Gimme shelter.

While working on my posting about how we as a planet would deal with a major catastrophe like an asteroid impact, it occurred to me that some attention should be focused on preserving a portion of the ecosystem as well. After all, it would be short-sighted to only preserve human life, as Noah - or more accurately Jehovah - was fully aware.

A search for images of Noah's Ark revealed images of another ark. Developed by 51-year-old Russian architect Alexander Remizov of Remistudio, in co-operation with Russian and German scientific groups, the new Ark was designed as part of the International Union of Architects’ Architecture for Disaster Relief initiative.

Everything would seem to indicate that it's a brilliant design. It can be built as a floating structure as well as a land-based refuge, and is made up of a combination of wooden arches and cable supports that allow for a flexible response to earthquake stresses. The Ark is constructed to create a vortex that helps propel a wind powered generator located in the cupola that tops the building, and the outside of the building is designed to optimize solar panel usage and rain water collection. The rounded shape allows for easy circulation of air, greenhouse effect adds another source of energy to be collected and stored, and all wastes are recycled.

Remizov's Ark doesn't use glass - the outside surface is covered with a special transparent self-cleaning foil which is cheaper, lighter and more flexible. The transparent shell contributes to the existence of an interior microclimate, with plants and trees providing oxygen and possibly food. 

Prefabricated building sections would allow construction of an Ark in three to four months, with each new Ark providing 150,000 square feet of living space.

It's an elegant and possibly even feasible solution to housing people in a disaster situation, but I'm sorry to say that after looking at the design, I found myself wondering how it would stand up to deliberate attempts at damage rather than aftershocks. Maybe I'm too cynical, or maybe I've read the wrong books, but it's far too easy to imagine desperate refugees trying to force their way into an already full structure, and the spacious green lawns packed with tents and sleeping bags.

But my real objection to the design is its theoretical nature, which is in no way the architect's fault. It is an elegant solution, one that probably deserves a real trial - well then let's try it.  According to The New York Times, right now people in Haiti are moving back into damaged houses that may collapse on their heads at any moment, because they refuse to live in refugee tent cities any longer.  Let's build some Arks in Haiti - because if we don't start actually doing some of these things, rather than making pretty 3-D digital renderings, we might as well be planning to move displaced and homeless people to Mars.

- Sid

First thoughts on Sunday morning.

Okay, let's posit parallel evolution, and that there's only one way to string DNA together.*  Add in the fact that the species-ending asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs** and empowered small warm-blooded animals was a statistical fluke.  In that case, when we do reach other solar systems, they'll all be run by…big lizards that think we're edible vermin?

Ooo, that's going to be difficult for everyone.

- Sid

* Star Trek does this without even thinking, or else how would half-Vulcan and half-Klingon hybrids be possible?

** By the way, is everyone familiar with my theory as to why Fred Flintstone had to push his car around with his feet?  Ha, obviously The Flintstones must take place before the existence of fossil fuels.

宅男.

I was out for a beer with my friend Chris, the self-described language geek, and he mentioned that he'd looked up the periodic table in Chinese - try to convince me that doesn't belong on the Geek Test!

- Sid

Dragon's End.

(Contributed by Dorothy Hatto)

Anne McCaffrey ended a long and enormously successful life early Monday evening, November 21st, at her home in County Wicklow, Ireland. Surrounded by the reassuring presence of family and close friends, her passing was swift and without suffering. We, her children, are hugely comforted by the outpouring of sympathy flowing now from all over the world. Our mother’s talent was known to countless fans. Yet her greatest gift to us all has to have been her enormous heart. That she was able to touch so many with her tender and loving heart is the greatest source of pride we will forever enjoy. Words cannot express how grateful we are to the universe of her admirers, whose heartfelt condolences beguile us in our grief, which pales beside the joy we know Anne McCaffrey brought to so many people.

The family of Anne McCaffrey

Today, I found out that one of my idols has died:  Anne McCaffrey, author of the Dragonriders of Pern, the Pegasus series, Crystal Singers, Shellperson stories and many other series. 

I discovered my first McCaffrey book, The Ship Who Sang, about 30 years ago, and since then I have escaped to many different worlds of Anne McCaffrey. It really was an escape for me, because I could see myself living in those wonderful worlds.

At the time I discovered Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton was my favourite author. Anne slowly took over first place as I worked my way through all her various works. I believe I now have just about every book she wrote.  My favorite was the Pern series - I started in the middle with The White Dragon and worked my way out. Once I had all the Pern books and all the short stories, I finally read the series from P.E.R.N., the beginning story, to the last book, The Skies of Pern. 

I cried when Robinton and Zair died after moving the “Red Star.” They had become real people to me.  I have read the stories over and over, and find something new each time I read each story. 

I will miss looking for new books by Anne.  I dread the day that someone makes a Dragonriders of Pern movie, though I might buy the DVD just to pick it apart.  The reality will never come close to the world she created in my head.

- Dorothy 

"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!"

