Skip to main content

The Shape of Things to Come



I have recently had the opportunity to visit London, Paris, and Edinburgh. That is why my blog has been absent the past couple of weeks. One of the things my wife and I did was to ride the Eurostar train from London to Paris (through the “chunnel”). Something that struck me, is the similarity between a high speed train and an airliner. The interior cabin looks very similar. Walking into the train, if you didn’t know better you might think you were on a plane. But it is the external appearance that I want to talk about. Both the high speed train and the airplane need to be streamlined to minimize wind resistance. You don’t want a lot of wind resistance (except under the plane’s wing where wind resistance is a good thing). The streamlined design carries with it an inherent beauty, symmetry and smooth lines.

Space ships also need a streamlined shape if they are going to be travelling through an atmosphere. But if they are not going to be travelling through an atmosphere, they can be as haphazard as you like. Look at the international space station (ISS); there is nothing streamlined about that. But wait, you say, that’s not a space ship; it is just a platform. Well, it is a space “ship” in that it is not fixed. It is a vehicle moving in Earth orbit. Since it is travelling through space you could call it a space ship. As technologically innovative and advance as the ISS is, there is nothing terribly aesthetically pleasing about its appearance. It is just an agglomeration of pods, platforms and panels. But that’s okay. It does not need to be anything else.

The day will come when we have ships whose sole function is transferring passengers and cargo from an Earth orbit to the orbit of  the Moon, Mars, or other objects. There is no telling what these transfer ships will look like. Since they are not going into an atmosphere, they can be just about any shape you like. Even something like the Borg cube from the Star Trek series might not be unreasonable, though I suspect a sphere might be more practical, or something with a rotating ring that can produce a partial artificial gravity. The point is that while we don’t know what they will look like, they won’t look like space ships from the 1950’s and '60's movies, or the things that I envisioned when I was growing up.

In my novel, Star Liner, most of the action takes place on just such a transfer ship. When my main character, Jan, first sees the ship, he is not overwhelmed by its beauty. “It was essentially a fat cylinder with extensions sticking out in various places . . .” There is no need for it to be streamlined, no need for it to be pretty. On the other hand such a ship does not necessarily have to look ugly either. I am reminded of the “Discovery”, the ship from Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A space Odyssey. That ship is a pleasure to look at, yet at the same time its form is logically constructed. A sphere at the front that allows rotational artificial gravity for the astronauts, and a long superstructure that separates the living area from the nuclear powered engines (probably a good thing to have some distance there).

When it comes to building any kind of contrivance, form is dictated by function and environment. We see it in nature as well. It is true of animals as well as space ships. Birds and fish are streamlined because of the medium they have to travel in. Perhaps this is why the streamline appearance is so appealing to us. It looks “natural” to our human psyche because we have seen it so often in nature. As we move out into space, the rules change. Who knows what we will consider appealing after we have lived out there for a while.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon, or the other usual online sources)

Star Liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove

  Despite both of us having science backgrounds, my wife and I share a leaning toward the artistic, though we may express it in different ways. In her life, my wife has been a painter, a poet, a singer, an actor, and a fiction writer. Not to mention a mother. I don’t remember what precipitated this event, but my wife, my son, and I were at home in the front room. My wife was responding to something my son said. She said, “remember, you get half your brains from me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a complete idiot.” To which my son started howling with laughter and said to me,” I think you have just been insulted.” Sometimes I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. I get no respect. But that is not an uncommon state of affairs for fatherhood. When my son was going to middle school and high school, my wife was always the one to go in with him to get him registered for classes. One time she was unable to go and I had to be the one to get him registered. “Ugh,” he said. “why can’t Mama do i...
1 comment
Read more

Empathy

  Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...
1 comment
Read more

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

My first experience with cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction was Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer was one of the early works that defined the cyberpunk genre. It was insanely influential. It won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award. But for me, it just did not resonate. I had a hard time visualizing the concepts. It left a bad taste in my mouth for cyberpunk. I mostly avoided the genre. Then a couple of years ago I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson which is cyberpunk (although some people say it is a parody of cyberpunk). Whatever, I liked it. I recently picked up All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu and it immediately became apparent to me that this was cyberpunk. Julia Z is the main character, and I think this is going to be the start of a series following her. She is a hacker (hence cyberpunk). She has got herself in trouble and so she lives on the margins, barely making it. Then a lawyer asks her for her help. His wife has been kidnapped. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more