Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Concept b

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Kryten
Guest

Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 9:41 pm Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

"Dreamer" <javidhussain@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1104921194.970470.315630@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Quote:

I have
done a 6 page biography on the boy here--
http://www.geocities.com/javid_hssn/science/astronomy/ahad.html

It looks very overblown and immodest IMHO.

It looks the kind of text a parent or relative would write, wanting everyone
to think they've produced some kind of prodigy.

The claims are rather nebulous to say the least.

"He sent the names of his entire family across 300 million miles of
interplanetary space to Mars
in a NASA DVD carried onboard one of the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers"

BFD. NASA sent the thing. All he did was log onto the NASA website that
collected names and hands back an electronic certificate. Even I've got one.
Took me less than a minute. The site doesn't even bother to verify names, so
even Mickey Mouse and various other joke names are on that DVD too.

"He travelled to Kennedy Space Center in Florida"

BFD. As a tourist on vacation, along with millions of other tourists.

"His famous words"

He ain't famous.

"Abdul Ahad's website and scientific works has attracted visitors from the
highest ranking"

BFD. NASA etc probably use Google to look for stuff just like the rest of
us. Just because they looked at that

You refer to him as "the boy".
Since he is 36 and married, he hardly counts as a boy.
Is he your son/nephew/relative or something?

Or are you hoping for a cut of the production budget?

Quote:

ingeniously designed starship of the future...!"

All he has done is say it is a huge hollow rotating cylinder with people and
plants in it.
BFD. That ain't design, that's just a rough description.

Design is where you sit down and do the maths and work out how the thing
should work.

Arthur C Clarke's story "Rendezvous with Rama" also had a huge cylindrical
spaceship.

BTW, about scooping up ice having the braking force of 14.75 times its own
mass of TNT, how is that working out for you?

Quote:

His FAQ page has all the detail---
http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent/fiction/FAQ.html

Oh yeah, inbreeding will be prevented by taking frozen sperm and eggs.
I can't see women being too keen on some computer telling them when they
should have a baby that isn't the product of their own egg or the sperm of
the guy they are in love with.

Certainly women in less egalitarian societies are regularly told who to
marry. Arranged marriages are common in Muslim and Hindu society for
example. But the only country rich enough to afford that kind of space
project is America. A country that is very wary about Muslims at the moment.
Many people equate Islam with religious extremism and terrorism. I'd expect
to be thoroughly searched getting on a plane if I turned up in traditional
dress, so what makes you think they'd let me on that spaceship?

Any woman smart enough to be chosen for the mission is going to say
"Buddy, you can shove that sperm popsicle up your own orifice!".

Or are you going to tell them they have to stay behind and face certain
death if they don't agree to those terms?

How will The Sex Police (hmm, now that's a good movie or band name!) stop
loads of bored randy teenagers nipping off for quickies? Mass medicated
contraception? It's quickly turning into a police state eh?

I have heard a more ridiculous movie plot though ("The Core") so maybe some
studio would be daft enough to buy Ahad's.

John Woodgate
Guest

Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 11:09 pm Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

Quote:

Arthur C Clarke's story "Rendezvous with Rama" also had a huge
cylindrical spaceship.

Not the first one, either. Larry Niven's 'Confinement Asteroid' is
earlier. Construction begins in 2050.(;-)
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

Rich Grise
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 1:13 am Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 07:39:31 +0000, John Woodgate wrote:

Quote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Ben Bradley <ben_nospam_bradley@mi
ndspring.com> wrote (in <esrmt05jm26gh3vnpvp35rjn586mdcvv1q@4ax.com>)
about 'Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Concept by A.
Ahad', on Wed, 5 Jan 2005:

"OPEN THE POD BAY DOOR, HAL."

"Say 'please'!"

Or get blown out into vacuum, and hold your breath. Yah, right. Ever
ascend from 30 feet with scuba? If you try to hold your breath with a
differential pressure of a whole atmosphere, in the first place you
couldn't hold it, and if you could, you'd get pneumothorax. I think if I
was going into vacuum, I'd first hyperventilate until I got woozy, then
expel my breath as hard as I could, so my lungs don't explode. Of course,
you'd have to keep your eyes shut real tight. :-)

Cheers!
Rich

Dirk Bruere at Neopax
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 1:22 am Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

Rich Grise wrote:

Quote:

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 07:39:31 +0000, John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Ben Bradley <ben_nospam_bradley@mi
ndspring.com> wrote (in <esrmt05jm26gh3vnpvp35rjn586mdcvv1q@4ax.com>)
about 'Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Concept by A.
Ahad', on Wed, 5 Jan 2005:

"OPEN THE POD BAY DOOR, HAL."