In the wake of my last post, I was astonished to discover that later today an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will pass within a mere 323,00 kilometers of Earth.  (For those of you without sense of scale for either one of those numbers, that's something about 400 meters in diameter coming closer to Earth than the Moon.)

Asteroid 2005 YU55 will do its fly-by at 6:28 EST, and during its run it will be 11,000 kilometers within the Moon's orbit. By the standards of cosmic distance, that's like having a bullet get closer to your face than the tip of your nose - and in this case, the bullet is moving at 46,000 kph.

The good news is that according to the good people at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, there is no chance that this object will hit the Earth either during this visit or any time in the next 100 years.  Nonetheless, the idea of a chunk of rock the size of a city block getting that close makes me more than a little nervous.

However, the adjacency of YU55 to Earth logically suggests that it might just as easily have hit the Moon. (After all, the Moon is a sort of orbital poster child for impact craters - just look at it.) Hmmm...I wonder what the effects of a really big asteroid hit on the Moon would be?  Presumably a large enough hit might shatter it, making us the recipient of a lot of collateral damage from fragments.  A slow breakup might give us an orbital ring à la Saturn.  But I think it's unlikely we'd get something that looked anything at all like the half-completed Death Star from Return of the Jedi, as much as I hate to disappoint you Star Wars fans.

- Sid

No one ever mentions Robert Duvall.

One of my clients told me that apparently it has been calculated that a massive asteroid will hit our planet in 25 years.  Heard about that?

Text from Laurie Smith, Personal Trainer

Asteroid With Chance of Hitting Earth in 2029 Now Being Watched 'Very Carefully'.

Apophis: The Asteroid That Could Smash Into the Earth on April 13th, 2036.

Asteroid Could Hit Earth In 172 Years.

New Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Discovered!

Chance, could, potentially - based on those headlines, it sounds to me like it's too early to start packing for the end of the world, or at least the end of the world that involves asteroid collisions.  But the prevalence of the meme suggests that the topic is worth more of a look.

Okay, what if - which is the name of the game, after all - what if the scientific community was able to determine without any doubt at all that an asteroid was going to hit the Earth in 25 years?  Let's assume that this is the real deal:  maybe not a planet cracker, but definitely an Extinction Level Event.

Okay, what should we do?  Hmmm…..right now, nothing.

What?  Sorry, but I'm unwilling to believe that the scientific community could predict 25 years in advance exactly where the point of impact would be.  As such, building any sort of last stand redoubt to shelter a remnant of humanity would be premature - it would be more than a little embarrassing to find out that said refuge had been constructed at ground zero. 

And yes, a remnant of humanity.  I gather that we've recently hit the seven billion population point*, I can't imagine that we can come up with a solution that allows all of us to survive a real species ender.  (Just for the record, I realize full well that I won't be on the short list - the new world will not need 75-year-old graphic artist/geeks, which is where I'd stand in 25 years.)

Well, maybe "nothing" is a bit extreme.  What I'd suggest is very quietly doing research to determine the best solution for survivability, and perhaps judiciously starting to stockpile resources.

Hmmm...would I put Mars on that list of solutions?

I'd like to colonize Mars regardless, but as a solution for an extinction level event, 25 years doesn't sound like enough time to create a self-sufficient haven on Mars.  The advantage of trying to survive here is that we can already survive here.  An asteroid impact, followed by all the various collateral damage effects like tsunamis, earthquakes, and nuclear winter, or its asteroid equivalent, will permanently change the face of the planet.  However, I don't think it will be bad enough to make the air completely unbreatheable and get rid of all the water, which is what we'd be facing on Mars.

But if it is a planet cracker, something big enough to actually destroy Earth, Mars it is. In this scenario, our survival as a species is in serious doubt, but it does raise an interesting question:  how would our approach to space travel change if we only had to worry about one-way trips?

However, statistics suggest that being hit by something that large is extremely unlikely compared to a piece of cosmic debris that would just kill everyone who isn't in some form of extreme shelter. For that scenario, I actually don't mind the 2012 option - the movie, that is, not the Mayan-calendar end of the world thing.  Building floating refuges, which will immediately be called arks by everyone involved, is not a bad idea.  I don't know if we can building something on solid ground that would withstand all the primary and secondary effects, but I could see a properly designed ark making it through.

Arks have a second advantage:  mobility. (Something that 2012 didn't add to the equation until after the disaster had taken place.) When the impact point has been accurately calculated, floating refuges can be shifted to a point as far away as possible.

The other option, as we all know, is to send Bruce Willis to blow up the offending chunk of rock.  Actually, we probably don't need to blow it up, we just need to change its vector a bit, although blowing it up would seem to be a longer term solution.  I wonder how practical that solution actually is?  The asteroid that may (or may not, opinions vary) have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs was probably about 10 kilometers long - how many megatons would it take to break down that much rock to the point where the pieces would burn up in the atmosphere?

And then all we'd have to worry about is trillions and trillions of cubic feet of dust...

- Sid

* I gather that there's some debate about whether or not we've crossed the seven billion line or not, but I suspect that another 25 years will take care of it.