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For a full list of previous issues, go to: "Science Fiction Newsletter - Archives"    August 1, 2011 Editor: EarlyHours-A Vigilante Ranger   Co-Editor: D. R. Prescott   One Year Anniversary Issue!  This issue marks the one-year anniversary of the Unofficial Science Fiction Newsletter! I would like to thank all of you for subscribing, and for the great interaction we've had in the first year. We have certainly covered a lot of topics, and I hope you've found the Newsletter interesting and helpful. Let's raise our light sabers high and look forward to a stimulating second year! 1. About this Newsletter 2. Letter from the Editor 3. Special Feature 4. Editor's Picks 5. Ask & Answer  Gravity The topic of this month's Newsletter has been tugging at me for a while. It hasn't been a strong force, but it's been an important one nonetheless.  Without it, we'd be a bit un-stuck. Yes, it's Gravity! The Letter from the Editor presents some information that might make it easier for your science fiction characters to negotiate gravity while traveling around in outer space. The Special Feature is again contributed by our Co-Editor, D. R. Prescott . Since Don joined the ranks of our Newsletter Editorial Staff, he has brought an interesting and critical view of science fiction. The science presented in the Newsletters has gotten more accurate, and our readership has gone up! So if you haven't made a visit to his portfolio, I highly recommend it! - EarlyHours "Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects." Dave Barry Can We Make Artificial Gravity? Science Fiction writers invented artificial gravity technology long ago, to keep everyone standing firmly on the ground. The characters had to move around their spaceships normally, because it wasn't practical for Hollywood to have their actors floating around all the time! So as usual, the science fiction writers were ahead of the curve. But so far there's no technology that will actually generate gravity in a spacecraft. Since gravity comes from massive objects, if you wanted to have a spaceship that could directly generate enough artificial gravity to keep someone's feet on the ground, it would need to have the mass of the Earth. More practical ideas for creating gravity in space involve producing acceleration on the spaceship. The one-g we feel on Earth is actually our acceleration toward the center of the planet. We would keep falling if the ground wasn't there to push back on us. So if we can provide our spacecraft with an alternative form of acceleration, it would feel like gravity to the travelers. One way is to constantly accelerate your spaceship for the first half of its journey, and then turn it around and decelerate for the second half. If you did this at 9.8 meters per second2, the "gravity" would feel like it does on the surface of Earth. You'd better have a good power source if you want to do this! Another way to create acceleration is through some kind of rotation. If you designed a ship shaped like a big doughnut, and spun it around at just the right speed, people standing on the inside hull would feel the force of gravity. The spinning causes a centrifugal force that wants to throw the astronauts out into space, but the spacecraft's hull pushes back on the traveler, simulating the feel of gravity. This method has been used in a lot of science fiction stories, including several of Ben Bova's Grand Tour novels. Why should we provide our characters with artificial gravity? Because, as it turns out, lack of gravity is very hard on an astronaut's body. Their bones soften and their muscles weaken. Even now, when astronauts return from the International Space Station, they need several days and even weeks to recover, and sometimes the bone density loss is permanent. With extended stays in space, the loss of bone and muscle make can make it very difficult for humans to move and even breathe under the weight of Earth's pull upon their return. If we set our story on a planet with lower or higher gravity than Earth, it would be interesting to speculate on how humans would evolve. What would their descendents look like after five, fifty, or a hundred generations? In lower gravity, would they be tall and spindly, with relatively weak musculature? In higher gravity would they be short, squat, muscular, and have back skin that's hardened like armor? So the next time you write a story set in space, or even on a planet with higher or lower mass than Earth, don't forget to appreciate the gravity of the situation! It's another way to add the depth and scientific realism that science fiction readers crave! "From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free." Jacques Yves Cousteau  "We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." Wernher von Braun One-g, Oh Gee! Contributed By: Gravity often loses me in many science fiction stories, especially film versions. Take 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Overall, these great films are well-done presentations... well, almost... Here are some things to consider when you watch reruns of these classics as well as any other space science fiction. Until Dr. Heywood Floyd landed on the Moon, things were gravitationally well. Then, my gravity gremlin reared its irrational head in a conference room scene on the Moon—a lapse like a dagger in the heart of credibility, even though it was subtle. Everybody moved about like they were in one-gravity, not one-sixth gravity! While bothersome, it was only a minor distraction but cheer up; there were more lapses to come, some requiring close viewer attention. Just a few seconds and scenes away, out by the excavated monolith on the Moon, Dr. Floyd and his escorts moved slowly and carefully, not exactly how the astronauts bounced about on the Moon in 1969, but at least there was some consideration that one-sixth gravity might make natural human movements appear a little different. On its way to Jupiter, we see the 111 meter long Discovery One spacecraft with its spherical command module (estimated at 21 meters in diameter) at one end of the long slender structure and the engines at the other end. With no apparent exterior mechanism for simulating gravity, Poole is found running around what would appear to be a major structural element rotating (to produce the apparent one-g)which could only be housed within the ship's spherical segment. The rub is that in order to produce anything near one-g, the rotating floor would have to be rotating between ten to twelve rotations per minute—likely a very uncomfortable situation for the astronauts. Looking closely at the spherical end of Discovery One, especially at the forward command viewing window or below it the EVA pod access hatch from which a ramp is extended to launch the pod, there is no indication that either section of the ship rotates (or the whole ship itself, for that matter) to account for the simulated gravity in the pod bay where Poole and Bowman move quite easily as if in something near one-g. In the sequel, 2010, the