfected virtual world.

    • Of course, the problem with that novel is that while they have full molecular nanotechnology, the main characters walk around as meat bags.

      At one point, the good guys get captured after a dose of sleep gas. Sheesh. A T1000 (or a TX, though I haven't seen Rise of the Machines) could have kicked all their asses.

      I did enjoy the novel, but most SF these days frustrates me at a certain level.

      • I don't think that the world of Aristoi contains AI. They have the Renos (I've seen implanted computers called "reno"s before, WTF does that mean?) but those are not intelligences, they just have agent software that responds to linguistic requests.

        Just because you have full nano doesn't mean you will necessarily reject the flesh.

        • OK, well they protagonists knew they were going into a dangerous situation, hence they carried guns.

          But where's the powered, self-healing, body armor? Or how about some air cover? They were conduting a raid on a stronghold, riding in on horseback, IIRC. This was after their cover was blown, so there was no need to be subtle.

          But walking into a dangerous situation as an unprotected meat bag is insane, given the level of technology available in the novel.

          Many authors may try, but few fully appreci

          • SPOILER ALERT!!! (Not to the person I'm replying to, but to any others) I AM ABOUT TO RUIN IMPORTANT PLOT POINTS SO IF YOU HAVE NOT READ ARISTOI AND PLAN TO, STOP HERE AND GO READ IT. Thank you.

            I've read that book about ninety times so I believe I am qualified to respond. You may recall that they landed on the planet to do reconaissance and their ship was destroyed while they were onplanet without the means to create nanotechnological devices.

            So, they made the assault with the most useful posessions the

            • Well, considering that you could take a disabled, offline nanotech lab which looks like a pack of cigarettes with you, I still think they could have been better prepared on-planet too.

              Not having full nanotech available is like not having a first-aid kit. What if somebody cuts off your head or something? Who knows when you might need an atmospheric fighter production facility? Or some cool new clothes? Or a fricken' FTL tacyhon transceiver?

              I'd think to an aristoi, walking around without full nanote

        • They have the Renos (I've seen implanted computers called "reno"s before, WTF does that mean?)

          As a guess, it's an in-joke for Walter Jon Williams fans - Reno was a character in 'Hardwired' who spent most of his life plugged into computers.

          Best wishes,
          Mike.

          • Sure, I've read Hardwired a number of times, and I did make that connection, but I've also seen "Reno" used for implanted computers elsewhere, and I don't know if they're just biting WJW's style or if there's some deeper explanation. I suppose the simplest explanation is the most likely, though.
      • Of course, the problem with that novel is that while they have full molecular nanotechnology, the main characters walk around as meat bags.

        I agree, that kind of physical manifestation is pretty incongruous in a distant-future setting, and it's a mistake that virtually all SF books and films make to some degree. I think there might be some "restrict humanity" meme going around in SF publishing circles, possibly fueled by the "otherwise readers won't relate to it" argument. Pretty pathetic.

        However, I do
  • so when am I going to get my lightsabre!!!

  • Sci Fi is Widely Accepted at NASA. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LoneStarGeek ( 626553 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:47AM (#6452023)
    I think anyone who has worked in the NASA environment (myself included) will agree with me that probably 95% of all employees and contractors at that agency love Sci Fi Novels and Movies. The study points out that NASA doesn't necessarily rule out far fetched ideas (Planet Colonization, Space Stations or Nuclear Interplanetary Vehicles) if they can forseeably become a reality when the technology and budget allows it. I think the US Space and Science Programs regardless of the criticism by the press and public is still one of the few places today where Science Fiction can become reality only if far reaching creativity and goal setting is allowed to flourish. There will be some mistakes along the way and all those participating in the various projects and missions realize that risk and accept those odds. To Err is Human.

    The sleeper has awaken!
    • The study points out that NASA doesn't necessarily rule out far fetched ideas (Planet Colonization, Space Stations or Nuclear Interplanetary Vehicles) if they can forseeably become a reality when the technology and budget allows it.

      The technology does allow it. We can go to Mars using the same technology we went to the moon with. The budget allows it, too. If we bring NASA's budget up by 7% (from about $14 billion to $15 billion) and hold it there for ten years, they'll have enough to go to Mars four o
      • I agree NASA's budget is always on the chopping block. It's priority is low on the Totem pole compared to the government's spending on other projects. It would be nice to return to the glory days of the Apollo missions and have our Astronauts be the first human visitors to Mars. Unfortunately, the first manned Mars mission may be many years off given our Budget defecit, the economy and current world affairs in the Middle East.

