From: Patrick Salsbury (salsbury_at_sculptors.com)
Date: 05/11/99
Message-Id: <199905110958.CAA32001@bootstrap.sculptors.com> Subject: Expressing a complex view, and the need for graphical presentation Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 02:58:42 -0700 From: Patrick Salsbury <salsbury_at_sculptors.com>
(Boy, I'm catching up on a LOT of mail tonight... :-) )
(Originally posted on floating-cities)
> Personally, I like the idea of an open bottom...it works for diving bells
> and
> for balloons, why not for cities? With the 1 mile diameter structure,
> we're
> only takling about requiring a 1 degree difference between ambient and
> internal, for buoyancy...about 2 degrees for positive lift *with* the
> payload
> of a small city inside.
>
> -- Chuck Knight
>
Yeah. I have a vision in my head, which I may have an
artist-friend convert to a painting, and which I may also do in
computer graphics, of a large, spherical sky city, 1+ miles in
diameter. The top half is clear, to let in sunlight & heat, there's a
bisecting "floor" at the equator, with various parks, ponds, farms,
etc., and with some (large) openings that let you see down into the
lower section (also letting light through, etc.)
The lower half slopes in like a giant bowl, with the city
arrayed out around it in terraces, sloping ever-more-gently towards
the nadir, so everyone gets a phenomenal view from their deck of the
land sloping away and curving around on both sides to meet again on
the far side.
At the very bottom of the sphere is a hole perhaps 4-500 yards
wide, which opens out to the world below. People may be hang-gliding
around either the top, or the bottom sections, and coming up through
the large bottom hole will be airships ferrying cargo and people from
earth to city, and vice-versa. The ships can float up to dock on the
underside of that massive "floor", where there would be appropriate
setup for standard cargo-shipping industry. (It might actually be
somewhat reminiscent of the scene from the original "Star Wars", where
the giant battlecruiser looms over the small ship, and it gets drawn
up into the Belly of the Beast...both from the perspective of the
ships entering the city through the bottom hole, and when they move
into docking position inside the sphere.)
That's a vision that's been in my head for 10 years. It was in
the *very* early discussions on the GEODESIC list, back around 1989,
but I think those archives have been lost to the winds of time. This
is why I'm beginning to think about graphical methods of communicating
it to people, until we have a real thing that they can see.
I'm beginning to realize the necessity of conveying these
complex technical ideas in concise, quick to view and understand
pictures and animations. So far, the Reality Sculptors Project has
attracted several hundred very sharp minds, but we really spend much
of our time discussing things. Hundreds of thousands of words describe
in delicious detail what it is that we want to accomplish, but it
takes time, and dedication to write and to read all those words. (And
we're getting to the point where there's enough discussion going on
that it's difficult to actually follow all the threads and lists.)
To this end, I'm beginning to focus more on my studies of
computer graphics, animation, 3D modelling and the like. If there are
any other folks out there who are interested in these areas, I'd
appreciate your help in devising ways to more effectively communicate
these ideas via visual means (and perhaps other creative ways).
For an absolutely prime example of just how effective the
visual communication method can be (not to mention a whole lot of
REALLY cool pictures of a proposed floating city! ;^) ), please take a
look at this page:
http://www.oceania.org/images/index.html
And for pointers to a whole bevy of other projects and
pictures dealing with the overall problems of designing life-support
systems for people on-, and off-planet, check out:
http://www.islandone.org/Settlements/
While I don't want (at all!) to "dumb-down" the presentation
of ideas on these pages, and in these fora, I also realize (through
years of trying to explain what it is that I want to do) that many
folks have a hard time grasping the interlocking concepts without
hours (or days, or years!) of discussion. Having a pictorial, or
interactive (VRML? Animation?) view of some of these ideas would go a
long way to quickly presenting a coherent view, which would help
interest more folks, and bring them quickly up to speed.
Any graphic artists, animators, painters, or other similarly
inclined folks (or those wanting to learn) out there?
Pat
___________________Think For Yourself____________________
Patrick G. Salsbury - http://reality.sculptors.com/~salsbury/
Check out the Reality Sculptors Project: http://reality.sculptors.com/
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