"Say 'please'!"

Or get blown out into vacuum, and hold your breath. Yah, right. Ever
ascend from 30 feet with scuba? If you try to hold your breath with a
differential pressure of a whole atmosphere, in the first place you
couldn't hold it, and if you could, you'd get pneumothorax. I think if I
was going into vacuum, I'd first hyperventilate until I got woozy, then
expel my breath as hard as I could, so my lungs don't explode. Of course,
you'd have to keep your eyes shut real tight. :-)

IIRC you get around 15sec of consciousness in vacuum. Which is quite a long time
if all you have to do is open a door.

--
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org

Rich Grise
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 1:31 am Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 15:41:11 +0000, Kryten wrote:

Quote:

Or are you going to tell them they have to stay behind and face certain
death if they don't agree to those terms?

Probably.

Quote:

How will The Sex Police (hmm, now that's a good movie or band name!) stop
loads of bored randy teenagers nipping off for quickies? Mass medicated
contraception? It's quickly turning into a police state eh?

It's a ship. Any ship has to be an absolute dictatorship. The captain has
the power of life and death over anyone on "his" ship. Unless he has to
report to somebody. ("That doesn't alter the fact that keelhauling's
illegal!")

Quote:

I have heard a more ridiculous movie plot though ("The Core") so maybe
some studio would be daft enough to buy Ahad's.

Huh? Ridiculous?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314979/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120738/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052077/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052655/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100666/

IOW, there's a LOT of stupid movies.

Well, "Spaced Invaders" was quite clever - it was the invaders who were
stupid. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

Rich Grise
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 1:37 am Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 17:09:36 +0000, John Woodgate wrote:

Quote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Kryten <kryten_droid_obfusticator@
ntlworld.com> wrote (in <rUTCd.224$Wo1.18@newsfe5-gui.ntli.net>) about
'Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Concept by A. Ahad',
on Wed, 5 Jan 2005:
Arthur C Clarke's story "Rendezvous with Rama" also had a huge
cylindrical spaceship.

Not the first one, either. Larry Niven's 'Confinement Asteroid' is
earlier. Construction begins in 2050.(;-)

I've heard that if you find a suitable metallic asteroid, turning it into
a sphere is almost trivial - you drill a core and fill this core with
water, or ice. Plug up the hole. Use a solar mirror to heat up the whole
thing to its melting point, at which time the water in the core will be
superheated steam. The metal melts, and Bwoop! the steam inflates it to an
iron/nickel bubble. Then just poke a hole and start building stuff on the
inside. :-)

I also read a story where somebody went and got a big ice asteroid, or
maybe a chunk of Saturn's rings, and just dropped it on Mars. You'd have
to get a new ice block every few hundred years, because the atmosphere
will eventually escape.

And whoever tows the first iron/nickel/cobalt asteroid into a parking
orbit is going to become very, very rich. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

Rich Grise
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 12:25 pm Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:22:07 +0000, Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

Quote:

Rich Grise wrote:

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 07:39:31 +0000, John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Ben Bradley <ben_nospam_bradley@mi
ndspring.com> wrote (in <esrmt05jm26gh3vnpvp35rjn586mdcvv1q@4ax.com>)
about 'Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Concept by A.
Ahad', on Wed, 5 Jan 2005:

"OPEN THE POD BAY DOOR, HAL."

"Say 'please'!"

Or get blown out into vacuum, and hold your breath. Yah, right. Ever
ascend from 30 feet with scuba? If you try to hold your breath with a
differential pressure of a whole atmosphere, in the first place you
couldn't hold it, and if you could, you'd get pneumothorax. I think if I
was going into vacuum, I'd first hyperventilate until I got woozy, then
expel my breath as hard as I could, so my lungs don't explode. Of course,
you'd have to keep your eyes shut real tight. :-)

IIRC you get around 15sec of consciousness in vacuum. Which is quite a long time
if all you have to do is open a door.

And close it behind you, and turn the "AIR NOW!" valve, and so on. ;-)

I wonder what it would feel like on your eyes, if you, like, peeked?

Cheers!
Rich

Kryten
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 6:37 pm Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

"Rich Grise" <richgrise@example.net> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.01.06.06.30.13.992685@example.net...

Quote:

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:22:07 +0000, Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

Rich Grise wrote:

expel my breath as hard as I could, so my lungs don't explode. Of
course,
you'd have to keep your eyes shut real tight. :-)

IIRC you get around 15sec of consciousness in vacuum. Which is quite a
long time
if all you have to do is open a door.