Russian spacecraft, the Alexei Leonov, has a spinning element rotating about the center of the ship's fuselage. Without saying a word about it, this imagery effectively suggested why Dr. Floyd and the crew experience one-gravity within various habitable areas of the ship. In testing the veracity of the concept, one could do a little math and find that the two flattened dumbbell structures may be somewhere around 21 meters end to end (very roughly estimated from film images) which gives us a radius of about 11.1 meters to calculate the spin rate (angular velocity) required (9.7 rotations per minute) to generate a tangential velocity of 10.2 meters per second at each end of the spinning structure to simulate one-gravity. Looking at the imagery, one can sit back and say, "Yep... looks reasonable but..." But, an eyeball estimate of the spin rate of the Leonov habitation modules looks to be something over 3 rotations per minute, considerably slower than necessary to produce one-g. Oh gee! In one scene, there is the very brief image of someone on the bridge through the viewing window. Here's the rub; they are standing at ninety degrees to the forward motion of the vessel. There is no evidence of any rotation mechanism to simulate gravity. Is that not contradictory? Worse, if the ship is traveling at a constant velocity and not accelerating, would they not be weightless? These are only a few of several dozen gravity lapses I found as I watched these great films for the nth time. Many might watch Star Trek, Star Wars and the like ignoring an obvious fact: usually no matter where the characters are in their spacecraft they seem to be operating in one-g; they don't generally float; they don't seem unusually lighter or heavier on their feet. An exception is when they don spacesuits, go outside and float in open space or wear magnetic-shoes to hold them to the exterior of the vessel. If some sort of artificial gravity produced by something other than mass or acceleration is at work inside their ships, why does the ship's hull seem to nullify the effect requiring magnetic boots? Gravity is a pervasive and an often ignored factor in science fiction, both written and especially film. Poorly considered, gravity can become a distraction to an otherwise good story. Handled carefully, it can be a powerful device to add credibility to the tale. That is the science in science fiction. The next time you watch your favorite SF flick, you may find yourself looking with new eyes at the gravity issue from any number of angles. Or, you may be annoyed that you read this piece.
One-g, oh gee, it's important.  "Love is metaphysical gravity." R. Buckminster Fuller This month's Editor's Picks show that WDC authors have their feet firmly on the ground... or maybe not...  Here are contests of interest to our Newsletter readers. Please participate, and support members who encourage science fiction writers in the WDC community!
Stories and Whatnot:
Poetry:
 Guest Editors Wanted! For upcoming issues of the Unofficial Science Fiction newsletter, I would like to invite subscribers to contribute. We are currently taking a tour of the Solar System, looking for interesting destinations for our stories' characters. Consider writing a "Special Feature," based on this or any other scientific of sci-fi interest you may have. Don't hesitate to contact me anytime if this appeals to you! -ed.  Last month's Newsletter topics were Terraforming and Solar System Carrying Capacity :LinnAnn-2x-NaNo Winner  : "I saw a movie recently, tv? it may be a few years old, known stars, and mars's microbes introduced by man, got out of hand, a moss or something took over. It was creepy. lol. Thanks for the articles."One other thought, there are and will be natural disasters, they keep the population in check. We were told as kids we'd run out of foodby the 1980's. lol Population control was the thing back then. I told them if all the grain and fruit that went into booze, was consumed as a food source, we'd be fine. lol "In 1972 we had a 'gas' shortage, and would run out of fossil fuels in 25 years, yet we're still driving cars. I think we would do better to stop destroying the planet we currently live on. We have to do that or we'd just destroy the next planet as well. "There is so much beauty here, I'm glad there are groups fighting to protect it." Here are a few comments that came from the "Science Fiction Newsletter Forum" :. The discussions are continued in the Forum, so go over there, check it out, and add your own comments!  atreidesmouse: "I loved the newest newsletter. It's always seemed to me that terraforming (and pretty much everything else) wouldn't be that hard to do if we tried and were willing to do what it took. "Terraform Mars? There's an app for that!" made me smile, and it also made me think about something totally unrelated to terraforming or colonizing the solar system. Science fiction authors have usually predicted things like spaceships, FTL travel, time travel, and other things that don't exist yet, but very few predicted things like cell phones that were as powerful as computers or any of the actual gadgets we have today. If you had asked a science fiction author from around 50 years ago what kind of technology would be around in the 21st century, I bet most of them would have said something along the lines of "spaceships, a moon colony, a Mars colony, etc.," but few if any would have predicted our actual technology. It makes you wonder what we'll predict that won't happen and what we won't predict that will happen... "Also, I find it amusing how lots of super-futuristic technology from Star Trek and similar shows would be considered very poor-quality cell phones, iPads, etc. today." Steve Ellen : "Great July newsletter! I quote: "We have two choices if we remain an Earthbound life form—collapse of civilization and/or extinction." There is a third choice: population control and the refinement of human civilization into something stable and permanent. Call it the Chinese approach for lack of a better term."Expansion into space is the American approach. Yay, space!" LJPC - the tortoise  : "Big thanks to EarlyHours-A Vigilante Ranger and D. R. Prescott for the great July SF NL. I love all the ideas for creating living space. It's been a while since I read Niven. Thanks for bringing up his Ringworld and reminding me of his talent and imagination."  Thank you so much everyone! I really appreciate the feedback from readers. Keep it coming! - ed.  Don't Be Shy! Write Into This Unofficial Newsletter!Reader feedback and comments is important to the Unofficial Science Fiction Newsletter (USFNL). Much of the Newsletter's content is based on reader feedback and discussion. Feedback can always be sent directly to EarlyHours-A Vigilante Ranger , but to make discussion even easier, a USFNL Forum has been set up. Feel free to post and interact at the Forum; some of the discussion may end up here! And don't forget to add the Forum (below) to your list of Favorites, and post often!
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