MY 3D Cities

[JMeganSnow]

How many people in the WORLD actually get paid to design space stations (besides me =P, who got paid to make this) Seriously, how many would you guess?

That's the phrase I have a problem with. You aren't *designing* a space station, you're doing *concept art* for a space station. "Drawing a picture of" and "actually doing the engineering specs for" are totally different things.

[Matus1976]

That's the phrase I have a problem with. You aren't *designing* a space station, you're doing *concept art* for a space station. "Drawing a picture of" and "actually doing the engineering specs for" are totally different things.

Whatever, don't you have something more interesting in life to do than nitpick such a minor thing? Hey, you're right, whatever, well, I am going to get back to doing my space station design work, er, I mean, 'doing the concept art for an internally consistent realistic projection of a space station in 25 years'

Edited November 20, 2007 by Matus1976

[Moebius]

I'm not going to reply to your technical responses, not because I agree with them, but because it would take me several days to research and work out the physics, and it's just not worth it to me. I would simply suggest that you show your drawings to someone who IS an expert in the field.

But all of your criticisms were of a technical nature in the first place...

To be more precise, the impression is targeted towards people who might support the Lifeboat Foundation - people just like me, since I do support the lifeboat foundation, in large part due to my technical background. It's not good PR for potential "customers" like me to see their imagery, and immediately think "whoever made this knows nothing about aerospace." I'm not trying to be insulting, just pointing out that that's not good marketing for an organization which seeks to build spacestations to not have consulted someone knowlegeable. There's thousands of people who are experts in such things, such as the guys behind the ISS and Bigelow.

Your argument is strange. You seem to be saying that since you support the Lifeboat Foundation (with heavy emphasis on your technical background, undergrad courses, high school science projects, and whatever), and you think the drawing sucks, that it is therefore bad PR.

First of all your reaction to the drawing obviously does not necessarily represent the typical reaction of a Lifeboat supporter (in fact I would bet that it isn't). Second of, not trying to call you a dilettante, but your aerospace background seem questionable, and anyway is not a pre-requisite to supporting the Lifeboat Foundation. Thirdly since the Lifeboat Foundation isn't actually selling you anything (except perhaps the idea that "hey maybe one day some major shit might go down and it might be good to have a backup plan), I don't see why they really have to worry about how a 3D future space station rendering is going to affect their PR. And finally, why did you assume that they did not consult someone knowledgeable? I don't know if they did or not, but they do have a pretty friggin' big scientific advisory panel.

[volco]

I am below, rather than above your technical discussion. I am fascinated with exit mundi scenarios, A.I. Singularitarianism, Space Colonization, and I have to be frank: I did like the Spaceship design when I first saw it in the site years ago. I still like it and enjoyed the eye candy. Thanks BTW!

As for imagining future design I believe the key is the penumbra between dark confirmed past possibilities, and blinding light of wreckless speculation.

That's the phrase I have a problem with. You aren't *designing* a space station, you're doing *concept art* for a space station. "Drawing a picture of" and "actually doing the engineering specs for" are totally different things.

Thanks for puting down so clearly a central point in the current choice I'm facing

[DavidV]

But all of your criticisms were of a technical nature in the first place...

If someone shows me a car with square wheels and says "look at this great car my company is going to make" I don't have to work out the physics of it to know that it's not great design. It doesn't help to say "but it's 30 years in the future" or "it uses 'molecular engineering'" or "it's just an idea." I could possibly see how it would be OK if you're just advocating safer or more efficient cars (not a particular design), but when you put detailed design drawings online and have "NASA experts" on your board, your proposal is expected to have a degree of realism. The proposal is full of ridiculous stuff like "the hub of each wheel are nuclear thrusters, ion thrusters, and chemical thrusters" What?!

And finally, why did you assume that they did not consult someone knowledgeable? I don't know if they did or not, but they do have a pretty friggin' big scientific advisory panel.

I didn't assume anything. I just saw a car with square wheels and thought "Whoever came up with this doesn't know anything about how cars actually work."

