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Bishop Ring (habitat)
__NOTOC__ A Bishop RingRain Noe"Space Colony Form Factors, Part 3: The Stanford Torus and Beyond" ''Core77'', August 7, 2015. Retrieved 28 May 2018. is a type of hypothetical rotating wheel space station originally proposed in 1997 by Forrest Bishop of the Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering.Forrest Bishop"Open Air Space Habitats" Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering, 1997. Retrieved 28 May 2018. The concept is a smaller scale version of the Iain Banks, Banks The Culture#Orbitals, Orbital, which itself is a smaller version of the Ringworld, Niven ring.Adam Hadhazy"Could We Build a Ringworld?" ''Popular Mechanics'', September 4, 2014. Retrieved 28 May 2018. Like other space habitat designs, the Bishop Ring would spin to produce artificial gravity by way of centrifugal force. The design differs from O'Neill Cylinder, the classical designs produced in the 1970s by Gerard K. O'Neill and NASA in that it would use carbon nanotubes instead of steel, allowing the habitat to be built much ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mirror
A mirror, also known as a looking glass, is an object that Reflection (physics), reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror forms an image of whatever is in front of it, which is then focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the direction of light at an angle equal to its incidence. This allows the viewer to see themselves or objects behind them, or even objects that are at an angle from them but out of their field of view, such as around a corner. Natural mirrors have existed since Prehistory, prehistoric times, such as the surface of water, but people have been manufacturing mirrors out of a variety of materials for thousands of years, like stone, metals, and glass. In modern mirrors, metals like silver or aluminium are often used due to their high reflectivity, applied as a thin coating on glass because of its naturally smooth and very Hardness (materials science), hard surface. A mirror is a Wave (physics), wave reflector. Light consists ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carbon Nanotubes
A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with a diameter in the nanometre range (nanoscale). They are one of the allotropes of carbon. Two broad classes of carbon nanotubes are recognized: * ''Single-walled carbon nanotubes'' (''SWCNTs'') have diameters around 0.5–2.0 nanometer, nanometres, about 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. They can be idealised as cutouts from a two-dimensional graphene sheet rolled up to form a hollow cylinder. * ''Multi-walled carbon nanotubes'' (''MWCNTs'') consist of nested single-wall carbon nanotubes in a nested, tube-in-tube structure. Double- and triple-walled carbon nanotubes are special cases of MWCNT. Carbon nanotubes can exhibit remarkable properties, such as exceptional tensile strength and thermal conductivity because of their nanostructure and bond strength, strength of the bonds between carbon atoms. Some SWCNT structures exhibit high electrical conductivity while others are semiconductors. In addition, ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rotating Wheel Space Station
A rotating wheel space station, also known as a von Braun wheel, is a concept for a hypothetical wheel-shaped space station. Originally proposed by Herman Potočnik in 1929, and popularized by Wernher von Braun in 1952. Specifications This type of station rotates about its axis, creating an environment of artificial gravity. Occupants of the station would experience centrifugal acceleration, according to the following equation: : a = -\omega^2 r where \omega is the angular velocity of the station, r is its radius, and a is linear acceleration at any point along its perimeter. In theory, the station could be configured to simulate the gravitational acceleration of Earth (9.81 m/s2), allowing for human long stays in space without the drawbacks of microgravity. History Both scientists and science fiction writers have thought about the concept of a rotating wheel space station since the beginning of the 20th century. Herman Potočnik introduced a spinning wheel station with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His 1970 novel ''Ringworld'' won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, Hugo, Locus Award, Locus, Ditmar Award, Ditmar, and Nebula Award for Best Novel, Nebula awards. With Jerry Pournelle he wrote ''The Mote in God's Eye'' (1974) and ''Lucifer's Hammer'' (1977). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America gave him the 2015 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. It also often includes elements of detective fiction and Adventure novel, adventure stories. His fantasy includes the series ''The Magic Goes Away'', works of rational fantasy dealing with magic as a non-renewable resource. Biography Niven was born in Los Angeles. He is a great-grandson of Edward L. Doheny, an oil tycoon who drilled the first successful well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field in 1892, and also was subsequently implicat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orbital (The Culture)
