Techin’ the Mickey: Conservatech

On December 21, 2010, In Techin' The Mickey, The Student, By Rick

So far I’ve just about managed to avoid using this column as a soapbox to stand on while I bitch and whine about my own personal issues with the games industry. Therefore, as I’m about to blow enough hot air to make myself a viable option for NASA’s next spacecraft prototype – I thought it only fair to give you a little bit of warning.

I am, always have and always will be, a dedicated PC gamer. The type that scoffs at playing a first-person-shooter with an x360 pad, and is well aware that compared to  Deus Ex, Mass Effect is light years away from being the greatest RPG ever made.

I’m not blind to the advantages of consoles. It’s pretty diffcult to gather your friends around a PC for a game of Pro Evo or Mario Kart, and when it comes to Street Fighter IV a mouse and keyboard just doesn’t cut the mustard. I do however, have an uneasy relationship with consoles simply because since they entered the mainstream all I’ve heard about PC gaming is that it is either A) dying, or B) already dead.

Now if such comments were the misguided outbursts of the odd prepubescent forumite they wouldn’t bother me so much. Unfortunately, it isn’t merely ignorant teenagers who hold this opinion. Ever since Halo betrayed its originally intended platform ten years ago, game after game has either suffered a delayed PC release or been denied one entirely. This very week Dead Space 2 and Alan Wake became the latest casualties of the PC gaming cull.

Frankly, Alan Wake can go boil his pretentious head. The only reason Microsoft have made it a 360 exclusive is to shift more consoles – a preposterous decision for a company who have just released Windows 7. However, Dead Space 2 has been denied a PC release due to alleged lack of sales of the original. It is in this where the real issue lies.

Dead Space was an excellent game, but like GTA IV and many others it was disastrously optimised for PC controls – simply turning Isaac Clarke around was like trying to drag a rhino through a swimming pool filled with treacle.As a result of mistakes made by the developer, sales were lost. But instead of fixing them for the sequel, EA decided to pull the game from the PC altogether.

EA are one of many companies who use lack of sales as a reason not to release games on PC alongside the age-old excuse of piracy. Yet the sales figures they refer to do not include those made via digital distribution services like Steam, which are estimated to make up 47 percent of all PC game sales, and with ten million users on Steam alone, that’s an awful lot unaccounted sales.

If PC gaming does die, it will be because corporations like Microsoft and EA kill it, and it will undoubtedly be a mistake they regret.

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2010: The Year We Stay Home

On December 21, 2010, In Features, The Student, By Rick

Sadly, The moon will no longer be recieving its Swine Flu jab.

If you happen to be a regular reader of Tech (or this blog if you don’t read the Student), you may have noticed we have been keepign a close eye on the Constellation Project; NASA’s construction of a new fleet of rockets to replace the ageing space shuttles, with the eventual prospect of maybe, perhaps, if you’re really good and eat all your vegetables and go to bed when you’re supposed to, returning to the moon. However, should Barrack Obama’s 2011 budget request pass through Congress without any hitches, the entire program will be cancelled.

Obama’s reasoning for scrapping the program is that it is massively over budget and massively behind schedule, now posited for completion in 2013 with the space shuttles due for retirement at the end of this year. His decision has brought considerable criticism, one Republican Senator claiming “NASA will no longer be an agency of innovation and hard science, it will be the agency of pipe dreams and fairy tales.”
Frankly though, Constellation was a dubious concept from the start, especially in terms of innovation.The program began back in 2004 under the supervision of George W. Bush, which is hardly the most auspicious of starts for anything more technologically advanced than a paper aeroplane. Of course, such a statement would be misplaced if the Ares I was going to change the face of space travel. It wasn’t. The design of Ares I was based (read: almost identical to) the Saturn V rocket which shot Neil Armstrong & co into orbit in 1969. So this sparkling new interstellar technology was forty years old before it had even been built.

This design decision may appear odd, but it doesn’t seem so strange when you look at events prior to the announcement. In 2003 the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The Constellation program was a knee-jerk reaction to this unfortunate event, a quick fix to replace the shuttles and prevent any further disasters. Six years on with the program nowhere near complete and the fix no longer seems so quick.

Obama’s proposed alternative to the Constellation program involves a $500 million incentive for the private sector to create a more efficient means of space travel than strapping seven men and women to an enormous and highly temperamental bomb. Concepts include placing fuel depots in space ahead of the rocket and so reduce the size of rockets on lift off, or putting further research into ion engines, which eject positive ions to gradually propel a spacecraft forward. Additionally, significant sums will be put into creating robotic probes, which are the most effective (if least exciting) method of exploring the solar system at present.

However, in terms of actual objectives Obama’s budget request is rather vague, and while I agree that  a rerun of the sixties’ Moon landings is not the best way forward, a more permanent residence on the moon is the next sensible step towards humans traversing the solar system. Furthermore, after so long, a return to the Moon in any form will almost certainly provide a huge boost in popular interest for NASA.

Perhaps though, the future of human space explorations lies not with the US. China put their first human into space in 2003, and India plan to do the same in 2016. While both are a long way off overtaking NASA as the dominant space exploration agency, they could well be on their way by the time NASA have another coherent program of events. On the other hand, Obama’s decision could well be the kick up the backside that NASA needed, and we’ll be zipping around the Moon on space-skis in no time.

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Techin the Mickey: Time to go home.

On December 20, 2010, In Techin' The Mickey, The Student, By Rick

Recently, Time magazine published their online list of the fifty best inventions of 2009. Of course, lists such as these are always utterly pointless and arbitrary, but they inevitably contain some ridiculous ordering and consequently make superb lampooning material for an equally pointless and arbitrary column like the one you’re reading right now.