[Matus1976]

If someone shows me a car with square wheels and says "look at this great car my company is going to make" I don't have to work out the physics of it to know that it's not great design. It doesn't help to say "but it's 30 years in the future" or "it uses 'molecular engineering'" or "it's just an idea." I could possibly see how it would be OK if you're just advocating safer or more efficient cars (not a particular design), but when you put detailed design drawings online and have "NASA experts" on your board, your proposal is expected to have a degree of realism. The proposal is full of ridiculous stuff like "the hub of each wheel are nuclear thrusters, ion thrusters, and chemical thrusters" What?!

Yeah cause that is an applicable analogy. You are comparing something which is obviously not functional in any manner whatsoever (square wheels vs round wheels) with something that you are merely not familiar with (the size of rings, for instance) Your objections are just based on ignorance of designs, again, like the hypersonic waverider. You essentially keep saying over and over again that you feel the design is as wrong as square wheels are, but you present absolutely no evidence backing that up, admit your own ignorance, and admit you arent interested in putting in the effort to discover if you are right or wrong. So why are you still posting? I think it's reasonable for you to just acknowledge that your initial reaction was unwarrented and probably incorrect, though you are not interested in being sure about it. You are just trying to 'save face' now in some abstract way, grasping for reasons to suggest the design is a terrible one. Like:

"the hub of each wheel are nuclear thrusters, ion thrusters, and chemical thrusters" what!?

*sigh* so again in the 10 seconds you spent thinking about something you admit you know nothing about, you cant think of any possible reason why there would be different kinds of engines in a large space scraft meant to provide a refuge for humanity. What can you think might be the differences between an ion thruster, a nuclear thruster, and chemical thrusters?? Hmm, lets see. Hmm.... I dont know, maybe ONE PUTS OUT LOW THRUST and HIGH EFFECIENCY (the ION Thruster) one puts out MASSIVE THRUST with LOW EFFEICIENCY (chemical rockets) and one is a good balance of the two, included since the primary power source is nuclear anyway. It might be a fusion reactor, it might be a nuclear salt water rocket engine. It might be that in 50 years we have one kind of engine which functions well in every performance enevelope, or entirely different kinds of engines which function at different effecencies. If you have to get out of the way of something real fast, an ion engine isnt going to help you much. If you want to go on a long journey then you would use a more effecient mechanism of propulsion.

I didn't assume anything. I just saw a car with square wheels and thought "Whoever came up with this doesn't know anything about how cars actually work."

You are more like a luddite looking at steel rim and rubber wheel and saying "look, moron, wheels have to be made of wood, see those wagons!" To which a rational person would say about you that you don't know anything about wheels.

Edited November 20, 2007 by Matus1976

[Thales]

Let me say, for the record, I love this kind of stuff!

This visionary, forward-looking attitude is mindful of 1950s science fiction, where man improves his life by quantum leaps. That sense of life is the American spirit as I've always thought of it. Today's endless doom-and-gloom that comes from environmentalists, multiculturalists and others seems to have permeated much of the America spirit, but you guys have ignored all of that and put forth some really great ideas.

[Moebius]

If someone shows me a car with square wheels and says "look at this great car my company is going to make" I don't have to work out the physics of it to know that it's not great design. It doesn't help to say "but it's 30 years in the future" or "it uses 'molecular engineering'" or "it's just an idea." I could possibly see how it would be OK if you're just advocating safer or more efficient cars (not a particular design), but when you put detailed design drawings online and have "NASA experts" on your board, your proposal is expected to have a degree of realism. The proposal is full of ridiculous stuff like "the hub of each wheel are nuclear thrusters, ion thrusters, and chemical thrusters" What?!

I didn't assume anything. I just saw a car with square wheels and thought "Whoever came up with this doesn't know anything about how cars actually work."

It's not a valid analogy because everyone knows what a modern car is supposed to look like.

