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Engineering From Science Fiction 155
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."
It WILL get /.ed (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Re:Maybe I just don't have a sense of fun (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
Look at Thomas Edison or Einstein all the best inventors and scientists were major dreamers.
Re:Maybe I just don't have a sense of fun (Score:3, Insightful)
We just see that there are some things we can't do right now.
Re:Maybe I just don't have a sense of fun (Score:3, Insightful)
Or weren't you ever inspired by a piece of fiction (Score:3, Insightful)
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
They aren't doing this already? (Score:3, Funny)
Perish the thought.
SCO just bought the rights... (Score:1, Troll)
Sad, but true. All the imaginative uses have been bought by SCO, and we're left with nothing but Service Packs.
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The Millennial Project (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:3, Funny)
Careful, there are kids reading this.
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:4, Interesting)
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:1, Insightful)
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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?
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:2, Funny)
That's the Slashdot spirit!
Underpopularion (Score:2)
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
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:1)
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:1)
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
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:1)
Re:The Millennial Project (Score:1)
Enders Game (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Re:Enders Game (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:Enders Game (Score:2)
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.
Re:Enders Game (Score:2)
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)
Re:Enders Game (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh. Countless? No, not really. There's only been a few authors who've used it.
If you find some that you don't see mentioned on the Ansible page on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], then please be sure to add them!
Re:Enders Game (Score:2)
This must be your ultimate offtopic discussion... how many years have you been waiting for this moment? : )
Piror Art (Score:5, Interesting)
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. .
Re:Piror Art (Score:3, Interesting)
IANAL.
Re:Piror Art (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Piror Art (Score:1)
but to prevent implementor to patent the idea becouse it was widely published before.
Patents suuuck!
Re:Prior Art (Score:2)
Robert Heinlein (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Piror Art (Score:3, Informative)
Arthur Clarke has also been quoted as saying he wished he had patented his geosynchronous orbit idea.
Cheers!
Re:Piror Art (Score:1)
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)
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
Re:Piror Art (Score:2)
Re:Piror Art (Score:2)
Very often science fiction authors are scientests as well, and help NASA (or some similar organization) get all the glory.
Probably not (Score:2)
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)
imagination (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:imagination (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re:imagination (Score:1)
Re:imagination (Score:2)
The interaction between science and human morality, perhaps even the difference between morality and ethics.
Hold that interdimensional portal! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Hold that interdimensional portal! (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:Hold that interdimensional portal! (Score:2)
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
Re:Hold that interdimensional portal! (Score:2)
Maybe, but that idea of getting around the world in 80 days is just nonsense. The check-in at Logan is three hours.
Re:Hold that interdimensional portal! (Score:2)
Re:Hold that interdimensional portal! (Score:1)
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]
Re:Hold that interdimensional portal! (Score:2)
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)
Best colloboration technology (Score:2)
Re:Best colloboration technology (Score:1)
Quantum teleportation? (Score:1)
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.
Re:Best colloboration technology (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Best colloboration technology (Score:2)
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.
possible technical challenges (Score:2)
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.
Life imitating Art (Score:2)
Re:Life imitating Art (Score:2)
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)
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.
A "matrix" type means of communication... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A "matrix" type means of communication... (Score:2)
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.
Re:A "matrix" type means of communication... (Score:2)
Just because you have full nano doesn't mean you will necessarily reject the flesh.
Re:A "matrix" type means of communication... (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:A "matrix" type means of communication... (Score:2)
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
Re:A "matrix" type means of communication... (Score:2)
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
Re:A "matrix" type means of communication... (Score:2)
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.
Re:A "matrix" type means of communication... (Score:2)
Aristoi was more about harnessing daimones (Score:2)
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
OK... (Score:1)
Sci Fi is Widely Accepted at NASA. (Score:4, Interesting)
The sleeper has awaken!
Re:Sci Fi is Widely Accepted at NASA. (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:Sci Fi is Widely Accepted at NASA. (Score:1)
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)
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)
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.
Re:Clarke Again? (Score:2)
Peer review and moderation (Score:1, Insightful)
'Warp Drives' and Techno Nerds (Score:1)
Half-baked (Score:2)
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
Re:Half-baked (Score:2)
real collaboration (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Time to cut NASA's budget again (Score:2)
Cutting NASA's PR budget wouldn't be a bad idea, either.
Re:Sci Fi is often closer to reality than we think (Score:5, Funny)
Such as? Occasional tendency to explode and / or disintegrate?
Over 4 times as efficient as a typical SUV??? I find it difficult to think of many things that are less than 4 times as efficient as a typical SUV.
Re:Sci Fi is often closer to reality than we think (Score:5, Informative)
Francium is heavyer than aluminium, it is extreamly reactive with water (as in selfignition reactive), and it is extreamly reactive with air. To add to the point, its melting temp is 27.2C, so it is definatly not a building material...
In short, nice one P.E...
Re:Sci Fi is often closer to reality than we think (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sci Fi is often closer to reality than we think (Score:1, Informative)
Francium is so reactive and rare, that no one has even taken a photo of the element.
I believe that the accepted theory is that there may be about 35 GRAMS of the material in the entire earth's crust.
Francium does react extremely violently with water, so I think even the 35 grams is optimistic at best.
True, but this is Matrix... (Score:2)
Remember the SCO matrix?
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Re:True, but this is Matrix... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sci Fi is often closer to reality than we think (Score:5, Informative)
The oxide of aluminium that forms when it oxidises in air is the same size as the aluminium metal and so forms a protective layer. So Aluminium doesn't exactly rust like iron alloys. See here for more details... [aluminium.org]
I'd guess that it's Francium's very light weight to strength ratio that you're talking about, but I don't think it is light, according to this:
Francium [sunysb.edu] does not have any stable isotopes. There is at most one ounce of francium in the whole earth at any given time as a result of the decay of other radioactive elements. It is the most unstable of the first 103 elements in the periodic table. Its longest lived isotope has a half life of 22 minutes.
Despite its radioactive complications, francium is the heaviest simple atom.
And on the Ford website [ford.com] a result for searching from Francium:
Search Results
Results for: francium
Sorry no matches were found.
Was this a joke, or can you provide us with more information on how Ford used the most unstable and heavy element in some magical light (or strong) alloy?
Re:Sci Fi is often closer to reality than we think (Score:1)
The next element to change history: Administratium (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sci Fi is often closer to reality than we think (Score:1)
Foolish people, it's not a troll if it's blatantly a joke. I guess some people just don't know thier science.
I call shenanigans! (Score:2)
Re:I have many cool ideas. (Score:1)
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This is just my sig.