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Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 10:23 am
by Kaiserspike
To my delight, i came across a Generation ship in witchspace after dispatch Thargoids between Lerelace and Xeoner.
Truly awesome, but are these babies dockable?

Re: Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 10:30 am
by Cody
Kaiserspike wrote:
To my delight, i came across a Generation ship in witchspace after dispatch Thargoids between Lerelace and Xeoner.
Truly awesome, but are these babies dockable?
'The penalty for interference with such a vessel is marooning'!

Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 10:36 am
by Kaiserspike
be that as it may, i'm sure i saw images of the interior of one of these things, or were they mock ups? or a dream? or space dementia?

Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 10:44 am
by ADCK
Kaiserspike wrote:
be that as it may, i'm sure i saw images of the interior of one of these things, or were they mock ups? or a dream? or space dementia?
All of the above.

Their config files show docks attached to them, but never tried to dock one, don't they run if you get too close?

Furthermore, even if they can be docked, there are no "interiors" in Oolite, only 2d information screens.

Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 10:49 am
by Kaiserspike
Tried docking with what looked like a docking port at the front of one the ships, with predictably disastrous results.
As for the my notion of "interior" it was more like a fly through a hollow cylinder rather than a different 3-d environment.
Oh well, still glad to finally see one of 'em

Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 1:36 pm
by Commander McLane
Nice that you like it! :D

Re: Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 9:42 am
by Kaiserspike

Re: Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 10:16 am
by Micha
WOW! That picture was in one of my kids future-educational-thingy books when I was growing up in Germany.. talk about a blast from the past :) Pity they were predicting these things in orbit by the 90's or so at the time. Here we are well into the 2nd decade of the 21st century and.. nada. Well, almost nada (ISS).
</offtopic>

Re: Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 10:20 am
by Kaiserspike
haha, cool, i've seen it a few times before alright.
How possible would it be to texturise a similar terrain image onto the interior of the cylinder of a generation ship, and allow you to fly through and admire the scenery?

Re: Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 10:44 am
by Cmdr. Maegil
Unless the interior is modelled into a 3d landscape (buildings and trees included), It'll probably end up looking like google Earth...

Re: Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 4:11 pm
by Kaiserspike
i was think a flat 2d, render, and yes, Google Earth would be the valid comparison, still though...

More nostalgia, Micha http://www.disinfo.com/2011/11/1970s-na ... olony-art/

Re: Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 6:48 pm
by Kaks
And to think this book explained fairly lucidly how relatively easy it would have been to build them things with '70s technologies... oh well....

Re: Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 10:13 pm
by Disembodied
In the interests of balance (i.e. a punchup :D), there's always a counter-opinion ...
I was completely astonished by the prevalence of the “space” reaction to the inaugural Do the Math post on galactic-scale energy. The post illustrated that continuing growth of our physical scale (energy) is not viable on a number of fronts—not the least of which is that Earth’s surface would reach the boiling point of water in a mere 400 years, based purely on thermodynamic arguments, and independent of which energy technology is employed. Many comments on the internets chided this view as being hopelessly unrealistic in its willful ignorance of the great space migration to come.

The connotation is that we should not heed repeated warnings about our current collision course with a finite world when—by some clairvoyant means that eludes me—we know we are destined to colonize the infinite void beyond. Space is therefore seen as an escape hatch for the human endeavor and from our arguably botched track record on Earth. Escapism may be more accurate.

Re: Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 11:14 pm
by Cmdr. Maegil
...those were harsh words, although completely right in the sense people generally do try to avoid looking at problems whose solution entails a change in the life style.

But colonization needn't and shouldn't be associated with solving our planetary problems, I think that's a fallacy.

Re: Generation Ships 1.1

Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 8:20 am
by Disembodied
Tom Murphy wrote:
I want to caution against harboring illusions of space as the answer to our collision course of growth on a finite planet. We live at a special time. We have enjoyed spending our inheritance of fossil fuels, and are feeling rather heady about our technological prowess. For many generations now, we have ridden an exponential growth track, conditioning ourselves to believe that our upward trajectory is an eternal constant of our existence. We'll see. When we cross to the down-slope of fossil fuel availability—beginning with oil—we'll see how timeless the growth phase seems to be, and whether we can afford a continued presence in space. We should be mature enough to admit that we have no context in which to evaluate how successfully the human race will navigate this unprecedented transition.
Some more thoughts (and numbers) about space colonisation, within and without the solar system ...

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-st ... redux.html