A better analogy would be we're all living in 1908 rural Alabama, and you're the kid that has heard about a Ford Model-T from a friend of a friend of a friend. Then this other kid comes in and shows you a picture he made of a 2007 Honda Civic complete with an enclosed body, air conditioning, radio, power windows, carbon steel frame, and maybe a flux capacitor that will take you back to the future when it goes above 88 miles an hour, and tells you that that's what cars will look like in a hundred years.

I mean, obviously if someone actually have 500 billion dollars to blow on a space station, it might not look anything like Matus's picture. It is what it is, a potential look at a space station that incorporates projected technology growth over the next 50 years. He said so from the start. So it seems strange that you would criticize him over the "ion thruster" aspects when that was exactly what he had intended to do in the first place. It's not as if he's claiming that this is the blue print for the Death Star. Everything else in terms of aeronautics itself that you have criticized, he has given -whether right or wrong- reasoned and articulate explanations for.

And yeah, you don't have to waste your time "working out the physics" or whatever to respond to his rebukes. I mean, shit, it's a picture of a space boat from the future on an internet forum in a thread that was actually about a sky scraper. But as much as you claim that you don't mean to be insulting, you sure as hell look like you're going out of your way to be passive aggressive.

[DavidV]

I was too lazy to do the math for my claims, but according to Pop Sci, it's very simple.

If you want the station to do 1 revolution per minute like Space Odyssey 2001, the radius of the stations needs to be:

r= g/w^2

r = 9.8m/s ^2 / .1 rad/s

r = 980 m

The radius of the station in the rendering appears to be closer to 100m:

100m = 9.8m/s ^2 / X rad/s

X = 1.04 rad /s

1.04 radian per second is just about 10 revolutions per minute!

If the average person is 2m tall,

98m = Xm/s ^2 / 1.04 rad/s

g = 9.7 m/s^2

That's about a 1% difference in gravity. That might not seem like much, but Mt Everest is 8,848m and the radius of the Earth is 6,371,000m, so that's less than 1% too. Imagine doing the gravitational equivalent of climbing Mt Everest every time you stand up!

[John McVey]

The radius of the station in the rendering appears to be closer to 100m:

100m = 9.8m/s ^2 / X rad/s

X = 1.04 rad /s

1.04 radian per second is just about 10 revolutions per minute!

That's mistaken.

r = 100m = a / w^2

w^2 = a / r

w = sqrt (a/r)

w = sqrt (9.8/100) = 0.31 radians per second = 0.05 revs/second = 2.99 RPM.

3RPM is still zippy, though. Judging from a cool science exhibit I went into while in Brisbane one time, walking through an aquarium-style plexiglass hallway with full view of the heavens would be... interesting The hallway had better have sturdy handrails and non-slip flooring!

If the average person is 2m tall ... That's about a 1% difference in gravity. That might not seem like much, but Mt Everest is 8,848m and the radius of the Earth is 6,371,000m, so that's less than 1% too. Imagine doing the gravitational equivalent of climbing Mt Everest every time you stand up!

I don't quite understand what you're getting at. All that the maths shows is that that there is a 2% gravity differential between head and foot for a 2m tall man. It doesn't mean that the exertion required to stand up is the equivalent of what is required to climb high enough on Earth so as to be at the same differential. The opposite conclusion will hold, in fact: as a dweller stands up the exertion required per unit of distance raised drops slowly because the net centrifugal force applying at his body's centre of gravity will fall as his distance to the station's axis falls. The only thing that might be of medical concern is the differential causing a tiny bit of pulling on internal organs and structures.

JJM

[Maarten]

In his book "The case for Mars", Robert Zubrin discusses the radius issue in one of the chapters, and I remember him specifically arriving at a radius of orbit of about a hundred meters as one that is ideal because it's a good trade-off between the gravity difference and the immense costs associated with building much larger spacecraft.

I think the gravity difference mostly becomes problematic when you reduce the radius to something like 10-20 meters, because then there is a 10-15% difference between your head and feet, and that is definitely noticeable. And climbing Mt. Everest isn't hard because of the gravity difference as far as I know; it's mostly the sheer size of the thing and the fact that the atmosphere is so dilute there.