        ELO (1976) The planet Earth from way up there is beautiful and blue And floatin

  • The SCIFI Book "The Number of the Beast" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stinkwinkerton ( 609110 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:50AM (#6452034)
    Did anyone read that one? While not completely related to the article, it is a story about a group of people who have a vehicle with the ability to hop between universes-- and interestingly enough they start hopping into universes that are actually based on the old stories they read... Oz, the world of John Carter, the warlord of Mars, etc. In the book it turns out the all these great universes either were created by the author who though them up, or the author that though that they had thought them up somehow "knew" about them without ever visting them.
    In the end they ended up hooking up with Lazarus Long and his cohorts from Methuselah's Children.
    If some scientist comes up with the device they came up with, think about how cool it would be-- Although I'm not sure if I would want to visit the Spawn universe, or a couple of the other nastier ones...

  • Clarke Again? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Perhaps the most detailed and famous publication was Sir Arthur C. Clarke's 1945 paper, "Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?", that laid down the principles of modern satellite communications and geostationary orbits

    This still persists? Look up "Hermann Potocnik", "Hermann Oberth" or even "Willy Ley".

    Clarke may have publicized it more, but the ideas are not his.

  • The communities with the most valuable comments are those which enable moderation by peers. Slashdot readers are obviously very familiar with how this can work, and how discussions are enriched by the rating system. Good comments which help the discussion are more visible, driven by the collective reviews of many people. It's actually fairly rare that wrong information is allowed to exist in a slashdot comment thread at a high rating, as people are always keen to spot the trolls or crackpots. There are
  • Hmm, so I should take these dossier seriously? One (I'll let y'all guess) cites Paramount Pictures as a source. It also puts all "science" terms in quotes. You know why? Because it is not science, it is fiction! The only word you can throw in front of "fiction" to make it real is "non-" and it's only a prefix. These dossiers are jokes. Let's forget our worm holes and 4" light sabers and get back to work.

  • I liked this idea [halfbakery.com], from one of the sites mentioned in the original story submission:

    "Register your premium-rate number. Get a minimum wage job as a night-time office cleaner. Call your premium rate number from about 500 phones at the large office you're cleaning, leaving the handsets off all night. Repeat, every night (The office workers will come in in the morning and think "Hmm - the cleaner's left my phone off the hook", and put it back).
    The large company this happened to didn't prosecute the clean

  • real collaboration (Score:3, Interesting)

    by khallow ( 566160 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @01:07PM (#6453818)
    We already have very effective means of collaborating experts and even nonexperts on these issues. The business world is chock full of good examples. For example, suppose I want to determine the best possible price for a share of Microsoft stock. How can I do this? Just look up the share price on the Nasdaq market.

    No one has come up with a more effective mechanism. The reason is that any new knowledge or better evaluation scheme can rapidly profit on a market from the less knowledgeable traders.

    Markets do have failure modes (eg, need a level of liquidity to function well, things which aren't being traded tend to become invisible, market psychology can be irrational, etc), but these flaws are pretty well understood.

    OTOH, flaws of other expert systems like peer-reviewed research can be very hard to determine. For example, the math describing black holes came almost immediately after general relativity (which predicts them) became usable. Ie, the key general relativity paper was published in 1916 by Einstein and Scharzschild (who died in the First World War) discovered the black hole singularity a few months later. But it wasn't till the 1950's that scientists as a group seriously considered whether these singularities existed in nature. What went wrong? We're not talking accepting that black holes exist, but merely that general relativity is put forth as a theory to describe the physical world, and that black hole singularities are a prediction of that theory.

    There are many cases of fraudulent or flawed science that takes years (if not decades) to evaluate and reject. For example, Lamarck's theory of evolution as espoused by Lysenko (the man who destroyed 20th century Russian genetics research), polywater, cold fusion, and the repressed memories therapy movement. However, these theories make real predictions that can be tested.

    If a betting market was created to determine if a particular test would be successful by time X, then one could determine how credible the theory was in that timeframe. That gives you a much more effective way to allocate your resources.

    For example, a reputation-based betting market, the Foresight Exchange [ideosphere.com] (of which I happen to be a contributing member) trades on an esoteric mix of claims about science, politics, business, etc. Here's a selection of space-based claims. The odds of people living continuously in space till 2025 is 33-34% [ideosphere.com]. The odds that someone makes a serious argument for the presence of alien artifacts in the Cydonia region of Mars (eg, where the Mars "face" is located) is 5-6% [ideosphere.com]. Extraterrestrial life has a 78-80% [ideosphere.com] chance of being discovered by 2050, but intelligent extraterrestrial life has only a 31-33% [ideosphere.com] of being discovered in the same time frame.

  • NASA has an annoying tendency to act like a lightweight National Science Foundation. They don't do very well at it, and Congress should take that funding away from NASA and give it to the NSF or NIST.

    Cutting NASA's PR budget wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

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