Heading the list was NASA’s Ares I rocket, the revolutionary new spacecraft designed to take astronauts to the moon and possibly beyond. Did I say revolutionary? I do apologise, I of course meant “regurgitation of a thirty-year-old design,” since Ares I is pretty much an anorexic version of the seventies’s interstellar headliner Saturn V, which makes it a bizarre choice for the No. 1 spot.

Further controversy was to be had as Microsoft’s Project Natal technology, which allows computer games to be controlled entirely by human voice and action, was several places above a new AIDS vaccine that actually works (albeit only 31% of the time). Surely, though, that’s a more important invention than being able to seduce a weird-looking virtual child called Milo without the dubious aid of a Wii wand.

However, I’m willing to forgive Time’s questionable charting abilities, simply because they included a robotic penguin on the list, which, frankly, makes them awesome.

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Techin’ The Mickey: Lunar Tech

On December 20, 2010, In Techin' The Mickey, The Student, By Rick

Space used to be so exciting. Firing random animals into the ether just to see what would happen, encasing a bunch of humans into a glorified tin can with an enormous bomb attached to the bottom and less computing power than a mobile phone.  As morally questionable as many of the actions of the Space Race may have been, at least it was interesting.

Half a century onward, and space is boring. For the past decade the only truly newsworthy occurence was the completion of the International Space Station or, as I prefer to think of it, the International Space Hotel for people so ridiculously wealthy they could build their own full-size rocket out of fifty-pound notes and their bank manager wouldn’t notice. Earlier this year Buzz Aldrin criticised NASA’s current agenda, in particular the creation of the manned rocket Ares I and spacecraft Orion I, both of which will take five years to build and take us no further than the moon, where we’ve already been. One small step for a man, one  giant retread of the same bloody ground for mankind.

However, last Friday the current tide of tedium in interstellar activity seemed to change as NASA put into effect their latest plan: to determine whether or not water-ice exists under the lunar surface. Now I know this sounds about as interesting as watching crocodiles evolve, but the method by which this experiment was undertaken was actually quite fascinating.  In order to penetrate beneath the lunar surface, NASA deliberately crashed a rocket and a satellite into the moon’s Cabeus crater. Brilliant, eh?

Unfortunately, no. While theoretically the crash was supposed to cause a dust-cloud large enough to be visible from Earth with a common telescope, nobody saw anything. Why? Because the crater absorbed the dust cloud.  Genius. Also, as NASA didn’t exactly go out of their way to publicise the event, no one was watching. Maybe this had something to do with the fact the satellite and rocket cost £79 million to make, £79 million which literally went up in smoke (and dust). Not that it really matters because nobody saw either.

Maybe I’m being a little harsh. Reports from NASA say that while the event was by no means spectacular,  they have gained enough examinable data to make the mission worthwhile. I wish they had gone to a bit more effort in recording the event than effectively sellotaping a crap webcam to the side of the rocket.  Frankly, by now we should have such things in sodding HD.

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To boldly go…

On December 7, 2010, In Features, The Student, By Rick

Concept art of the Ares 1

Whatever happened to the days when astronauts played golf on the moon? Almost forty years have passed since Apollo 17 left the valley of Taurus-Littrow and humans haven’t been back since. Granted, sticking Colin Montgomery on the moon just to swear at a golf ball would seem financially wasteful, and since the last lunar mission in 1972 the money has been put to better uses like investing in superhero movie sequels and wars against nonexistent nuclear weapons. Although the media might have lost interest in Mars, the moon and any black holes that aren’t made in Switzerland, a quick glance at NASA’s website will show you there’s far more happening on the final frontier than you may imagine.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the lack of public euphoria over space is that most current missions go on for years rather than days, and many of these are focused on Earth itself, particularly the state of its climate. Aura, an ongoing mission launched back in 2004, is dedicated to assessing the health of Earth’s atmosphere. Two other satellites, Aqua and Terra, are doing similar investigations into Earth’s water cycle and the general climate respectively. This is important work, but lacks the theatrics of skiing down Olympus Mons or Storm chasing in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

It’s not all about watching glaciers melt and spying on polar bears. The spacecraft Dawn, launched in September 2007, is a long-term mission with multiple objectives including a survey of Vesta – the second-largest body in the asteroid belt – in 2011, and an encounter with the dwarf-planet Ceres in 2015. In the short term, the craft is expected to fly by Mars around the same time that you read this article.
Another mission on the horizon is of quite astounding scope. Kepler is destined for launch in less than three weeks, intending to survey over 100,000 star systems for planets similar to our own. It will be the first satellite capable of locating distant planets that are the same size or smaller than Earth, which is one giant leap for answering questions about extraterrestrial life.

Satellites and probes aren’t the only things being sent into space either. With the International Space Station (ISS) verging on completion and the space shuttle nearing its admission into the world’s largest old folk’s home, NASA are in the process of developing a new rocket, Ares I, and the crew capsule Orion I. These are projected to take over from the space shuttle on trips to the ISS, but they are also part of plans for a long-term colony on the moon and even a manned mission to Mars. However, this is very much theoretical until both complete rigorous testing, so don’t book your buggy-racing holiday on the moon just yet.

Special mention should be given to the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes, which with an estimated five-year working lifespan are now approaching their thirty-second year in space. Their current mission is to reach the edge of the solar system and be the first man-made object to enter interstellar space, an incredible achievement. In addition, Voyager 2 recently discovered that the solar system is not spherical: rather, it is squashed at its southern hemisphere, changing traditional concepts of how the sun reacts with space and the objects surrounding it.

So while we won’t be flying TIE fighters or warring with the Klingons anytime soon, it might be possible to swing a six-iron in the Sea of Tranquility in the coming decades. Unless you believe the moon landings were faked, in which case you’re an idiot.

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