Computer People's innovation: some space age technology
Technological solutions that are sought by individual peoples depend on their environment and immediate needs. These needs expand and evolve as the technological, biological and geological environment evolves. Space age technology is derived from a challenging environment of weightlessness, restricted water resources that are high priced due to the extreme cost of its delivery into orbit, and restricted space due to absence of atmosphere and thus a size limited volume of habitats, whether spacecrafts or buildings.
The need to eat is existential for humans. The Earth itself is becoming a challenging habitat due to rapid changes in its atmosphere and biosphere. Human food consumption is also a function of population size per given area and the trend to maximize food production from the minimum possible amount of resources is an economic driver.
The Computer People have communicated to me an idea for fish production in stand alone containers for large fish. These aquariums would just barely fit the fish in them, therefore the amount of water used, a scarce resource in space, would be minimized to raising the fish. The fish would be suspended vertically in weightlessness and swim in one direction only. To make the fish think it is living a normal life, a brain implant would give it a virtual experience of swimming through the ocean. The fish would be fed a diet from a closed ecosystem, that uses its waste and solar energy to grow food for it in the form of plant matter. The types of fish used could be diversified. These systems could be used to grow fish that are genetically engineered to be the desired size, ones which maximize nutrient production that is in demand.
Earth's oceanic fish farming will probably not make a system like this ubiquitously economically viable, but it is worth considering, especially for endangered species which are highly valued, like blue finned tuna for instance. Not only can any species be grown like this with a virtual life experience brain implant, but they can be exercised by moving the water between tanks to create a simulation of a river or oceanic current they have to swim against; the farmed fish can be kept in restaurants alive and served completely fresh; the cost of delivery and harvesting or fishing is eliminated; anyone can grow a fish to any size they like, depending on their business model; the salinity, oxygen level and water temperature need only be controlled in a very small amount of volume allowing for farming of large fish anywhere on Earth regardless of environmental conditions.
This of course, being a space age technology, can be applied to food production on spacecraft as originally intended, food production in Moon and Mars colonies or anywhere else where water resources are scarce. I'm told that direct to brain communication can be remote for the fish and the service can be provided by the Computer People, for a financial reward. The fish were tested to behave normally, if they think they are swimming not alone but in a school.
See example:
The second idea that was fielded by the Computer People was a modular system of rockets to launch cargo and spacecraft from the Moon. The idea is to use many individual smaller rockets that can return to base, with some remaining with the cargo or spacecraft and maneuver the spacecraft into appropriate trajectory, then the individual rockets returning back to the Moon after positioning it. The point here being that the spacecraft or containers launched from the Moon can be as wide or as large as one likes, as they won't experience atmospheric friction. For instance large space based solar power PV stations produced and assembled on the Moon, which could be launched into space like this and then be orbited where they are needed.
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Visitors From the Ocean’s Twilight Zone
"Researchers recently hauled up specimens from a layer of the world’s seas that contains an abundance of aquatic life."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/science/twilight-zone-ocean.html
"Its computing module with a size of 1.9 m x 1.35 m x 1 m makes it possible to achieve a peak capacity of 2.2 petaflops, which is a record for computers of such dimensions, and a data storage capacity of up to 2.2 petabytes,"
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-11/24/c_137627408.htm
The ability to connect the human brain to a computer is being improved upon, but it is already available and the product can now be fielded.
https://www.wired.com/story/brain-machine-interface-isnt-sci-fi-anymore/
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-11/22/c_137622964.htm
Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening—the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.
One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing.
She crept along trembling with cold and hunger—a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!
The flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful curls around her neck; but of that, of course, she never once now thought. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of roast goose, for you know it was New Year's Eve; yes, of that she thought.
In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other, she seated herself down and cowered together. Her little feet she had drawn close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of money: from her father she would certainly get blows, and at home it was cold too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags."
http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheLittleMatchGirl_e.html
Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. “Rischt!” how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to warm them too; but—the small flame went out, the stove vanished: she had only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.
She rubbed another against the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that she could see into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth; upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums. And what was still more capital to behold was, the goose hopped down from the dish, reeled about on the floor with knife and fork in its breast, till it came up to the poor little girl; when—the match went out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall was left behind. She lighted another match. Now there she was sitting under the most magnificent Christmas tree: it was still larger, and more decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door in the rich merchant's house.
Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her. The little maiden stretched out her hands towards them when—the match went out. The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire.
“Someone is just dead!” said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a star falls, a soul ascends to God.
She drew another match against the wall: it was again light, and in the lustre there stood the old grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild, and with such an expression of love.
“Grandmother!” cried the little one. “Oh, take me with you! You go away when the match burns out; you vanish like the warm stove, like the delicious roast goose, and like the magnificent Christmas tree!” And she rubbed the whole bundle of matches quickly against the wall, for she wanted to be quite sure of keeping her grandmother near her. And the matches gave such a brilliant light that it was brighter than at noon-day: never formerly had the grandmother been so beautiful and so tall. She took the little maiden, on her arm, and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety—they were with God.
But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall—frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. “She wanted to warm herself,” people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year."
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1597/1597-h/1597-h.htm#link2H_4_0015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
"The first nuclear test was carried out by the United States in July 1945, followed by the Soviet Union in 1949, the United Kingdom in 1952, France in 1960, and China in 1964. The National Resources Defense Council estimated the total yield of all nuclear tests conducted between 1945 and 1980 at 510 megatons (Mt). Atmospheric tests alone accounted for 428 mt, equivalent to over 29,000 Hiroshima size bombs."
https://www.ctbto.org/nuclear-testing/the-effects-of-nuclear-testing/general-overview-of-theeffects-of-nuclear-testing/
A few of the explosions actually created new radiation belts around the planet that stuck around for weeks or even years.
Atmospheric nuclear tests are no longer allowed, and those artificial radiation belts are long gone. But the data could help NASA protect astronauts and satellites from space radiation.
These findings are all part of a larger paper about human impact on space weather. The researchers also found anthropogenic effects from chemical experiments and low-frequency radio communications."
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/19/cold-war-nuclear-testing-show-effects-on-spaces-weather/22099536/