June 10, 2017

Places of Interest

in the comments section Madrocketsci inquires (in reference to Isaac Arthur's excellent channel)...

 ...where do people like this hang out online?
Well, we linked to that one from here so, ipso facto, Brickmuppet Blog is a place where people who like this hang ou...



Art by Dani Ikapi
Oh. 

Well then.... 

Atomic Rocket is a superb resource for near term space exploration concepts. It is primarily geared towards providing authors a reference to assist in providing realism in spec-fic
...so they can write SF "the way God and Heinlein intended"
Scroll down to the very bottom of the linked page for a sitemap. Be warned that this is digital crack. The engine list page alone will...
...
...

Damn. The sun is setting.

I should get back to the post....

Scott Lowther's site is named The Unwanted Blog for reasons that are quite unclear given that the correct response to it is "Do Want!". Mr. Lowther also runs Aerospace Projects Review, which produces several online magazines that look at forgotten aerospace history from an engineering perspective. 

Next Big Future is a science-news blog that focuses mainly on disruptive technologies and futurism. 
 

Glasstone.Blogspot.com focuses on things that might keep the future from happening, like global thermonuclear war. It is dreadfully non-intuitive to navigate but there is a cornucopia of information on civil defense and high energy weapons effect on that site. 

The Secret Projects Forum is a vast message board dedicated mainly to forgotten transportation and weapons projects. Unlike most such sites it has a crackerjack team of moderators that purge unverified or made up content, so one doesn't accidentally find Antarctic Space Nazis in one's research into Horten Coal Fired Ramjets.


Jerry Pournelle's site is a stream of consciousness that touches on many futuristic topics and how to achieve them through a strategy of technology. It also has tips for how to preserve past knowledge and survive in the event that something stupid and terrible happens like a global thermonuclear war. 

The excellent Colony-Worlds focused on space colonization but hasn't been active since 2012. It still exists and has still got a good deal of info... while it lasts. 

Centauri Dreams looks at deep space exploration with the ultimate goal of manned trans-stellar voyages.

Icarus Interstallar is a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to bringing about a manned interstellar mission by 2100. They fund various engineering studies looking at the problem from different directions. 

The Lifeboat Foundation is an organization exploring various ways to preserve humanity in the event of an extinction level event such as a Hostile AI, asteroid strike, plague or global thermonuclear war. 

Nasa Spaceflight.com, is not as far as I know, NASA affiliated. It has forums for discussion of space related issues, but most of the high-end, credentialed discussions of speculative projects are moved to the L-2 forum which requires a subscription. 

The Space Review is an online magazine dedicated to space exploration, space business and space law. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:12 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 494 words, total size 6 kb.

1 Thanks! Wasn't expecting a whole post. I think I can count you as one of the "cool ones"

I have been aware of projectrho since undergrad. I'll certainly check out the others.

Posted by: madrocketsci at Sat Jun 10 18:14:55 2017 (VF34g)

2 I'm familiar with some of those, but the list will be helpful.
One thing I'm wondering whether you or your other readers have heard of or read about: nested-ring habitats. It's a design that I thought of to overcome the lack of scrith for use in large-scale spinning-ring habs. The Bishop Ring design (and other spinning habs) presumes industrial-scale production of Buckytubes because the spinning ring is assumed to have to support its own centripetal acceleration/outward tension, but that hasn't happened yet AFAIK. So instead of waiting on that, would it be feasible to build a double-walled ring, with the rings kept separate by vacuum and magnetic bearings (no physical contact), and the outer ring serving to support the inner ring (the outer ring wouldn't spin)? 
I am not an engineer, but I can't intuitively see any mechanical reason why such a configuration wouldn't work. If it does, then Bishop Rings, Banks Orbitals, and even Niven Rings would be feasible with current materials technology (though absurdly expensive at the upper end).
And yet the only places I've ever seen anything comparable is the old SF with spinning sections inside spaceships, wherein the ship's hull acts as the outer ring. So is my intuition wrong, or have I just never chanced upon the design?

Posted by: jabrwok at Sun Jun 11 05:51:42 2017 (wKZS0)

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