Last entries of my journal
Important Internet Spaceships part 2 - survival of the fittest?
Okay, we found out obvious priorities in interstellar travel (thank you, thank you captain Obvious), so let's see what technologies we have nowadays at our disposal.
Survival of the crew, that's the toughest one, all right. The thing is, small social group (the size of, lets say, small provincial town) need to survive and continue to exist as a whole through a few generations in the conditions of limited space and resources. It's not a technical problem per se where the hardest task lies but the social one. Biological shields, close-cycle water-and-air, food production - any other technical problem could be solved within technological advancement. But I don't see the easy way out of social problems.
Lets see, for a starter, government and economical structure of our space town, what could it be? We have to stretch our resources thin for a long run, so we can't afford to have big social and economical segregation. Money as universal resource has a meaning if there is a range of commodities and services to buy, not in the condition of rationing our supplies (so, good old capitalistic society in it's raw form won't work in our environment. We can't afford rich and poor in a general sense). We have no (or have very limited) natural resources, every new thing must be manufactured from something we take with us from the start. And, frankly, we can't afford any civilian unrest, high crime levels and many other things we have in our everyday societies no matter what country we live in.
Okay, I see several ways.
First one. Some sort of communism and paramilitary government structure. Strong control of the state for every activity of the crew, centralized resource management. Well, yes, the funny thing - it seems that it's model was tested in my own country as in some eastern ones (yay for interstellar technologies in our life!). Well, as far as USSR, we had too many natural resources, so that could be the whole problem of an experiment. But despite all recent black PR I myself remember old country as a place where children dreamt of space exploration and, yes, interstellar flights. Still, we need something more stable as a society, we also has a poorer North Korea as much cleaner (and harsh) experiment. Yep, I don't think it's perfect structure, but it could do.
Second one. Let's go at the fantasy world for a change. Virtual social-capitalistic society. We could have some sort of money to buy non-material resources, not essential for the main mission. Yep, music, movies, that sort of thing, some personalized entertainment like online gaming. Oh yeah, the ship full of MMORPG gamers with real-money-trade, all those premium items and services of a free-to-play game. Well, I will have a nightmares about that, but we could kill two birds with one stone - make a virtual economy (to stimulate self-improvement through competition) and also make recreation capabilities with limited resources. Oh, and mix it with communism and we will get another real-life interstellar spaceship experiment, yip, that will be the PRC :P
Third one. Well, let's dream it could be some sort of neo-society, like self-organised net society, crowd sourcing, open source, so-called democracy 2.0, any other things. Well, we are talking now about spaceships, right, not today's political movements (like US Occupy WallStreet, Russian White Ribbons, Egyptian Tahrir Sq, etc etc... even movements like Anonimous), but I hope the analogies is clear enough.. For it to work we need everyone on the net and with some minimum level of education, but that's one thing we could provide for sure in the interstellar spaceship conditions, right? At least we're doing small scale experiments all around the world now, so we could develop some kind of answer in the near future. As for economics, it could be something new, like today's "attention economy" or even some kind of "trust economy", where we earn not some kind of material resources but some kind of equivalent of trust as a commodity (think about "reputation" on some internet portals and social networks).
Oh yes, folks, feel free to express your own opinions on discussed matters of today's interstellar technologies :P.
Important Internet Spaceships part 1 - set the course
Thinking about design tradeoffs at my work and at some of my hobbies lead me to a strange idea... Let's say we want to build a manned interstellar spaceship meant to reach nearest star systems without any faster-than-light cosmo-fantasy technologies. What will be the key characteristics of it's construction? Which goals we must seek the most while in highlevel design stage? Let's think like an architects, not just an engineers.
My pick is:
1. Survivability of the crew. Our first and foremost priority. As with hundreds of years ago, crew, our people, is our most valuable resource. Not just from ethical point-of-view, it's also a practical one. Human adapt, survive, have the ability to self-replicate. We build the machines to build machines to carry us at some distant places. Manned mission could be a success only if the crew reach it's destination. And that doesn't mean just biological shielding and life support systems, it's also a preservation of society. We have a long flight ahead, yes, more than one generation will live here.
2.Survivability of the construction. We must survive. So the key construction points must survive (with humans as number 1 components, yes). And we can't build a city-size machine without some bugs (look for software engineering, yes :P). So it's not indestructibility build-to-last parts. It's repairability, redundancy, multi-purposing of the components. Build something stronger from weaker parts. If something will broke we should be able to replace it, reroute it, repurpose it. Just look at some offroad legends like LR Defender, it's not reliability but repairability and heroic actions of the "crew" what makes that cars an Africa legend, something that venture "where no car rode before". Everything could break, even the most reliable parts. We must build our ship according to that. Nothing is perfect, no part is everlasting and indestructible.
