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)
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