Activity for rek
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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What is the best form of powered vehicular flight within a McKendree habitat? Background A McKendree cylinder is a spinning space habitat in the style of an O'Neill cylinder (below), but orders of magnitude larger. McKendree habitats are hundreds of kilometres in diameter and thousands of kilometres in length, whereas an O'Neill is only a few km across and a few dozen km long... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
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Procedurally generating a galaxy's worth of names Background I am investigating the practical utility and limitations of a procedural-generation-based naming scheme for stars and other notable or significant interstellar structures (e.g. nebulae, globular clusters) in a Milky Way-like galaxy, for use by an expansive interstellar civilization. Hundr... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
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Are there any benefits to a large body of water in a space habitat? The classic example of a cylindrical space habitat, Clarke's Rama, has a 10 km-wide ring of water at the middle. Most depictions of this O'Neill-style of habitat do something similar, placing a large body of water somewhere inside. The drawbacks to this design choice are fairly obvious: If the hab... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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The Great Deoxygenation Event Assume an Earth-like or super-Earth terrestrial planet in a state comparable to Precambrian or Archaen Earth. The atmosphere is mainly nitrogen and carbon dioxide, perhaps some methane, but very little to no free oxygen. CHON(PS) life has evolved and struggled, but that's about to change: something h... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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Is this subspeciation plausible? Below is a diagram showing transverse cross sections of skulls representative of the two subspecies (A and B) of the Trilateral species. Is it plausible that such obvious differences "“ noting the rest of their morphology and physiology is essentially identical "“ could be found within the same speci... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Are there any natural forms of communication as robust as speech/vocalization? Vocalization has a number of features that make it a very robust natural form of communication: Variable volume from whisper to shout, roughly scaling from direct to omnidirectional; Equally effective in daylight and total darkness, doesn't require visual contact; Precision of hundreds of distinct ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Which conditions would make aerial filter feeding successful? Premise On Earth the seas have numerous filter feeding species, large and small, sustaining themselves on the microscopic nutrients and organisms that drift in the current. The largest animal evolution has produced here feeds on some of the smallest. Tropical coral reefs are the go-to example, but a... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Neurological supercharger out of thin air Some speculation on a neurological supercharger for a sapient alien species: The supercharger is a natural biochemical compound of some sort produced and stored in a specialized brain-adjacent organ. Perhaps it's the byproduct of a symbiotic organism, perhaps something else. A critical part of th... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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O'Neill/McKendree Looping River Is there a way to design a river system in an O'Neill/McKendree-style cylindrical habitat to passively feed into itself in an endless loop, from one end of the habitat to the other and back again? Reworded: is the Coriolis effect or other innate properties of a spinning habitat up to the task of cir... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Stabilizing a McKendree Cylinder Habitat Background A McKendree cylinder is a rotating cylindrical space habitat comparable to the more well known O'Neill model. It was proposed by NASA engineer Thomas McKendree in 2000 as an update of O'Neill's, using carbon nanotubes instead of steel and aluminum to allow for much larger structures "“ up... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Could a habitat ring be spun-up and stabilized by electromagnets? Using the following dimensions (and assuming any material characteristics necessary to maintain structural integrity), could a Standford Torus-style artificial habitat achieve the necessary spin to produce its centrifugal "gravity" and maintain a stable position relative to a fixed containment struct... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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Designing a flag for Mars: drag and proportion I've been thinking about flag designs for colonies on Mars, and something occurred to me. The "official" Flag of Mars has a critical flaw The average wind speed on Mars is 10 m/s (20 mph); the fastest speeds recorded by the Viking lander were 30 m/s (60 mph), barely half the speed of hurricane wind... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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Heterochiral biosphere: a two-handed world Original post: Imagine a world in which both left- and right-handed chirality appeared and evolved into a variety of complex organisms comparable to post-Cambrian Explosion Earth (both plant and animals). As on Earth, chirality would apply to amino acids, sugars, enzymes, and potentially oth... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Barycentric influence on plate tectonics Setting A binary planet system consisting of two terrestrial planets (hereafter Alpha/α and Beta/β). The system barycentre (C) is between the two planets; for the sake of this question the exact position is variable as long as it remains in the space between the two, but closer to Alpha than to Be... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Evolution of ophidian sapience and caudal tool use What natural environmental pressures or opportunities might drive an alien ophidian species to evolve sapience and caudal tool use? Conditions The species should be lacking limbs prior to the emergence of these traits, but may develop finger-like appendages for gripping and fine manipulation. Th... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |