Ideas and creative technology solutions to problems both green, envrionmental and otherwise. All my own, some more viable than others, best viewed with out great seriousness.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Compact living

There have been a number of conversations about SpaceX's new super launcher  ability to send someone to Mars

Would you spend 8 months to 2 years in here without going mad ? 

One of the primary problems is radiation and space. Basically the Space X capsule isn't that big for 2 people for up to 2+ years ( 6 months or so if landing). The basic assumption is a larger capsule would be OK. So I wondered if you had a capsule which appeared to have more space. I was proposing to do this in three ways. Firstly physically using walls moving like old archive shelving you find in libraries. This creates walls that move. 
If you want to see the effect then have a look at this Hong Kong apartment. 


Pretty cool and you get the idea. Perhaps with lighting changing automatically the it would be possible to give the 'effect' of different rooms and hence a larger space. 

The second effect would be trompe l'oei - an old roman method to use perspective to make space seem bigger. 

My vision was to have moving floors ( the dragon capsule is taller than a person so the head space goes to waste). The floors move up and down  would stack like cookies in a packet. The walls would be covered curved OLED screens. They would give the effect of more 'space'. 

The cabin would track the heads of the 2 crew  and generate a head centric depth illusion. The screens would be touch displays so they could be used as instrument panels and act as lighting. Hopefully both illusions might help keep the crew sane enough to get to Mars and back.

 Hopefully by being in such a compact space the crew could have denser shielding than that offered by a flexible inflatable habitat as currently proposed.