And close it behind you, and turn the "AIR NOW!" valve, and so on. ;-)

I wonder what it would feel like on your eyes, if you, like, peeked?

Dunno, but I'm pretty sure your eyes are under no pressure to pop out of
your head on stalks (as shown on Total Recall) or your head pop like a messy
balloon (as in Outland). Unless of course your head is full of compressed
air.

It is true that blood contains dissolved gases, but a decrease of 1
atmosphere is only about the same as ascending 407 inches (10.3 metres) in
water. I don't think you get the bends unless you have been down a fair bit
deeper or longer.

Dirk Bruere at Neopax
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 7:42 pm Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

Kryten wrote:

Quote:

"Rich Grise" <richgrise@example.net> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.01.06.06.30.13.992685@example.net...

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:22:07 +0000, Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

Rich Grise wrote:

expel my breath as hard as I could, so my lungs don't explode. Of
course,
you'd have to keep your eyes shut real tight. :-)

IIRC you get around 15sec of consciousness in vacuum. Which is quite a
long time
if all you have to do is open a door.

And close it behind you, and turn the "AIR NOW!" valve, and so on. ;-)

I wonder what it would feel like on your eyes, if you, like, peeked?

Dunno, but I'm pretty sure your eyes are under no pressure to pop out of
your head on stalks (as shown on Total Recall) or your head pop like a messy
balloon (as in Outland). Unless of course your head is full of compressed
air.

It is true that blood contains dissolved gases, but a decrease of 1
atmosphere is only about the same as ascending 407 inches (10.3 metres) in
water. I don't think you get the bends unless you have been down a fair bit
deeper or longer.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

From the now extinct page http://medlib/jsc.nasa.gov/intro/vacuum.html:

How long can a human live unprotected in space?

If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so
is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage
your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and
you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but
theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to
vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil.
You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.

Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends", certainly some [mild,
reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) start after ten
seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen.
Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits
are not really known.

You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect
of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because,
although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer
away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has
depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct
sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can
get a very bad sunburn.

At NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson Space Center) we had a
test subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an
incident involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber back in '65. He
remained conscious for about 14 seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2
deprived blood to go from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not
reach a hard vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds.
The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude.
The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and
his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil.

Aviation Week and Space Technology (02/13/95) printed a letter by Leonard Gordon
which reported another vacuum-packed anecdote:

"The experiment of exposing an unpressurized hand to near vacuum for a
significant time while the pilot went about his business occurred in real life
on Aug. 16, 1960. Joe Kittinger, during his ascent to 102,800 ft (19.5 miles) in
an open gondola, lost pressurization of his right hand. He decided to continue
the mission, and the hand became painful and useless as you would expect.
However, once back to lower altitudes following his record-breaking parachute
jump, the hand returned to normal."

--
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org

Erik Max Francis
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 10:35 pm Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

Quote:

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

From the now extinct page http://medlib/jsc.nasa.gov/intro/vacuum.html:

I have a set of links regarding this here:

http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/science.html#Explosive_decompression__vacuum_exposure

Included is Geoffrey Landis' summary of the literature on the subject:

http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/vacuum_sf.html

--
Erik Max Francis && max@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
Custom reconciles us to everything.
-- Edmund Burke

Ash Wyllie
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 11:31 pm Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

Rich Grise opined

Quote:

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 17:09:36 +0000, John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Kryten <kryten_droid_obfusticator@
ntlworld.com> wrote (in <rUTCd.224$Wo1.18@newsfe5-gui.ntli.net>) about
'Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Concept by A. Ahad',
on Wed, 5 Jan 2005:
Arthur C Clarke's story "Rendezvous with Rama" also had a huge
cylindrical spaceship.

Not the first one, either. Larry Niven's 'Confinement Asteroid' is
earlier. Construction begins in 2050.(;-)

I've heard that if you find a suitable metallic asteroid, turning it into
a sphere is almost trivial - you drill a core and fill this core with
water, or ice. Plug up the hole. Use a solar mirror to heat up the whole
thing to its melting point, at which time the water in the core will be
superheated steam. The metal melts, and Bwoop! the steam inflates it to an
iron/nickel bubble. Then just poke a hole and start building stuff on the
inside. :-)

I'd really like to see a small proof of concept demo. Some asymmetry, or a
small flaw and your steam escapes to space.

Quote:

I also read a story where somebody went and got a big ice asteroid, or
maybe a chunk of Saturn's rings, and just dropped it on Mars. You'd have
to get a new ice block every few hundred years, because the atmosphere
will eventually escape.