[DavidV]

In his book "The case for Mars", Robert Zubrin discusses the radius issue in one of the chapters, and I remember him specifically arriving at a radius of orbit of about a hundred meters as one that is ideal because it's a good trade-off between the gravity difference and the immense costs associated with building much larger spacecraft.

Are you sure that his design called for 1 gravity?

Check out this NASA page on the risk of corilois forces.

[Matus1976]

Imagine doing the gravitational equivalent of climbing Mt Everest every time you stand up!

Assuming you were as tall as Mt. Everest, that might be a valid analogy. A 1% - 2% gravitation gradient difference between head and toe would be below the threshold of perception level.

[Matus1976]

The radius of the station in the rendering appears to be closer to 100m:

100m = 9.8m/s ^2 / X rad/s

X = 1.04 rad /s

1.04 radian per second is just about 10 revolutions per minute!

If the average person is 2m tall,

98m = Xm/s ^2 / 1.04 rad/s

g = 9.7 m/s^2

That's about a 1% difference in gravity. That might not seem like much, but Mt Everest is 8,848m and the radius of the Earth is 6,371,000m, so that's less than 1% too. Imagine doing the gravitational equivalent of climbing Mt Everest every time you stand up!

Actually it's 150m in radius and rotates 2.44 times per minute and will generate 1G on the lowest floor, which is on the site.

Also, the disorientating effects of simulating gravity using rotating wheels decrease as the diameter of the rotating structure increases. Ark I's habitat rings will be large enough to make these effects unnoticeable and to comfortably house each rings 250 occupants, but not so large as to make construction too difficult.

The effects of the corilois force, which essentially comes from the difference in the tangential velocity at different radius, is also diminished as the size of the structure increases and the rotational rate decreases, and at this size is also below the threshold of perceptability. In small quickly rotating structures, if an astronaught turns their head rapidly to one side, the inner ear on the leading side will have a higher tangential velocity, and the inner ear on the trailing side will have a lower, the brain interprets this as suddenly tilting your head sideways, again, a large enough ring, even if rotating fast, makes this effect unnoticeable (although if you are playing catch you might have some problems)

Instead of throwing out vague ideas, how about present some of the data showing what optimal rates are and the threshold of perception levels for these things are. Might want to start here - http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/inhabit...l_gravity.shtml

Since this topic originated on 3D objects, here is my latest project, a very high detailed model of the Enterprise D from Star Trek. Modeling is done, but still need to do lighting and surfacing. Much higher res images are on the site

http://www.matus1976.com/3d/Star_Trek/Ente...eD/in_progress/

[John McVey]

Also, the disorientating effects of simulating gravity using rotating wheels decrease as the diameter of the rotating structure increases. Ark I's habitat rings will be large enough to make these effects unnoticeable and to comfortably house each rings 250 occupants, but not so large as to make construction too difficult.

I was thinking of visual cues and their effect on balance. At a 100m radius the images of the stars would be zipping by on the plexiglass floor at 31.4 metres per second (even faster with greater radii at the same g), creating a blur with a definite direction. The science exhibit I went into in Brisbane demonstrated that this sort of visual experience means that an observation deck would be impractical even at slower speeds (unless the aim is to freak people out as entertainment). Even just port-holes wont be much use. Decks and ports closer to the axes will be a different matter, say to watch or direct ships coming in and out, so even a ring as small as 100-150m would be fine so long as people don't mind not seeing outside terribly often.

The effects of the corilois force ... a large enough ring, even if rotating fast, makes this effect unnoticeable (although if you are playing catch you might have some problems)

For a game of catch, that the whole body of air would be rotating would itself mitigate things further, too. But more seriously than catch would be that industrial designers would have to include all forces and differentials in how they design plant and intend for machinery to operate. For example, that doesn't seem like much of a problem for working with materials that have yield points, but for materials without a yield point it could lead to modes of failure not normally expected on Earth even though the differentials may have no appreciable biological effect. Similarly, industrial processes involving raising things to significant heights would then have additional issues, such as a blast furnace or fractional distillation column (assuming you'd eventually have things like these in space). I don't think these problems are insurmountable, though they will require intelligence planning and departures from traditional operating methods.

