If we were to colonise Mars, we’d need to give it an atmosphere. The best way to do that would be to duplicate the creation of atmosphere here on Earth – by letting plant life do the work for us. With this in mind, scientists are investigating
the trees that grow on a lofty extinct volcano in Mexico, to see if their ability to survive in the thin atmosphere could be transferred to the Martian surface. [Colony Worlds] [Image by Redvers]
All posts by Paul Raven
More tech for the military
Thanks to the huge budgets involved, the military forces of the world tend to get a chance to play with all the best new technology before anyone else. The US Army Flight School is adopting a new augmented reality helmet for training purposes, which enables the wearer to see tactical information and thermal imagery, and to focus on distant objects. A more long-term Pentagon plan is to adopt militarily useful iterations of directed energy technology – to build laser blasters, in other words. Another technology that soldiers are more likely to get before the rest of us, albeit due to the most unpleasant of circumstances, are cybernetic limbs like the iHand prosthesis, a myo-electric replacement hand that can lift delicate objects without crushing them.
“Worldbuilder’s Bible” available for download
Aspiring space opera writers, take note: you can now download the Rand Corporation’s 1964 report document “Habitable Planets for Man” as a PDF file for personal use, a piece of work
described as being the ultimate guide to creating plausible fictional worlds … even though it was meant for more ‘serious’ purposes. [SlushGod] [image by SideLong]
Doctorow’s ‘whuffie’ made real
Via Bruce Sterling comes yet another example of a science fictional idea brought to life – RapLeaf looks to be a nascent incarnation of the ‘whuffie’ reputation economy from Cory Doctorow’s
novel Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom.
Brits to re-enter space race?
Well, it’s high time – a special committee of MPs has recommended that the UK government reverse its ban on manned spaceflight, lest we fall so far behind everyone else that we can’t catch up. So we’ll be needing some sexy-looking space suits … either Louise
Riofrio’s design, or this oh-so-retro space leisure-wear from MIT perhaps. While we’re at it, we could probably find any number of uses for rocket engines with a variable throttle. But then again, maybe we should go the other way, and abandon subtlety in favour of an
updated version of the Orion Project – space vehicles propelled by dropping nuclear bombs beneath themselves.