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VideonGames.com
is edited by: Chris Range email: crange(at)celticgrove.com Videon Games Company PO Box 70227 Knoxville, TN 37938 |
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08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003 01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004 02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004 03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004 04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004 |
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| News, Links and Space Goodies | |||||||||||||||||
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Wednesday, January 28, 2004 |
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Monday, January 26, 2004 |
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There are movies we like because they are art, because they are funny, or because they are timeless dramas. Often we like a movie just because it's fun. Everybody likes some bubblegum once in a while. People enjoy movies for a variety of reasons, but one of the simplest is that you remember it from childhood. That's how it is with me and Planet of the Apes. I don't want to overvaunt it the way it's so easy to do with movies from yesterday -- especially with science fiction. I don't think average people fainted at the site of the first movies featuring oncoming trains, shrieked when Rhett Butler said "dayum" on camera, or panicked in fear of the nihilistic scenes in Night of the Living Dead. Scary yes, panicky no.
People have tended to be more saavy than memory would like to credit. But however ham-fisted the moral, the famed last scene of POTA did make a statement. Like the expressionist German films of the 1920s (ok maybe not that high brow - heh heh) Planet of the Apes challenged our commonly-held conceit, that good always prevails and humanity will somehow survive. Yep, it's definitely a movie of its time. People just a few years younger than me don't remember the status quo that I simply took as gospel for most of my life before 1989. "The Russians and the U.S. have enough warheads pointed at each other to destroy the world 7 times over." So went the everyday reality. That's over now, for now at least. Today we face fleeter and more shadowy foes. But that's how it was then. I remember once at Scout camp in Whitesburg, TN, a camp counselor telling us a radio announcement had just confirmed that the Russians had launched a nuclear attack. "Pray for your families, and consider your lives boys. These may be your final moments." * Sound of crickets chirping. Instead of reacting with fear, most of us laughed it off. Were the attack real we'd have been turned to ash in a blinding moment, all the while convinced our troop leader was a terrible poker player. Not a bad way to go after a fashion. I can think of worse deaths than the one that smites you instantly while you are totally unaware. At any rate Planet of the Apes remains fodder for the kinds of conversations my friends and I used to revel in back in school days. We'd skip right past the improbabilities of apes developing speech and a full blown society within a space of 2,000 years. You took that for wrote. The REAL inconsistencies in a movie like Apes were questions like "Why would a crew of 4 astronauts travel into deep space in a capsule with only 2 seats?" Or "What idiot planned the mixture of 3 guys and 1 gal for a colonization mission?" Sheesh. Did the writer skip Biology 101? Too few seats, a bad mixture of sexes on the mission -- those are huge plotholes -- but talking monkies with a corrupt court system? Duh. Of course THAT is possible. Grin. Such are the arguments of geeks in their youth. Now that you understand the genesis of my deep analysis of Planet of the Apes, you can play along with one of my pet peeves. Not only does the Icarus have too few seats, they aren't very well designed either. The monstrous tubular throne chairs have tiny seatbelts that look way too flimsy to hold you in place for a rocket launch. And besides that they look really uncomfortable. They lean waaaayyy back like the bench seat of a 1972 Impala, making it impossible to reach the implausibly huge control panel cum stereo mixer. I disliked those chairs from the first time I saw them. It's one of those things that makes the movie less than perfect. No really. If you are the sort of person who notices what kind of chairs they used in Planet of the Apes, you'll probably also notice such things in Land of the Giants, or Babylon V. So it's that likelihood that lead me to notice this little bit of trivia Is this the same chair recycled over and over by Paramount during 3 decades of filmic history? Planet of the Apes was among the last of the big studio pictures. Studio pictures were made entirely in-house. Effects and set pieces were built on sound stages owned by the studio, not farmed out to ILM. And once a set piece was built, you might see it in movie after movie. But I'm thinking these tube chairs might be among the longest-lived. For the record, I've got no problem with a 50 foot tall monkey. King Kong himself is entirely probable. Just tell me this. Why would the islanders build a giant wall to keep out the giant monkey, and then build a giant door big enough for the giant monkey? That is a real mystery. |
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Saturday, January 24, 2004 |
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Boeing has wasted no time in posting up pictures of their proposed Total Solution for the new NASA space exploration initiative. To the keen eye the Crew Control Module looks a lot like an Apollo CM - and the Resource Module looks very similar to the Apollo SM. The Crew lunar habitat even has the same landing gear configuration as the Grumman LM. But this is a case where a leap backwards, is actually a leap forwards. At long last, we're finally returning to the frontier. [See the pictures] | |
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Monday, January 19, 2004 |
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The prospect of new extended lunar missions has got me thinking on unique aspects of human EVA. Human activity on the moon is an area where the challenges presented to the astronaut's exploration yield many secondary benefits in areas such as life-support and materials science. Here are some of my first musings about the future, based on observations from the past.