JJM

[Steve D'Ippolito]

You wouldn't see stars zipping by because they are at infinity, you see the view outside the window rotate. (Because I sometimes have rotational vertigo issues, this would almost be normal for me. ) Provided that the line from your eye parallel to the axis of rotation went through the window. If your eye->window line of site is skewed to the axis of rotation you will see stars pass by, describing arcs; they will look like they are moving faster and faster the more the skew is. That's more critical than the linear speed of the rotation. Whether this would cause distress or not is another issue. Just making the window deep-welled will mean people cannot see much unless they are right in front of it.

Bigger problem is that the sun, moon and earth, all big sources of light, will be shining through the window and tracing a circular path on the opposite wall 2.44 times a minute (assuming the calculation is correct)--the further off axis they are the bigger the circle will be will be. And it's impossible to make sure they are all on the rotation axis at all times. That will drive people nuts; like having someone swing a flashlight around constantly. You MAY be able to set things up so that the station is oriented towards the sun as it orbits the earth (there are orbits that precess at just the right rate that they always cross the equator at the same local times) but the moon will still be a major moving lightsource, sometimes not too bad, sometimes worse depending on its phase.

Now if there is some stationary piece of clutter right outside the window, it *will* appear to fly past but it will be like the blink of an eye, like a "what was that!?" Such stuff would have to be cleaned up regularly lest it actually collide with the rapidly-rotating station.

[John McVey]

Whether this would cause distress or not is another issue.

The view from a small port-hole would be not much more than a white and sideways version of the Matrix screen saver going at a rapid clip. I doubt very much there'd be much in the way of acute issues there, except in particular people's circumstances (eg epileptics?). What would be more of a concern is chronic exposure through larger portholes and observation windows by dockworkers and the like.

Bigger problem is that the sun, moon and earth, all big sources of light, ... that will drive people nuts; like having someone swing a flashlight around constantly.

One flash every 20-25 seconds? I think that would be less bad than what people who live or work in the view of dynamic lights systems (eg advertising, neon signs) have to put up with. I think that's even well below the frequencies that get epileptics worried, though the flashes themselves might still set off a person or two.

Also, if sunlight were to get in through the ports that would mean they'd have so much shielding on all viewports that most of the time there'd be blackness (and hence probably no entertainment-oriented observation deck). That just leaves the intermittent flash issue, which I don't think is going to be a problem at all.

Such stuff would have to be cleaned up regularly lest it actually collide with the rapidly-rotating station.

There are OHS&W issues galore. I hope they aren't used to beat down private venturing. In the meantime: Matus, carry on!

JJM

[volco]

Back on Earth, this is an update of my city:

I want to call it Mulligan Point if not Valley, do you think it's proper?

Edited June 7, 2008 by volco

[Gabo]

I want to call it Mulligan Point if not Valley, do you think it's proper?

Probably. Very nice work!

[Matus1976]

Great work Volco. makes me want to get back to work on my 3D city as well!

Are you doing this in a 3D art program or a CAD / Architectural program?

[volco]

Thanks Gabo, ! thanks MAtus!

I'm using plain "retarded" Sketch Up,and sometimes rendering in Kerkythea.

Another section of the city....

[volco]

Matus have you make any other cities besides Atlantis (or whatever the hexagonal island city was called)? sketches, anything? please post!

[Matus1976]

Matus have you make any other cities besides Atlantis (or whatever the hexagonal island city was called)? sketches, anything? please post!

Hi Volco,

I don't have much that is in a rendered final form, it's mostly just alot of plain grey models so far. The only building I made significant progress on was my art deco styled skyscraper

Short animated fly in -

[EC]

Wow... that last building is beautiful. I would love to see it built one day.

Edited June 17, 2008 by EC

[Matus1976]

Wow... that last building is beautiful. I would love to see it built one day.

Thanks! I'll have to get back to work on this one, It's definately been my favorite so far to work on.