Spacestation - Tumblr Posts
Space station astronauts solve the mystery of a missing tomato
It's gotta be hard to lose something when you're swirling around the Earth on the International Space Station — right? Well, apparently not. A missing tomato sparked a lighthearted mystery for the astronauts on board the ISS – and it's finally been solved after months of accusations and intrigue.
✨Trade Space Station !✨
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Finally...More than 60 hours of work, I can present my masterpiece. I have been working and planning this project for a long time. Given the sheer amount of things to talk about, I will split all of my rambling in (at least) four posts : one about the concepts, ideas, and general aspect (you're here !); one about the technical side of things; one depicting how the project evolved (using pictures taken during the construction); and one dealing with all the smaller details, ships, and such.
Enough with planning, though. Explanations, other images and more explanations below the cut !
(less) edited picture of the build :
So. You might see, now that I got rid of all that pesky editing (or most of it) that there is a big arm holding the thing in place. It's easily a fifth of all the work of this build, because I absolutely wanted to hold this thing at an angle, and it's heavy, at around 15 kilograms (33 pounds). I'll talk about the technical difficulties of that in a later post, but it was important for it to be solid, because the station was the central piece of my second ever (very small) lego exhibition. AND it allowed me to meet the recruiter of a much larger exhibit. Long story short, in a month, I'm presenting this piece again (just before my exams, whoops-).
Anyway. Not only is it heavy, but it's also quite tall and wide. Around a meter at the highest point (tilted or not), while the diameter of the main ring is at around 0.75m. Quite a difficult thing to move around. Or is it ? Well, yes and no.
Here are all the main components (excluding the holding arm), when I move the piece around. Of course, all the ships are detachable (it allows me to move them around from one day to the other), but the dome carrying the antenna can also be removed, and then, the entire ring can be disconnected (that, too, was quite a challenge).
Removing the ring obviously makes it waaay easier to transport, because a single wooden plank can then be used (again, except for the arm, but that thing was made to be sturdy, so it can be transported with less care); and , once the dome is removed, I can just let the central cylinder stand upside-down (useful for storage). The only trouble I found with this system is that I once connected the ring the wrong way around, meaning everything in the small hangars was upside down. Quite an embarrassing moment.
Speaking of the hangars, I initially wanted to keep them all empty, to store ships inside, but it didn't really offer this piece the sparkle of life. Setting up these small decors inside most of them, with colors contrasting with the general theme of the build, was actually a really good addition.
The colour scheme as it is now is not exactly the one I had planned at the start of the project. I originally planned on using bright light orange (bricklink colour name) instead of sand green, but I found out that this colour was tough to find in large quantities, and I already had quite a bunch of the sand green, so this tragic decision was made. I think it would have offered a more vibrant colour to the build (resembling a Subnautica default palette, which I enjoy quite a lot), but in hindsight, the green works really well, appart from a small detail I'll expand on in a minute.
What's really funny for this project is that, when it started, I actually only wanted a nice way of showcasing all the little space ships that I tend to make whenever I have access to a small amount of cool pieces. Then came a long time where I only daydreamed about it and planned how I would want it to go, and only when I had a clear vision did I start the actual building process. So, taking all that into account, you can probably double the amount of time I spiritually spent on this project.
What I knew is that I wanted to get this huge ring held by beams to the station's body, which made the build both more interesting and more complicated that it would have been. But the challenge was appealing.
At first, the main body was completely flat and white, but I soon had to add texture, both because it was becoming ugly and because the 2*2 white curved slopes were starting to diminish fast. The first modifications I did were to add the sand green curved slopes instead to create stipes, then letters : the big A-2 you can easily spot. With the few bits of lore that I have created for this piece, you have to imagine that there are hundreds of these stations spread in the galaxy, which can be easily described through 3 criteria : the Letter, the Number, and the Colour. That would mean that, if you wanted to meet with someone at the exemplar I made, you would say something along the lines of 'Meet you at Sand Green A2'.