Niven again. Brennan, a protector, wanted to kill the Martians. It wasn't
interested in a usable atmospere.

Quote:

And whoever tows the first iron/nickel/cobalt asteroid into a parking
orbit is going to become very, very rich. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

-ash
Cthulhu in 2005!
Why wait for nature?

Rich Grise
Guest

Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 2:54 am Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 12:37:41 +0000, Kryten wrote:

Quote:

"Rich Grise" <richgrise@example.net> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.01.06.06.30.13.992685@example.net...
On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:22:07 +0000, Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

Rich Grise wrote:

expel my breath as hard as I could, so my lungs don't explode. Of
course,
you'd have to keep your eyes shut real tight. :-)

IIRC you get around 15sec of consciousness in vacuum. Which is quite a
long time
if all you have to do is open a door.

And close it behind you, and turn the "AIR NOW!" valve, and so on. ;-)

I wonder what it would feel like on your eyes, if you, like, peeked?

Dunno, but I'm pretty sure your eyes are under no pressure to pop out of
your head on stalks (as shown on Total Recall) or your head pop like a messy
balloon (as in Outland). Unless of course your head is full of compressed
air.

It is true that blood contains dissolved gases, but a decrease of 1
atmosphere is only about the same as ascending 407 inches (10.3 metres) in
water. I don't think you get the bends unless you have been down a fair bit
deeper or longer.

Not the bends, but I'm thinking of pneumothorax. In scuba school, they're
very emphatic that if making an emergency ascent, _don't try to hold your
breath_!

And I don't think you want to get me started on the effects of intestinal
gas during pressure changes - this one can be a challenge in a 32-floor
elevator ride. ;-)

Thanks!
Rich

Rich Grise
Guest

Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 3:12 am Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 08:35:33 -0800, Erik Max Francis wrote:

Quote:

Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

From the now extinct page http://medlib/jsc.nasa.gov/intro/vacuum.html:

I have a set of links regarding this here:

http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/science.html#Explosive_decompression__vacuum_exposure

Included is Geoffrey Landis' summary of the literature on the subject:

http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/vacuum_sf.html

Michael Ash
Guest

Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 4:38 am Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

In rec.arts.sf.science Rich Grise <richgrise@example.net> wrote:

Quote:

Unfortunately, your simulation didn't really match vacuum conditions very
well. The major difference is that when your lungs are full of nothing,
gases in the blood will actively *escape* back out into the lungs. The
blood going through your lungs will not only not be re-oxygenated, it will
be very efficiently de-oxygenated. The 15 seconds of consciousness comes
from the fact that this is about how long it takes blood to get from your
lungs to your brain. Once blood that's had all of the oxygen sucked out of
it reaches your brain, it's game over as far as remaining conscious goes.

Logan Kearsley
Guest

Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 8:21 am Post subject: Re: Colony ship to Alpha Centauri - The Motion Picture Conce

Quote:

I've just done a little anecdotal-grade experiment. Everybody's done the
"how long can you hold your breath" trick, with some people achieving
three or four minutes. But I thought, in vacuum, you don't have a
lungful
of air. How closely can I simulate that condition by just simply
exhaling
as hard, and completely, as I can?

So I did. I exhaled, and continued to exhale, forcing all of the air
out
of my lungs that I was able to - since I'm in the atmosphere, there will
obviously be some quantity of air remaining. Oh, well, we'll have to
adjust our parameters. So I squeezed out as much as I could, and started
watching the clock.

At 45 seconds, I was impelled to breathe. I'm sure I could have gone
longer, but the "BREATHE NOW!" imperative from my limbic system was more
powerful than my desire to see if I got a buzz from it.

I guess the point is, you'd probably stay conscious for more than 15
seconds, but it would, like, hurt, like being strangled or something.
Shudder!

Unfortunately, your simulation didn't really match vacuum conditions very
well. The major difference is that when your lungs are full of nothing,
gases in the blood will actively *escape* back out into the lungs. The
blood going through your lungs will not only not be re-oxygenated, it will
be very efficiently de-oxygenated. The 15 seconds of consciousness comes
from the fact that this is about how long it takes blood to get from your
lungs to your brain. Once blood that's had all of the oxygen sucked out of
it reaches your brain, it's game over as far as remaining conscious goes.

So, presumably, something with haemocyanin based blood, which only releases
oxygen with the right chemical triggers, would last significantly longer...?

Maybe that's why martians are green. :)

-l.
------------------------------------
My inbox is a sacred shrine, none shall enter that are not worthy.

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