High!

Recently, I finished a 3600-frame animation of my desert world 
"Ghurghusht"... the sequence looks like a flight along the equator, but 
rather is a close-up of the planet/moon's limb rotating underneath - the 
illumination angle remains always the same.

The animation can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwDzWvUfsKw

Enjoy!

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

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Wow!  You've done a great job with this. It reminds me of those seminal films
taken by the APOLLO moon-landing astronauts (Apollo 8?) as they circled the
moon. The camera angle setting is also quite good, with that oddly interesting
'foreshortening' or compression of the space (i.e., that telephoto look.)

Now--if you care to re-render the whole thing again(!)--a more rock-like texture
for the surface would be nice. Perhaps with a bit more shadowing. Oh, and
perhaps a 16X9 aspect ratio, to give it that expansive 'you-are-there' feeling.

Ken

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High!

Kenneth wrote:
> Wow!  You've done a great job with this. It reminds me of those seminal films
> taken by the APOLLO moon-landing astronauts (Apollo 8?) as they circled the
> moon.

Yes, the very same films I had in mind also... with "Dream A Little 
Dream Of Me" by the Mamas & Papas as background music!

> Now--if you care to re-render the whole thing again(!)--a more rock-like texture
> for the surface would be nice. Perhaps with a bit more shadowing. Oh, and
> perhaps a 16X9 aspect ratio, to give it that expansive 'you-are-there' feeling.

Yes, I plan to add a more differentiated texture (depending on height, 
slope, latitude and distance to lakes) with some small-scale normal 
later on... but first, I want to replace the dull dark blue lakes with 
realistic water and to add an Earth-like media sky!

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

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Kenneth schrieb:
> Wow!  You've done a great job with this. It reminds me of those seminal films
> taken by the APOLLO moon-landing astronauts (Apollo 8?) as they circled the
> moon. The camera angle setting is also quite good, with that oddly interesting
> 'foreshortening' or compression of the space (i.e., that telephoto look.)

(Just as a side note: The moon-landers would have been the Apollo 11 
team. The Apollo 8 crew were the first to orbit the moon though, and so 
as far as moon-circling footage goes, that of Apollo 8 is probably more 
famous.)

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Kenneth schrieb:
> > ...It reminds me of those seminal films
> > taken by the APOLLO moon-landing astronauts (Apollo 8?)...
>
> (Just as a side note: The moon-landers would have been the Apollo 11
> team. The Apollo 8 crew were the first to orbit the moon though, and so
> as far as moon-circling footage goes, that of Apollo 8 is probably more
> famous.)

Sorry, I didn't think many people (read: youngsters) would remember just what
the Apollo flights were for(!) Probably seems like ancient history to many, like
Greek mythology or something. Yes indeed, Apollo 11 was THE event; I remember
staying awake about 30 hours straight, watching the entire spectacle
unfold--with good ol' Walter Cronkite giving a minute-by-minute account. For
anyone lucky enough to be of age then, it was a life-changing event, burned into
memory.

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Kenneth schrieb:

> Sorry, I didn't think many people (read: youngsters) would remember just what
> the Apollo flights were for(!) Probably seems like ancient history to many, like
> Greek mythology or something. Yes indeed, Apollo 11 was THE event; I remember
> staying awake about 30 hours straight, watching the entire spectacle
> unfold--with good ol' Walter Cronkite giving a minute-by-minute account. For
> anyone lucky enough to be of age then, it was a life-changing event, burned into
> memory.

I was born too late to witness it live on TV - but astronauts (and 
especially the Apollo guys) have always been my heros throughout childhood.

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High!

clipka wrote:

> I was born too late to witness it live on TV - but astronauts (and 
> especially the Apollo guys) have always been my heros throughout childhood.

Same with me - I was born during Apollo 11! And for some time in my 
childhood, I believed that Armstrong and Aldrin actually landed on July 
19... when got my first books about astronomy and spaceflight, at about 
9 years, I found out that it rather was on July 21.

See you in (Khyber)space!

Yadgar

Now playing: Water Of Love (Dire Straits)

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> I was born too late to witness it live on TV - but astronauts (and 
> especially the Apollo guys) have always been my heros throughout 
> childhood.

It is one of my earliest memories. Well, when I was young, I always thought 
that by now we would have at least a base on the moon. Maybe have gone to 
Mars.

Now I suppose we will remain earthbound forever. It is not worth it (in 
monetary terms). We know what our planets look like. They are not very 
interesting. Terraforming? Takes too long, if possible at all. Mining? Not 
economical.

Explore other worlds, other planets, other suns? Unless somebody comes up 
with a way to travel faster than light - no chance. And faster-than-light 
travel? Highly improbable - I guess the chances are around zero for anybody 
finding a way to bypass Einstein. Even if somebody did, we would still need 
a means of radioactive shielding (at high velocities any incoming radiation 
becomes really mean short-wave), a deflector shield (at really high speeds 
even a small speck of dust has lots of destructive energy) and a vast, cheap 
energy source to power all this. So: another dream gone bust.

This is rather depressing.

On the other hand, physics can be tricked. I remember writing an essay on 
sub-micro and nano-lithography some 20 years ago. Why it would be impossible 
to do without having to resort to gamma-rays. Man, was I wrong. Who would 
have guessed at immersion lithography back then? Therefore my comment 
above - while I don't think so with what I know now, there may be a way to 
navigate around Einstein - something nobody has currently thought of... 
well, hope always dies last.

As a side note, guess how big the Apollo guidance computer was: memory 
capacity was just 4 kB with 36 kB ROM!  ;-)

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> Kenneth schrieb:
>
>> Sorry, I didn't think many people (read: youngsters) would remember
>> just what
>> the Apollo flights were for(!) Probably seems like ancient history to
>> many, like
>> Greek mythology or something. Yes indeed, Apollo 11 was THE event; I
>> remember
>> staying awake about 30 hours straight, watching the entire spectacle
>> unfold--with good ol' Walter Cronkite giving a minute-by-minute
>> account. For
>> anyone lucky enough to be of age then, it was a life-changing event,
>> burned into
>> memory.
>
> I was born too late to witness it live on TV - but astronauts (and
> especially the Apollo guys) have always been my heros throughout childhood.

I remember that my father woke me and my brother up to look at the 
direct diffusion of man first steps on the Moon. Then, the next day at 
school when almost everybody was sleepy and talking about it.
Then, there was Expo '67 and the US pavilon with a real Apolo capsule on 
display...

Alain

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High!

TC wrote:

> Now I suppose we will remain earthbound forever.

It's clear that colonizing the Solar System won't ease overpopulation on 
Earth - even a terraformed Mars could hardly accommodate more than a few 
hundred million people, let alone the other terrestrial worlds which are 
  even more hostile to life (and, thus, more difficult to terraform) 
than Mars.

> It is not worth it (in 
> monetary terms). We know what our planets look like. They are not very 
> interesting.

Oh, then you're probably not so familiar with the latest discoveries on 
the Saturnian and Jovian moons!

> Terraforming? Takes too long, if possible at all.

Back in 1991, I read in a German newspaper of a terraforming scenario 
for Mars which would take a mere 180 years to complete...

> Mining? Not economical.

I think asteroidal mining could probably be the first commercially 
successful application of interplanetary space flight - many rare earth 
metals are about to run out in the next few years, and sophisticated 
recycling ("urban mining") would possibly not be enough to meet our 
(think of China's and India's growing economies!) demands...

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

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