The Five Pods

The planet next door .. Poster courtesy of Wikipedia

FREAKY FRIDAY

After weeks of drought, we are being deluged with rain today. I’m surprised at how busy everything is. I had to fight for a parking place at Tom Thumb. We Dallasites rise to the challenge of inclement weather!

TO THE MOON

Today’s topic harks back to one of my first blog entries, Destination Moon. In that blog, a main suggestion was to use more robotic devices for a lot of the grunt work – remove the expense of manned shuttles. I still recommend that and have more to elaborate these 10 years later.

AND THE MOON FIRST

There are two Mars initiatives right now – a NASA manned mission for 2035 and a Dutch consortium aiming for a much more ambitious 2024 manned mission. Mars is an 8 month journey away.. Its thin air and arid surface are little more inviting than our moon. The moon is only 240,000 miles away from Earth – a hop and a skip. Were anything to go wrong with lunar supplies or setup, a correction could be on the way in a matter of hours. The moon is completely without air – its challenges are more extreme. All the better to have that be our exploratory playground. If we can conquer the moon, Mars should be a piece of cake with its CO2 atmosphere and water rivulets. Baby steps first – and the Moon is our perfect setting for that.

FIVE PODS

My idea for a lunar colony involves robotic delivery and assembly of piece parts before a human even arrives. The basic infrastructure of the colony is ready and waiting for humans to make it hum as an integral whole. Let me describe briefly the 5 basic “pods” that would need to be landed – these aren’t necessarily order of importance:

ENERGY POD – The energy pod would be either a solar or nuclear powered generator of electrical current to power and control just about everything else.

AIR POD – The air pod would contain copious breathable air in the same mixture as the Earth’s biosphere.

WATER POD – The water pod would contain fresh, drinkable water. The pod would be huge, like a water tower reservoir on Earth.

REQUISITIONS POD – This pod might be the most interesting.. It would contain food, clothes, medicine, building supplies, tools, and just about anything needed by the lunar inhabitants. Its contents would be air and temperature controlled to maintain earth-like quality.

RETURN FUEL POD – This pod, like the H2O pod, would be very large. It would contain thousands of gallons of rocket fuel (also temperature controlled), for return space journeys.

The pods would be robotically landed and assembled. Fuel and food would come last, when the receiving pods were tuned correctly. Obviously the colony would have many other things going on -- landing areas, transmission lines, dormitories etc. But these 5 initial pods would lay the groundwork for everything. The assembly could be done remotely from Texas or Florida. All systems would be “go” before any lives are at stake. Why would I have such elaborate fantasies about a space colony? Because I think we are at a juncture where it could really happen – such ventures might be undertaken for real. If a Mars Rover can take panoramic pictures and soil samples, a Lunar Robot could snap pre-fitted pods and pipes together. Let’s just do it in a logical order – Moon first, pods first. Humans, safely and comfortably, would come next.

© 2015 Snillor Productions

Computer Envy

A new PC in town .. Poster courtesy of HP

TODAY

We are having a beautiful Indian Summer.. October temperatures are 10 degrees above average but I can deal with the 90 degrees. I’m back at the Lakewood Arboretum Starbucks -- I like its bright window exposures and high ceilings. Also it gets an interesting mix of people. It has more SMU students than you might think for being this remote.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY

Last night I watched the first episode of American Horror Story – Hotel (Season 5). This season we’ve switched out Jessica Lange for Lady Gaga; Lange is doing a Broadway show. Ryan Murphy’s direction continues to give us the surreal, disturbed, black comedy that we had in the first 4 seasons. It is a pastiche of sex, murder and occult that would not be to everyone’s taste. I’m disturbed enough to look forward to 11 or so more installments.

HP ENVY

I noticed that my 6 year old HP Pavilion was starting to get creaky on me. 6 years is an eternity for a computer whose life must be measured like dog years. It is a testament to HP quality that this one has had such staying power. I decided that the time was right for an upgrade.. using bonus dollars from my employer for good attendance. I purchased an HP ENVY m6 convertible touch screen laptop. It has a slim profile (a la MacBook), metallic veneer and beautiful style. Here are the many features and improvements:

8GB memory
1 Terabyte hard drive
Hi-Res 1080p touch screen, 15.6”
I5 6200 chip (new model chip)
2 USB 3.0 ports
Keyboard with backlighting
Keyboard folds back 360 degrees to create a large tablet
Windows 10 OS
Bang and Olufsen sound system
Microsoft Office 2013 (via MS HUP program)

There are probably some other features I’m overlooking. I was expecting it to be 1000 times faster than the old unit, but the gains are not quite so extreme. Old, inefficient software will still run slowly. Slow, connected servers will make web surfing only as fast as the slowest remote site. And software not designed for Hi-Res may give you a fuzzy display. All that being said, I’m really liking the new computer. Every 6 years (42 dog years) you should avail yourself of a new PC.

The old one will be factory reset and given to my bro, who loans them out for Bible studies. (Just need to see how permanent file deletion works – don’t want a Hillary-type email situation confronting me).

CONCLUSION

If you have FXNOW on Roku, check out American Horror Story. FX also brings us Season Two of Fargo starting next week – that should be an extra enticement. If you have a geriatric PC, check out the new offerings at Walmart or Best Buy. You can get a very capable device for well under a grand, assuming you stay in Windows World.

© 2015 Snillor Productions