Continuing with themes in the stories for Lunatics… Here’s number eleven:
Theme #11
Real Science and Technology
We’re not so much writers who happen to know some science as we are
scientists who’ve turned to a second career in writing. As such, we
don’t just infuse science into plots we’ve already imagined. Rather,
scientific premises are often plot-drivers in our scripts — they are
where the script starts. Although we certainly have scripts that are
primarily about character development or archetypal frontier situations,
these science-driven plots will be quite common in Lunatics. Biology,
astronomy, (lunar) geology, and physics all get starring moments in
season one stories for Lunatics.
Some proposed technologies and ideas that will be appearing in Lunatics scripts:
- Telepresence-operated robotics
- Ballistic point-to-point transportation on the moon
- “Moon hotel” concept
- Underground habitats and radiation safety issues
- Solar power collection fields
- Fuel-cell/electrolysis power buffering
- Applications of rilles and lavatubes
- “In Situ Resource Utilization” — I.e. “living off the land”
- Artistic / commercial exports created from lunar materials
- Closed-Systems ecology and biospherics
- Both soil and hydroponic farming
- Colony architectural ideas owing originally to Peter Kokh and the
Moon Miner’s Manifesto and some others from Artemis Society
International design studies in the 1990s - Catalytic oxygen extraction
- Space elevator (the “Space Tether Experiment Platform”)
- Aerobraking
- LOX/AL hybrid fuel rockets (I.e Lunar-refuelables)
- Long-duration LOX/LH2 storage on orbit and tanker + transport logistics (Constellation-era design studies)
- New manufacturing tech, e.g. 3D printing ceramics from fused regolith
- MANY closed-systems ecology issues
Of course, although I know enough about these things to make
broad choices, I am NOT an engineer (I was an aerospace engineering
major for about 1 year in college, but went on to other stuff), and I
very well might want to get someone who is to look over what we’ll be
creating and/or do more detailed design.