The Culture is a fictional interstellar post-scarcity civilisation or society created by the Scottish writer Iain Banks and features in a number of his space opera novels and works of short fiction, collectively called the ''Culture'' series. In the series, the Culture is composed primarily of sentient beings of the humanoid alien variety, artificially intelligent sentient machines, and a small number of other sentient "alien" life forms. Machine intelligences range from human-equivalent drones to hyper-intelligent Minds. Artificial intelligences with capabilities measured as a fraction of human intelligence also perform a variety of tasks, e.g. controlling spacesuits. Without scarcity, the Culture has no need for money; instead, Minds voluntarily indulge humanoid and drone citizens' pleasures, leading to a largely hedonistic society. Many of the series' protagonists are humanoids who have chosen to work for the Culture's diplomatic or espionage organs, and interact with othe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elysium (film)
''Elysium'' is a 2013 American dystopian science fiction action film written, produced, and directed by Neill Blomkamp. It was Blomkamp's second directorial effort. The film stars Matt Damon and Jodie Foster alongside Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, and William Fichtner. The film takes place on both a ravaged Earth and a luxurious artificial world called Elysium. The film itself offers deliberate social commentary that explores political and sociological themes such as immigration, overpopulation, transhumanism, health care, worker exploitation, the justice system, technology, and social class issues. The film was released on , 2013, by Sony Pictures Releasing through the TriStar Pictures label, in both conventional and IMAX Digital theaters. It received positive reviews, but critics considered it to be disappointing after Blomkamp's first film, '' District 9''. It grossed $286 million and was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 17, 2013. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Outer Wilds
''Outer Wilds'' is a 2019 action-adventure game developed by Mobius Digital and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game follows the player character as they explore a planetary system stuck in a 22-minute time loop that resets after the sun goes supernova and destroys the system. Through repeated attempts, they investigate the alien ruins of the Nomai to discover their history and the cause of the time loop. The game began development in 2012 as director Alex Beachum's master's thesis. He was inspired to create a game focused on exploration in which the player character was not the center of the game world. Beachum led a small team in building the game, first as an independent project, then as a commercial game at Mobius after the project won the Excellence in Design and Seumas McNally Grand Prize awards at the 2015 Independent Games Festival. Annapurna joined the project as the publisher in 2015 and funded its expansion beyond a student project. ''Outer Wilds'' was rel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Halo Series
''Halo'' is a military science fiction video game series and media franchise, originally developed by Bungie and currently managed and developed by Halo Studios (previously 343 Industries), part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios. The series launched in November 2001 with the first-person shooter video game '' Halo: Combat Evolved'' and its tie-in novel, '' The Fall of Reach''. The latest major installment, ''Halo Infinite'', was released in 2021. Spinoffs include real-time strategy and twin-stick shooter games. Bungie began as a developer of computer games for the Macintosh platform. After the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2000, their in-progress game, which started life as a real-time strategy game, became ''Halo: Combat Evolved'', a first-person shooter exclusive to Microsoft's Xbox video game console. Following the success of ''Halo'', Bungie developed additional ''Halo'' sequels before and after regaining its independence from Microsoft in 2007. Microsoft established 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting (narrative), setting, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing the world with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, culture and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers. Worldbuilding often involves the Fantasy map, creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology, and often if writing speculative fiction, different peoples. This may include social norms, social customs as well as invented languages (often called ''conlangs'') for the world. The world could encompass different planets spanning vast distances of space or be limited in scope to a single small village. Worldbuilding exists in novels, tabletop role-playing games, and visual media such as film, films, video games, and comics. Prior to 1900, most worldbuilding was conducted by novelists, who could leave imagination of the fictional setting in part to the reader. Some a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orion's Arm
Orion's Arm (also called the Orion's Arm Universe Project, OAUP, or simply OA) is a multi-authored online hard science fiction world-building project, first established in 2000 by M. Alan Kazlev, Donna Malcolm Hirsekorn, Bernd Helfert and Anders Sandberg and further co-authored by many people since. Anyone can contribute articles, stories, artwork, or music to the website. A large mailing list exists, in which members debate aspects of the world they are creating, discussing additions, modifications, issues arising, and work to be done. A computer game and a tabletop role-playing game are being developed by the community, within the OA milieu. There is an ezine for Orion's Arm fiction, art, and commentary, called ''Voices: Future Tense'', add-ons for the Celestia program to displaying Orion's Arm planets, spacecraft and other objects, and additional transhumanist flavored SF illustrations. The first published Orion's Arm book, a collection of five novellas set within the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
