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5月26日 My New ToyJust a note so you don't think I've forgotten you all.
It's been quite a busy week. I finally got my Tablet PC from Gateway last Monday--right before I had to take off to work. Since I got it specifically to keep me busy between calls, I spent the first day getting acquainted with it. Since then, I have put almost all of the HOT Project drawings on it, along with as many of my novels and shorter works (fiction and non-fiction) as I could find. I've also begun working with the pen and Ink Art to learn how to do artwork, illustrations, and renderings of various designs that are too big for programs like Floor Plan 3-D.
I'm still trying to figure out why the pen doesn't work consistently. Eventually I'll either figure it out or go to Gateway's tech support website and ask.
Meanwhile, it's great to have a laptop I can actually draw on when I want to--or watch a movie (it's a widescreen)--or read and polish a novel--or create a work of art to include in the story.
Eventually, I plan to make some of the novels available online as pdf files for download. I've written five novels based on the Village of Tomorrow designs, and part of a sixth. If you want to get a real tour of Starfield Valley, to say nothing of several other villages that use the petal designs, you'll want to read these tales. I've also written two and a half novels based on the World Ark design, and I will make the completed ones available as well. Of course, it's my expectation that I will complete the unfinished novels in time, probably on the Tablet, and illustrate them as well.
I'll keep you posted, and let you know when I set up the full-fledged website for my "commercial" ventures. For now, I'll keep working on updating assorted HOT designs, particularly those home designs I've developed but not yet uploaded.
Until next time... 5月13日 The Living Tile Modules Photo AlbumFor those who want to know what the living modules in the Living Tile look like, and how they fit together, check out the new slide show. The first level modules have only been done for the School Circle, but the equivalent modules for the Garden and Barnyard Tiles look pretty much the same. I've also included some pictures of how the tiles fit together into the different levels of the School Circle.
You'll find it a little easier to read the notes if you view the slide show full size.
I should mention that all of the designs (as opposed to the photos) were done in Visio 3.0 (which is ancient, but it's free and it works a lot better for me than Visio 2003), then converted into bmp files. When uploaded to this space, they were severely compressed, so the quality isn't the greatest.
Next on my list to add in the way of photo albums are some Single Family Home designs I've developed, as well as (I hope) some three-d views of the School Circle (done in Floor Plan, which was never designed for the complexity of what I'm trying to do--but then, I'm always pushing the envelope, I guess).
5月8日 How We Can Settle the Solar System in 3 Easy StepsCheck out the new photo album by the same name. This is the presentation I would've given at this year's Interntational Space Development Conference in Los Angeles last weekend. I couldn't be there because of a recent appendectomy, but I did send a copy of this presentation to the manager for the Space Settlement track. I don't know yet if he ran the presentation on my behalf or not. I just thought you'd like to see it anyway.
5月5日 The Principles of Integrated DesignIntegrated Design Principle #1: Keep It Simple
That's a pretty standard thought. But what I mean by simple doesn't mean boring squares jumbled together into slightly less boring combinations, like most home designs I see everyday. To me, simple means simple shapes combined in useful and interesting combinations. Yes, most of my Earth-Sheltered Home designs consist of squares or rectangles, but that's because squares allow for the most usable space of any of the Euclidean shapes. In larger assemblies, my usual hierarchy of shapes is squares, circles, triangles, and hexagons.
Integrated Design Principle #2: Keep It Endlessly Interesting
Remember the old song about ticky tacky houses? It's as true today as it was 30 years ago. Here on Earth, the views tend to make up for the otherwise boring sameness of all those squares jumbled together. But in orbit, on the Moon or Mars, or floating around the solar system, there's a good chance that either there won't be any views, or the views will be relatively uninteresting beyond the walls and shields of our little oases. So, although the shapes I use are simple, as is the hierarchy, there are an infinite number of ways tiles (the triangles) can be fitted together, and an equally infinite number of decoration schemes.
