On the tech blog Science 2.0 Robert Walker takes a close look at the in’s and out’s of colonizing Venus by establishing cloud cities floating in its atmosphere. Difficult? Yes. Sensible? Perhaps. Worth looking into? Certainly. Link to his article >>>
A 1970s Soviet vision for Venerian cloud cities.
I continue on the impromptu theme for this week: “Our Solar System”. Robert Walker writes a lot on the tech blog Science 2.0 on how to (and not to) colonize other celestial bodies in the solar system. He is good at weighing pro’s and con’s and supports his suggestions with competent arguments. Here, for instance, is his close look at the possibilities for Lunar colonies — link >>>
In the next blog post: Venus’s cloud cities revisited.
The Apollo 15 lunar buggy in action
Ron Miller has published another pictorial special, this time about suitable tourist destinations on the Moon — link >>>
The Copernicus Crater
If our planet had rings comparable to Saturn’s, this is what it would look like from the surface, according to artist Ron Miller. Read more here — link >>>
The English translation of my dieselpunk novel The Ice War has now been edited twice. It will undergo a third scrutiny session during the winter. If matters work out well, it will be published as an ebook in Q1 2015. It feels good to see this labor of love so close to the goal.
The dream of colonizing alien worlds has been a part of western culture for sixty-seventy years. Mars appears to be the most likely candidate for the first settlement. But with every major new piece of knowledge acquired about the Red Planet, the difficulty of such an endeavor increases a notch: radiation levels, hazardous dust, food cultivation and ecology, etc — everyday life gets more challenging than one would expect. A Mars colony appears to be the most complex engineering venture imagined so far and many technology hurdles remain to solve. We will get there, I am sure, but that will be many decades in the future. Whoever pretends otherwise is a charlatan.
Here is a long article that looks at some yet unsolved technological and psychological problems facing tentative Mars colonists and at some people that nevertheless dream of settling there pretty soon — link >>>
The first Mars colony will probably resemble the interiors of a submarine or an underground factory.
Idag har jag epostat manuset för space-opera-rollspelet Sci-Fi! till Saga Games. Det känns bra att ha snickrat ihop ett old-school-spel med rymdäventyr; mitt första rejäla spelskapande på många långa år.
Stämningssättande citat, saxat ur Vapnet från det Okända av Edmond Hamilton, en action-fylld pulp-klassiker. Så här kan det se ut i spelkosmos:
Dilullo var van vid sällsamma världar, vid luft med olika smak och konsistens, vid hur mark kändes under fötterna. Den här var kall och sandig, skarpkantad, ogästvänlig, och luften hade, även om den var andningsbar, en bitter lukt. Dilullo gillade inte den här planeten. Den hade struntat i uppgiften att frambringa liv och föredrog att tillbringa tidsåldrarna i självisk ofruktsamhet. Ingenting hade någonsin levt här. Men någonting hade av någon anledning kommit hit för att dö.
Summary in English: I have just emailed the text for the Swedish space opera RPG Sci-Fi! to the game publisher Saga Games. It was a few years since I last wrote a complete game so I feel pleased with the fresh accomplishment.
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* Stjärnskeppet FMUS Altair används som exempel i speltexten, därav rubriken.
Today the Philae lander, a part of the Rosetta space probe, has touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. This is a social media portrayal of the event:
And here is an ESA video depicting the mission:
The Canadian aerospace company Thoth Technology is developing the Northern Light Mars rover for a 2018 launch. They are now calling for crowdfunding support to make their project materialize. Judging from their presentation, they appear to know what they are about to do; read more here — link >>>
Nasa’s Cassini orbiter photographs sunlight gleaming in the waterfree Kraken Sea on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. (Click on the picture for a larger version.)
The Dream Forge 