The biggest challenge after radiation and basic life support for astronauts on the moon is mobility. Suit pressure limits mobility, but Apollo astronauts are in general agreement that a good fit was the thing that was paramount. A closer-fitting suit would be better in their opinion than the next-gen suits with complicated articulations that are being comtemplated now. The new proposed suits are hard-bodied to offer radiation shielding and some protection against micrometeorites. Arguement over that question could drag out, especially considering some of the faster particles move at 64,000mph -- there's no known substance that would withstand a strike from something at that speed, no matter how small. The planetary science folks estimate the probability of such a strike as something like 0.008% during an EVA, which is way below a lightning strike. It's hard to say what the precise effect would be of a 1/4" particle striking the human body at such tremendous speed, but the imagination fills in some terrible gaps. Another factor in suit fit and materials was friction and wear on the body. Many of the astronauts on the extended EVA's of Apollo's 15-17 experienced bruised fingertips, blisters and lots of damage to fingernails. A couple even had nails separate from the cuticle. Externally the finer lunar soil would build up on the palms of the gloves and the handles of tools. This acted over time like a dry lubricant similar to talcum powder. Eventually it became difficult for the astronauts to hold onto the tools, and they'd have to take time out to do some cleaning and dust off their gloves. Planetary field geology received many pluses from the human experience of EVA. A pair of eyes examining items in context and making judgements of color, bracciations and the like could certainly be done by a robot - but the instinctive judgements of human intellect helps separate wheat from chaff quickly and efficiently. It adds an experiential dimension ranging from the vicarious and existential, to practical knowledge of human experience in an alien landscape. The field geology performed by Apollo was highly valuable, but it also was a very different process from that on Earth. The short EVA times and competing interests on the ground would often interrupt the astronauts during the peak of their performance. Irwin and Scott (Apollo 15) would get mildly frustrated at these interruptions. To them it seemed that each time they found something truly interesting, somebody on the ground wanted them to move on to another experiment. If it wasn't that it could be the flight surgeon recommending they move back closer to the LM, or an engineer insisting they not stray so far out with the rover. Ironically another conflicting view from the ground was the expectation that the astronauts could cover ground faster than what happened in reality. The fast loping gait was great for covering distance in short bursts but it wasn't sustainable. Eventually the astronauts would tire and have to slow their gait. The bonuses to planetary geology from new moon missions would have to include the capability to perform more Earth-like field geology. Without the pressures of a 48 hour itinerary the astronaut geologists could revert to a system more akin to that of scans and stations. Thus samples could be examined for context with less time constraints in situ and then returned to the lab for lengthier study. Working longer term on the moon would enable the development of better suits, and once again lead to benefit in the field of materials science. Advancements in communications, photography, life-support, geology, astronomy, experimental fuels and much more would come from extended human exploration. There is much to recommend for long-term human EVA on the moon, and the challenges presented in this piece should be viewed as just that. They are not obstacles which prevent exploration. They are challenges that offer the opportunity to both explore the moon and expand our practical technology back here on Earth. |
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Tuesday, January 13, 2004 |
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Kodak has announced that it will stop manufacture of film cameras for the U.S. market.
One wonders what will happen to any form of analog media. Perhaps the Dead Media Project has the answer. All technology is eventually eclipsed - whether the Omega Speedmaster watches favored by astronauts, the DSKY computer, which at 50hz and 16k of RAM pales behind a school calculator and weighed in at 70lbs, the Hasselblad cameras which gave us such remarkable pictures of the moon. But perhaps not the Saturn V or the Apollo concept itself. It seems that technology is more durable. And we expect President Bush to speak words to such effect tomorrow. |
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Friday, January 09, 2004 |
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Space.com has two new articles laying out more details of President Bush's historic announcement for new lunar missions - expected to come next week.
Moon Base Linked to Mars Exploration Update of Bush Moon Plans |
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While the SPIRIT rover is sending back the best photography ever from the surface of mars, and gearing up for it's scouting mission -- word has it that President Bush will be announcing plans for a U.S. return to the Moon. Leaks of the upcoming announcement centered on its proposal during the 100th Anniversary of Flight celebrations in North Carolina. But it now seems likely that Bush will choose the State of the Union address or perhaps the 1 year anniversary of the Columbia tragedy in February as an appropriate time. More from Space Daily. http://www.marsdaily.com/2004/040110002440.qk4xmh8v.html | |
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Sunday, January 04, 2004 |
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First Pictures from SPIRIT
The first grainy images from the SPIRIT robotic mars explorer are coming in to Earth now. The current images are predominantly frames of the vehicle itself and the immediate surrounds. It will take approximately 9 days for SPIRIT to fully deploy her exploratory equipment and begin providing high-quality color photographs of the Martian landscape. |
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The SPIRIT has Landed!
NASA just completed their first press conference a few minutes ago, and as of this writing the rover is slowly being lowered to the surface as its airbags deflate. Soon we will see the first new pictures live from the Red Planet, since the last rover mission in 1997. [MORE] |
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The Mars Rover has landed successfully! Here's the first story out of Yahoo. Much more to follow to be sure. | |
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Friday, January 02, 2004 |
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I've posted an example to the Game Maker forum.
Stick Example Sparkydude, a user on the forums, was looking for an example of a stick falling off a ledge and then flipping onto the ground. The tolerances needed to be like the stick was teetering on its center and then falling. So I created 4 animations, and then whipped up some objects in GM. The example is based on the Basic Platform Tutorial from the Game Maker website. You will need to download Game Maker from the site to see the demo. Game Maker is a Delphi-based game creation app, authored by Mark Overmars. |
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LUNAR RANGER LM SIMULATOR - VIDEON GAMES, distinctive titles, logos,
graphics and contents TM & © 2004 The Videon Games Company BT. All
Rights Reserved.