Texture-wise, the other element of the largest cylinder is the exposed bits of machinery, very classic in sci-fi, I know, but it does work well in this context. The second cylinder has much less textures, with only a few grates, and some 2*1 ingot pieces (because they look cool); but it also has its own, smaller ring (diameter slightly larger than the largest cylinder's).
Then come the smaller cylinders, which don't have much texture, except in their transition from one to another (barely visible in any of the pictures, but it exist).
Overall, I'm also really happy of how round it looks, given that circles are not my speciality.
Here is a completely unedited picture of the support arm (Lewa for scale), with a nice counterweight which might be necessary to hold the entire thing in place (it may not be, but I'm not trying to remove it. Bad idea.).
As you might notice, my studio is not a shelf anymore. I built something new from scratch with a green screen, because I thought it would make my editing job easier. And it would have, if I didn't use sand green in my build. Anyway, I'm keeping this for a few days, to snap some pictures of the MOCs which don't fit in my shelve (and are not green, meaning editing will be easier.
Here is the 'studio' from an outside point of view :
I know it's quite a mess outside of my clean perimeter, but I do as I can. You can see one light in the foreground, but there is also one (less visible in the background), symmetrical to the first one, and a third one behind and above the camera (outside of the picture).
You may also notice a lot of sorting boxes. Sorting pieces can greatly improve your productivity, if you label all your box correctly. Covered by the greenscreen is essentially a shelf full of these sorting boxes, labelled by colour and piece type, and it was really practical. Anyway. Thank you for reading until this point, I guess ? If you survived through all this rambling, you probably deserve something...
I mean- Have these pictures I took during the exhibition, I guess...
(You can notice that these are two different days because of the ships’ placement).
✨Trade space station !✨
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Today’s gonna be about the progress of the build in time, which allows me to ramble about the building process. Yay !
Before actually commenting the build. You may notice chocolate and my (empty) tea mug. They should be apparent in most of the earliest pictures (there was not enough space on the table for them at the end of the project, sadly~
So, here, you can see that my first step was to see the scale of my project. The template of the large ring to see how much space it would take, and the small ring to see how round I could make it (and at the bottom, you can see the white curved pieces. Enjoy this view, it won’t last.)
You can also notice above that I already stared making some small ships.
The next day ! You can see on the left my long rod. This was the ideal height for the central cylinder. I also created the first core of the build (replaced later because too fragile), and the first arms to hold the ring (too fragile too).
Progress ! This is the moment I realised my original color scheme would not work (you can see orange and bright green on the side, which I tried before the sand green).
I had half of the big cylinder added (you can see the slots left for the additional details) and another naked half on the right side. And my collection of boxes on the table is growing. It’s only getting worse after that.
See ? More boxes (and pieces) scattered all around. And a hammer, too. I at this point mostly finished the big cylinder (or so I thought, some reinforcements were necessary), started the smaller cylinder, and realised white pieces were running out. I also still haven’t touch the ring yet, as I wanted to stay focused on one bit.
Mostly done with the cylinders at the point (you can even see the start of the smallest one on the right side). Agin the boxes grow ominously.
Since it was time to start the ring, I created a replica of a sixth of it. Given that there were twelve sections, I wanted to be sure of the design before starting to build them all, starting with the facade. It took some fiddling around (you can see these aren’t symmetrical, as I was trying out different designs). Really, if you have this kind of things to do, try to make it in a vacuum first, you’ll gain a lot of time later, once the prototype has every problem answered (mine were mostly the curve, and the link between each plates (solved with mod 1*2 black plates).
See ? After the prototype was done, I simply built all of the facades and attached them (you can see my 1*4 curved pieces were all missing at the time though).
I kept the prototype on the side, because I’ll still need it later. I also am missing half of the ring (the part above, since there is only a structure below), because I was not sure of how everything would fit, and I waited until these parts were assembled before making it, in case adjustments were needed.