Integrated Design Principle #3: Begin with the End in Mind
With apologies to Stephen Covey, this principle means you design the completed project in such a way that the permanent infrastructure never needs to be changed. It also means that anything that might ever need to be replaced or upgraded is easily accessible at all points. I couldn't tell you how many cone zones I've had to drive through in my life because the founders and those who came after failed to apply this principle to the design of the city--any city. But then, the original settlers never gave a thought to what the completed city would look like. Or if they did, they completely failed to take into account the need for expansion beyond their wildest dreams. We can't afford to think like that when it comes time to build cities in space--and it wouldn't hurt to start applying this principle to subdivision design and up here on Earth.
Integrated Design Principle #4: Make It Self-Sufficient
This means that you don't just lay out a pretty plat plan, then worry about fitting the utilities in. You need to make every design for subdivision and up as close to self-sufficient as possible, starting with the basics of water, sewage, air, food, and human interaction. The tiles I've designed are the equivalent of subdivisions. Each design has its own aquifer for water storage, its own electrical generation capability and distribution network, its own telecommunications grid, multiple water and sewage treatment facilities, food production capabilities as part of the landscape design, and ease of access to all parts of the tile by any and all residents.
Because the tiles can be arranged in a variety of combinations, they can "trade" between themselves, so that those tiles which specialize in one function can trade with those that specialize in other functions.
While tiles built on Earth need not be shielded, doing so will turn them into giant heat engines, from which they can recover a substantial amount of kinetic energy from the atmosphere and turn it into electricity. Also, the sewage treatment process can be designed specifically to recover methane for cooking, heating, and electrical generation through fuel cells. Carbon dioxide can also be recovered for reuse in everything from hydroponics to the fizz in the home-brewed root beer.
Integrated Design Principle #5: Think Big, but Start Small
While it's important to begin with the end in mind when designing a project, it's equally important to design the project so it can be built in small pieces--essentially one tile at a time. You'll never get the seven or so billion needed to build the full Vista de la Luna project all at once. But you can easily get $60,000,000 or so to build one Recreation Tile as a hotel and casino.
Once it proves it can pay for itself, which it will, you can move on to the next step, building a Living Tile first on one side, then on the other, to provide housing for permanent residents and time-share condos for vacationers. With plenty of room for a 9 hole golf course in each Living Tile, plus the Casino/Restaurant Tile in the middle, residents and visitors will never lack for things to do.
When the Living Tiles have proven themselves out, you move to the next step, building three Water Tiles to provide for a wide variety of tropical water sports and activities, from snorkeling and swimming with the dolphins, to water skiing and jet skiing, to deep sea fishing, to enjoying a Polynesian Luau. When these tiles prove themselves out, you move on to the next stage, and so on until the project is completed in fifteen or twenty years.
Conclusion
The same principles apply to building cities anywhere in the world--or out of it. They can be designed to reach a certain size, like the Vista de la Luna project. When they're finished, a new project can be built nearby--or somewhere completely elsewhere.
Other cities can be designed to expand indefinitely (or nearly so), simply by adding tiles and extending the long distance transit system to match. For instance, a paired O'Neill cylinder 22 miles long and 8 miles in diameter would contain 96 rings per cylinder, each ring consisting of 48 living or reserve hexagons and 48 "window" hexagons. Just one of these cylinders could easily house at least a million people--but by building it one ring of hexes at a time, it can begin paying for itself long before it reaches full size--in about a century.
Through the application of these principles here on Earth, we can design towns and cities that are lovely to live in and easy to maintain relative to the towns and cities we're used to. They'll be far more efficient in terms of energy and resource management, and therefore much less expensive to build and live in over time.
Once we've learned how to apply these principles effectively here on Earth, we'll be able to apply them to a variety of projects off-planet, and get a lot more for a lot less than most of the designs I've seen so far.
Feel free to browse my design albums. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me at tkholmes_ssde@hotmail.com. And, of course, I welcome constructive criticism. |
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