From: Patrick Salsbury (salsbury_at_sculptors.com)
Date: 06/28/01
Message-Id: <200106281956.f5SJujl04321@gargoyle.sculptors.com> Subject: Extreme Domesteading: The Mars Society in the frozen Arctic North (and a request for help) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 12:56:45 -0700 From: Patrick Salsbury <salsbury_at_sculptors.com>
Not sure how many of you remember this from last year, but the Mars
Society is going back to Devon Island at a fridgid 75 degrees north
latitude for another summer of simulating colonization trips to Mars.
(Their FMARS research station is cool looking, and even has the little
landing legs I'm so fond of for avoiding the need to pour a building
foundation. However, it's not geodesic, nor as spacious as a dome or
autonomous house would be. (I can understand their point, though. They
want to have something delivered complete onsite, rather than build upon
arrival.)
Check it out. It's very cool:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/space/20010627/sc/simulating_a_martian_colony_in_the_arctic_1.html
It also points to another area I see as a potential target market for
Autonomous Houses: Research Scientists and Field Teams. Provide ample
& comfortable living space, food supplies, energy requirements, drop
in some computers and perhaps chemistry/bio/physics lab space or
whatever, and you've got something that I bet most researchers would
trade all their cold wet nights in cramped tents & huts for.
Things to do:
Speaking of target markets. We'll need to generate lots more views &
pictures to get this idea clearly understood by more people, and get
them interested in the technology. And that means more rendering, and
more photo-work done with things like GIMP or Photoshop to blend the
computer generated pictures into actual landscapes.
Does anyone here have that sort of skillset? I've got bazillions of
cool landscape pictures I've taken over the years. (When I see open
landscapes, my brain superimposes autonomous houses all over them
automatically, but I realize I'm going to have to do more work to let
other people's brains see 'em, thus, I have lots of pictures.)
I've also got the Moray models I've been doing of the Autonomous
House, and would be more than happy (ecstatic!) to share them with
others who are interested in working on 3D graphics, extending the
models, or even just posing them in cool ways and going through
"snapping pictures" of what they look like. (This is easier than
building the models, if you're not sure that's up your alley. It
really is just a matter of moving the camera around and trying out
different views. When you find one you like, you make a bigger, more
detailed rendering of it.)
If you're more comfortable with a different renderer, such as Bryce or
something else, let me know. We can use those skills (and Bryce is
better for generating realistic terrains, anyway) and convert the 3D
images files from one format to another.
Really, what I'm hoping for is to get a small team of people playing
with these tools and see what we can generate. The people on this list
now have a pretty decent idea of the sort of thing I want to build,
and the pictures certainly help convey that. But so far, it's just me
making the models and putting up the web pages, and it's S-L-O-W. (In
fact, I've just added two more pictures to the website to hopefully
inspire you.) These are the most recent work I've done on the model,
including new walls on the second floor to make bedrooms, some folding
partition panels to make movable walls, following our discussions
here, and a better sense of scale & realism by incorporating shadows
into the geodesic frame rendering, and giving some more views of the
photovoltaic and solar-water-heating panels.
This is all stuff I accomplished in about 2 days. This is all stuff I
accomplished almost exactly 11 *weeks* ago. I'd certainly like to
improve the turnaround time on this, and having more people involved
would help greatly. If you're excited, interested, or merely curious,
please speak up. It doesn't take that long to learn these tools. 3D
graphics is actually quite fun, and just about any help at any skill
level would speed things up. Not to mention that the programs I've
used to do all this house work can be had for free. (I eventually
registered the shareware Moray modeller after 9 months of using it,
because I think the guys more than earned their money. But you can use
it without paying a cent, if you so desire, and the POV-Ray ray
tracing engine is totally free.)
Here are two new pictures to hopefully inspire you. And if not,
they're at least nice to look at. (And if you're mad that they're only
800x600 resolution, not 1024x768 or 1600x1200 or whatever makes good
wallpaper for your desktop, then good! I'd be happy to show you how to
re-render in high quality and high resolution, and you'd be helping
move things along. :-) )
External view showing underbody of house, solar-heat & PV panels.
http://reality.sculptors.com/~salsbury/Gifs/Graphics/autonomous-house-001.png
External view with geodesic framework showing. Also showing some wall
and door details on the second floor, and folding sectional wall
panels on both first and second floor. (1st floor is extended to left
from near central staircase to outer wall. 2nd floor is folded up
between the two doors, but when extended would divide the room into
two separate bedrooms.) There are still some detail-glitches, such as
walls and floors that extend a bit beyond the outer shell, etc. This
will be corrected in future models.
http://reality.sculptors.com/~salsbury/Gifs/Graphics/autonomous-house-002-manual-edit.png
And of course, web site design skills are also welcome. All of the CVS
and FAQ-o-matic software has been installed to allow multi-person
teams to interact and work on things in parallel. I'm just waiting for
more folks to join in. (As my girlfriend, Stacie, did recently with
all the hydroponics greenhouse pages, at
http://reality.sculptors.com/hydro/ ) We can now both edit those pages
simultaneously and make updates without stomping on each other's
work. It's quite cool, and works well with larger groups,
too. (Hint-hint.)
Sorry if this comes off like a big recruitment post, but it is. :-)
I've realized that old adage of "You'll never get what you don't ask
for" is true, so I'm asking. I'd like the Reality Sculptors Project to
become more than just a hobby. More than just some mailing lists
people read. I'd like it to actually start building things, creating
homes for people and solutions to world problems. But I can't do that
alone, and as they say, "The more, the merrier." If we start getting
more of the graphics & models done, then more people will understand
what we're trying to do, and we'll also be that much closer to having
product designs we can manufacture and sell to those people.
If we just sit and talk about it, not as much gets accomplished.
Here's a quote from the introduction to Syd Mead's 1979 book,
"Sentinel" (p.16):
On fantasy: "There's a large abuse of the word. Fantasy is
anything that isn't real. You can have a project (and I've worked on
many of them) aimed at eventually producing a real object. Everything
is very carefully thought out and then pictures, either renderings or
sketches, are made. The project may encompass a very real problem and
I may arrive at a very real solution, but if it never comes to pass,
no matter how logical or carefully the planning is done, it's still
fantasy or a dream if it never exists as an object."
I'd like to start moving the Reality Sculptors Project, and more
specifically and immediately, the Autonomous House Project, from
fantasy into reality. Some of that will involve getting the hub
designs prototyped & tested, then manufactured. Some will involve
getting custom panels built. Octet truss floors need to be made, etc.
When we can build one, we can build 5 or 10. When we can do that, we
can sell a few, make a profit, and build some more. There's still an
incredibly long way to go on all of this, and I think we should
probably get moving.
Ask yourself: Aside from getting lots of email from cool people such
as yourself, what would you like to be doing with this? What skills do
you have? What would you like to see Reality Sculptors doing for
*you*? (If you can answer that, chances are that others would like
something very similar, and then we've got something to pursue.)
Enough from me. What do you think?
Pat
___________________Think For Yourself____________________
Patrick G. Salsbury - http://reality.sculptors.com/~salsbury/
Autopilots for ground- and air-cars: http://reality.sculptors.com/lists.html
---------------------------------------------------------
Eris is not hateful or malicious. But she is mischievous, and does
get a little bitchy at times. --The Principia Discordia