3. Versatility of whole construction and its parts. The travel will take a few human generations and look at the technological improvements we made at last 30-40 years. Our space mission could benefit greatly from such technological breakthroughs if we could upgrade our ship on the go. Make better machines, to build better machines to build ship parts, with limited onboard resources. Recycling. Rebuilding. Conservation of energy. We could receive technology updates fom our planet back there, even ready-to-deploy upgrade plans and we could have something better at the end than the steam train we started with. Okay, the Earth discovered faster-than-light travel, let's download and install the upgrade and up we go to Tau Ceti!
1-3 is closely related to each other. Humans means versatility and survival. Survival of some key construction points is crucial, but with enough human and technical ability to adapt we could rebuild everything else, using broken parts as source of materials for a new (and with some updates) even better ones. Our steam engine broke, we could build gasoline engine from the same material. I think there is enough raw materials in some old transistor receivers to build quite a few iPods, if only we could have the ability to recycle it properly and have enough energy and knowledge.
4. Power source longevity ...
5. Engine speed and efficiency ...
6. ...
Will be continued in the next post.
logbook - 10th day
Today is the final day of our little adventure. The thousands kilometers of snow, cold and struggle to keep our truck, no, our moving home, is behind us. But still, let me tell you something.
It isn't cold or other hardships what we will remember from this trip, but the feeling of trust, friendsip and accomplishment. Our travel was a bit troublesome and, frankly, reckless. Every day prepared for us some new challenges, tiny or big. And you know what, we beat them all.
And I'm feeling a bit philosophical (thanks to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.5){kind=small}
malck, clancynorthwind and some others who shared their thoughts with me during the course of travel). So bear with my ramblings a little, or just see the photos.On every log page I wrote "stress level of the crew - absolute zero", and that wasn't bluff. Yes, we have some stressfull moments, but it all passed very quickly. I think it's the nature of such travels, when you live by your own struggle and struggles of few close friends.
There are nobody to blame here, nobody to moan. Nobody owes you nothing, your complaints have no meaning there. You either do everything you can to survive and go forward, or you stays where you are, alone and in the deadly cold. Your engine stuck because of some bastard at refueling station, well, maybe you could sue him. But it won't get you out of where you are right now, in the cold without means to go forward or sometimes heat yourself. So your only way is to do what you must to repair it, no other options, no complaints, no regrets. Just do what you must and you will win. Rawr!
This kind of thoughts, primal, animal-like, leave no place for doubts and other complex existential things. So you really at peace inside, inner tranquility of struggle to survive, and as you continue to beat the odds this feeling grew, and you don't need to be a tibet monk to feel like buddha.
Purrs and whiskers, my dear readers, purrs and whiskers.
The temperature outside is -15 degree celsius;
temperature inside living space of our truck is +19 celsius;
temperature inside truck cabin is +5 celsius;
local time zone - GMT+9 (Moscow standart time +5);
stress level of the crew - absolute zero;
10 meters to our destination.
And now the photos:
logbook - 9th day
I'm typing this log in a truck's cabin while we crossing the border of Irkutsk oblast.
Yes, our destination is almost within our grasp, and it fills our hearts with joy (oh, yeah, bath, warm water, we soo missed ya)! The taiga surrounds us, pine trees all covered with fluffy snow, very cozy.
Feels almost like home. Well, it's certainly home for our truck, it seems to love deep snow and forest roads.
Yes, deep snow =^_^=.
Oh, and as for our habit of saving people along the way - today we helped out 4th one. This far it was the easiest of our cases. WV in the snow so near the road we wasn't need our heavy offroad arsenal. Just a little tug, here you go little one:
The temperature outside is -16 degree celsius;
temperature inside living space of our truck is +18 celsius;
temperature inside truck cabin is +3 celsius;
local time zone - GMT+9 (Moscow standart time +5);
stress level of the crew - absolute zero ;
600 km to our destination.
And now the photos:
logbook - 8th day
Okay, I must admit it, saving people from snow became our hobby. We saved the third car today, some nissan was thrown out of the road near Kemerovo. The driver was so thankful for our help, so he just open a trunk of his car, took from there huge sack of ... wheat flour and threw it inside our truck. And refused to take it back by all means. "You helped me, I will help you, no isn't the option!" He was soo persuasive we just can't say no (by the way, owner mazda we saved yesterday tried to gave us money but we utterly refused to take 'em) . So now we have 30-40 kg of wheat flour in our living space and wonder what use could it be to us...
Yes, our truck may be a bit ugly and the worst thing to long-distance travel, with it's huge fuel consumption, noise, vibrations, no comfort whatsoever. Our paws may be dirty from constant repairs and adjustments. But this truck is the best thing you could hope to meet on the road when your comfy little car happened to be stuck in deep snow, at night, far from asphalt so other cars can't dug you out. We have a sack full of flour to prove it!
Oh, and tiggah made a little fire alarm in the truck's cabin, never mind that.
The temperature outside is -10 degree celsius;
temperature inside living space of our truck is +19 celsius;
temperature inside truck cabin is +6 celsius;
stress level of the crew - absolute zero ;
1350 km to our destination.
And now the photos:
