Heavy Geek Alert
Monday, December 1, 2003. Entry #231

Welcome to Holidailies, where certain members of the journal community make a pledge to update our journals on a daily basis as a special Christmas gift to you, our loyal readers.

I know I failed to complete it last time I did this, but it's not about me. It's about you. About me giving to you stories about me.

If you're new here, or one of the folks checking in from Holidailies, it will become rapidly apparent I'm a geek. A role-playing, sci-fi kibitzing, costume-wearing, card-carrying geek. I scored over 60% on the Geek Test, which places me in the top ten of net geekdom, okay?

Anyway. Today, we're talking about one aspect of geekdom and how it's driving me to distraction. I joined a new online role-playing game recently.

These games are a lot of fun, as they are generally rules-free, cooperative writing, where you take the part of one character in an ongoing story and contribute your portion of the story from your perspective. Any sort of genre and milieu will do, but most games are based on Star Trek, Buffy, Babylon 5, and other sci-fi/fantasy shows. My particular thrill is Star Trek games, mostly 'cause I'm a huge technobabble fan. I love to whip up pseudo-scientific nonsense and argue about it with other aficionados.

Anyway. I joined a game based in a Dyson's Sphere, which, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is basically a giant sphere the size of Earth's orbit, completely enclosing the Sun. Picture enough living space to fit Earth's population some 250 million times over and...well, if you can actually picture that, then you've a better mind than me, friend.

This is such an outlandish concept that it's FILLED with pseudo-scientific technobabble, all in an attempt to justify it working at all. How can you live on the inside without it spinning? Gravity generators. Something that big will collect all the energy output of the sun, so how do you keep from charbroiling? Energy collecting and radiating systems. Et cetera.

I'm in heaven.

Here's a particular 'for instance'. The inside surface of the sphere has an Earth-like atmosphere over its entire area. This atmosphere doesn't fill the whole sphere, of course, but rests on the inner surface like on a planet. The center remains a vacuum, except for the boiling mass of fusion in the center. So inside this massive protective shell, the writers of the game have placed ships, space stations, and shipyards.

My question is, how do they get out? A big hatch, I was told. Fine, how do they keep the air from leaking out? Opening the hatch to space would be like pulling a plug. Having a massive air lock is out, since we try to take everything from the television show as canon, and the one episode of Next Generation that had a Dyson's Sphere didn't include an airlock, but also didn't show how they kept the air from leaking out.

Shut up. We've already established I'm a geek. Let it go.

Okay, standard Star Trek answer is that there's a force field over the airlock. This works in shuttle bays, so why not an airlock one kilometer across? Well then, how do the ships get through the atmosphere? Again, canon says most Star Trek ships do badly in atmosphere. Does the enterprise look aerodynamic to you? Well it's not.

We eventually came to the conclusion that something is maintaining an 'atmospheric corridor', a 1,000 kilometer long tube of vacuum leading from the hatch to the inner space of the sphere. We haven't settled on what exactly, but we're getting there.

This sort of thing is fun for folks like me. It makes us laugh and grin and grit our teeth and wrack our minds. The solutions have to be basically plausible, while counting in established technologies and not making it magic. It's a mind game.

Of course, I'm so excited by the whole deal that I started making pretty pictures to detail my ideas.

First, I started with some animated diagrams to show the possibilities. Wanna see?

Sure you do.

Option One has a metal tower rising through the atmosphere to the vacuum. An ugly blemish on the landscape. Option Two examines the concept of a force field over the hatchway and the inherent problem with that. Option Three is like Option One, except with a force field in place of the metal. Prettier, but a menace to birds. Option Four is much the same, but with the shield turning on and off at need. Cool, but I'm sure there is a downside to a thousand cubic kilometers of atmosphere being suddenly 'pushed aside'.

But my artistic endeavors didn't end with simple animations. No, I wanted to know what it looked like. So I went nuts.

Here is my concept of what the view of the area around the hatch might resemble. The buildings around the bottom generate the field keeping the air out, but ships can pass through the field intact.

Here is an idea of what the conduit looks like from the air. The rings help keep the huge field stable at such a height.

Pretty eh? And the debate still rages. Among the three of use who really care about this sort of thing anyway.

Oooh! Jon! You... augh! What sort of bastard lies about his Grandmother's death just to get a little sympathy on the show? Not just that, but plans it in advance with his buddy? You get him Sandra! You're the only one not falling for his crap. Get him!

And I really don't understand what the hell is going on with the council. They booted Tijuana? Sure, this is good for my girl Sandra (who's my pick in the office pool), but...the hell?

Okay. This week. Lill and Darrah team up with Christa and Sandra to boot Jon. For real this time.

In Ancient Times...
On Wednesday, November 29, 2000, I crafted timeless text about Lisa lieaving to prepare our new home in Medicine Hat.
On Saturday, November 24, 2001, I wrote exciting prose on my eating alone.
And on Saturday, November 30, 2002, I penned a perfect passage on my finishing my book.

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