RE: starship-design: Computer displays et al.

["L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu
> [mailto:owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu]On Behalf Of
> Peter / Sci
> Sent: Monday, June 03, 2002 7:58 AM
> To: Starship Design
> Subject: Re: starship-design: Computer displays et al.
>
> I agree that most of the computing power on the ship, will
> probably consist

[clip]

For an exploration ship on a multi-year mission an actual "Control Room" is
probably not terribly necessary. Most day-to-day operations of the ship
would perforce be automated to a great extent, not requiring constant
oversight. In fact, once safely on course, there would be almost nothing to
do at all. Even for Kelly's Explorer class of starship I can't see needing a
control room any bigger than what is currently on the Space Shuttle. With
wall sized flat screens in everyone's quarters, wireless PDAs and voice
controlled interaction with the C3 systems, control oversight could be
exercised from just about anywhere.

Once the exploration vessel was in-system, there would be a much greater
amount of daily decision making going on so there might be some social
usefulness to having a centrally designated Control Room, but this could be
configured shortly before the exploration vessel arrives from an empty
storage room that used to house food for the journey. The control runs for
the equipment would of course have been preinstalled in several storage
rooms for that eventuality. Probably also want a control room for the
exploration itself, not just control of the ship and its landing craft.

As for redundancy, I would think that the computer network would be a
distributed model with multiple redundant main processors located throughout
the ship. It would even be able to draw on the power of individual PDAs if
needed. Since the charter of this group is to explore technology feasible
within the next fifty years, you should be willing to speculate a little
about changes to computing technology within that timeframe. For instance,
the "PDA" may well be physically inside your head and wired to your nervous
system through your eyes, ears and spinal cord. This is important because
then the holographic display wouldn't really be necessary, it would be 3-D
inside your head!

Lee