Will this be the ISS Replacement?

Painting by Don Davis, courtesy of NASA

It might look like something from the Golden Age of Science Fiction, but the above painting shows a representation of a Stanford Torus Space Station. And, if a recent interview with the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov is anything to go by, it may well be that NASA is working hard to transform the Stanford Torus from Science Fiction to Science Fact...


The Stanford Torus was first proposed in a NASA Summer Study in 1975, held at Stanford University, in which possible designs for future space colonies were discussed. The science behind it is relatively simple; the torus rotates at a speed which generates artificial gravity, close to that of Earth's, on the inside of the outer ring by means of centrifugal force. In 1975, they discussed the possibility of a 1.8km diameter ring, rotating once per minute, that would be capable of supporting 10,000 residents.


In a recent interview, Azarov stated "I will tell you a story: I just got back from a plant in Dnipropetrovsk. Only 20 years ago, it was a highly classified facility that produced missiles and satellites for the Soviet Union. Today, I saw with my own eyes: it is producing the first stage of parts for the US-designed Stanford Torus space station in collaboration with scientists from the United States."


If you're wondering what a Stanford Torus would look like from the inside, well Don Davis has done us the favour of envisioning that as well:

Painting by Don Davis, image courtesy of NASA

While this is likely to only be the early stages of a prototype, I'm excited to think that this type of forward thinking is going ahead and that NASA is conducting research into the practicalities of this technology....

Big Bang Fizzling Out...

Photo: Sonja Flemming/CBS

First of all, I have to admit up front that I am a relatively recent convert to The Big Bang Theory; it was only a few weeks before Christmas that I finally worked up the motivation to check out the first season and I enjoyed it so much that I quickly grabbed the four season box set and began devouring episodes at a rate of knots... 

However, now that I'm up-to-date and catching up on the fifth season, I have to say I am deeply disappointed with the changes that have been wrought upon the show. The Big Bang Theory that I had developed such fondness for told the story of a bunch of guys whose service to science, and love of all things geek chic, means they had the collective social skills of a mouse mat and more raging hormones than a US cattle farm; four guys who lives are disrupted (and enriched) by the arrival of a hot, blonde neighbour who lacks their intellect but also lacks their social awkwardness and outweighs them all combined in the area of common sense.


We spent time in their work environments, were involved in the various scientific projects they worked on and the many machinations they set in play in order to achieve success with the ladies (with the obvious exception of Sheldon, for whom such matters were far too trivial). And, throughout, the show was littered with all manner of SF, comic, fantasy and gaming references (not to mention more than a few snippets of scientific theory). It was fun, it was bright, it was a breath of fresh air in comparison to the majority of turgid sitcoms out there...


Fast forward to Season 5 and it's hard to believe that this is the same show. Leonard is in a long-distance relationship; Howard, the (wannabe) suave player with a penchant for foot-in-mouth disease, is in a serious relationship, Raj has seen more girls in the first four episodes than he did in the first four seasons and even Sheldon - the theoretical physicist who considers himself the first homo novus - has a friend, who is a girl but not a girlfriend (although in episode 3 of the new season we see him displaying very out-of-character jealousy).


Change I can deal with, but it seems like the heart of the show has been ripped out; I'm five episodes in and we've had no scenes in the University (aside from a few discussions in the canteen), there's been very little mention of science and even the various references seem to be far less numerous and designed to appeal to a lower common denominator. Instead of a fresh take on modern sitcom, The Big Bang Theory has descended into the same mire as so many other shows - focusing more on relationships than relativity - and thus mining material that has been seen a hundred times before.


In watching all of the episodes with such delirious rapidity, the decline is all the more noticeable and perhaps nowhere more so than Sheldon who has devolved from a beautiful mind, whose hubris was predicated on years of being way too smart for those around him and who was seemingly unable to comprehend even the simplest social interactions, to some kind of petulant brat who gets jealous when he doesn't get enough attention from his visiting mother...


It feels like the show is trying to temper its sharp edge, bring down the barriers-to-entry created by genre specific references and appeal to a wider audience. But, in doing so, it's losing what gained it its audience in the first place. I'm hoping it can improve, that it can be turned around and restored to its former glories...but I'm not sure how many more tepid episodes I can watch before, like interstellar matter being sucked into the gravity well of a black hole, all the enthusiasm for the show is drained from me... 

E-Flotsam from Google...

Image Courtesy of Scott Cresswell

I have to admit, I'm often bemused by the curious ways in which people find themselves, like flotsam and jetsam, washed up upon the shores of this blog.


I first noticed it the other day, when I was looking at the visitor statistics of the site on statcounter, and saw that I was the number one ranked search result for the phrase 'head of culture job' on Google (which relates to one of my earliest Unsuitable Job applications). A quick scan through my visitor's paths saw that, due to the rather varied nature of the various Unsuitable Jobs I have applied for over the years, you can find me at the head of the Google results in a whole host of areas...


Some of the top-ranked favourites that have sent people my way in recent days are 'Antelope Keeper' (due to Unsuitable Job 14), 'Experienced Sock Designer' (Unsuitable Job 37), 'Rules of bodyguards' (Unsuitable Job 43) and 'Resident Sex Therapist' (Unsuitable Job 76).


I am not quite sure what those people made of the blog when they got here - I find it hard to believe that they got precisely what they were originally looking for - but it's still nice to see such random visitations and I hope, at the very least, it gave them cause for a brief amount of smirkage...

Apocalypse (anytime) Now...

Image Courtesy of NASA

As you may have heard, the world is going to end in 2012. To be more specific, the world is going to end on December the 21st, 2012. Which works out quite well for me as its only two days after my birthday (there's a good chance I'll still have a hangover) and four days before Christmas (so I don't need to bother splurging on gifts for the family this year).


However, it appears that things are working out even better for Vivos - The Underground Shelter Network for Long-Term Survival of Future Catastrophes - who are flogging floor space in their fortified bunkers to the gullible chosen few, for up to $50,000 per person...

3 Cool Space Missions for 2012

Image courtesy of NASA

I can trace my abiding fascination with Outer Space all the way back to a large book on the Universe, which sat on the bottom shelf of our bookcase at home. The book and I were inseparable in my formative years and  I would sit on the living room floor and pore over it for (quite literally) hours at a time. While other five year olds in my primary school class were doodling what they did on holiday, I was more interested in mapping out the Solar System in as much detail as I could muster. Yes, even as a five year old, I was a little strange.

Therefore, despite the fact that 2011 saw the demise of the Space Shuttle programme, I am pretty excited about the wide variety of space missions that are planned for the forthcoming year so figured that I would run through some of the coolest extraterrestrial happenings of 2012.