Here is the top part ! And all the hangars done, too. It took me a surprising amount of time to do all twelve of them…
Huge progress ! There is no more room on the table for the boxes, but you can see them…on the floor, on the left…Lot was done, from the bottom cylinder now finished along with its ring, the covering pieces of the big ring (except the internal faces), the hat of the station, and a huge reinforcement for the six arms, which was done separately). At this point, except for a few details, the station itself is finished.
And there is a picture taken moments before disaster. The station is done (ignoring the transitions between cylinders) the arm…supposedly, too.
Sadly, the arm wasn’t, in fact, finished. If you read the first post, you will notice it isn’t as bulky, and isn’t attached on baseplates yet.
Well, guess what ? When I finally tried to see if the arm would hold onto the station, it broke. Rather, two pieces broke, then the rest came down, and so did the station, which shattered on the floor below. Luckily for me, the main cylinder was so dense it practically completely survived. Most of the hangars of the rings only broke section per section, so it only took a few hours to get it back together, but much more time to make the arm solid. And now, it can hold the station for ten hours without flinching ! So, here is a lesson. If something you do fails when you do it with your heart, let the rage flow through you and build it back out of spite. It works* !
*don’t hold me accountable for any failure using that method
Angus McKie's cover art for The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K. O'Neill, 1978.
Think we're the only planet with life?
Waltz of the Stars
l from International Space Station l Sean Doran
Thinking about Doug Eiffel from Wolf359 and I think I know who I wanna be when I grow up. Dudes he’s got some issues but he’s king.
(I don’t know what this is just that it wanted to be written. This is a original science fiction short story that I wrote with the intention of perfecting it and turning it into a whole universe, this did not work out. So I thought I’d post it here with the hopes someone likes it. I’m not that fond of the structure I use especially the use of first person because I think it makes it slightly muddled. Contains talk of war and mental health.)
I shifted impatiently from foot to foot and glared out the viewport. I hated being in space after spending most of my formative years stuck on that broken-down junk heap that the military jokingly called a medical space station. I had been prepared to never set foot on a space ship or station ever again, yet here I was. The shuttle was definitely an upgrade from the one Redbird Flyer had driven to get us from place to place, sometimes rushing us and the wounded out when the mines and the shooting got too close. Hades, it was always too close.
I was one of the few surviving implants left and so we were presented with an honor. I was only going to give a piece of my mind. After all, enough of it had been taken from me against my will and enough had been put in. The cries of space flyers reverberating through my link as their crafts exploded was something that was permanently wedged there. I was surprised at how easily I got used to the smell and feel of recycled air and the rock of deck plates under my feet, after twelve years.
On the station I would always complain about the tang in the air, the flickering lights, the reverberations that went from my feet to my head, the damn control unit that either burned or froze out. However, when I finally got back to my beloved farm, the steady earth felt strange, I choked on the air, the sun hurt my eyes, it took me five years to find my Earth legs again.
I watched on the news when all the old war stations were destroyed and I looked for the one that had held me captive for seven years but they didn't show it. They wouldn't have done it justice anyway, not the clang of the space dock, or the cries of the wounded, not the stench of alcohol and burned food and flesh. Not the doctors and the nurses and the engineers and the techs and the rest of us working tirelessly, against all insanity. Our fearless leader looking at us through shadowed eyes as she thinks of her children back home, the jokes, the nightmares, the back biting, the love, the hatred, the infighting, the crying, the homesickness, the desperation, the pain. Mary-Jane sobbing her eyes out until she was finally sent to Trinity station, our vigilant head surgeon drowning himself in booze and cards, our chief engineer ready to hang herself at the sight of the next broken engine.
Then me, hacked into the computer with an implant I didn't want, getting married through a video link and watching my 'son' grow up into a stranger, unable to attend mom's funeral, dying a little each day as my childhood was robbed away. I know that I am just one of many whose lives were ruined and some would say that I was lucky that I was alive, but some days I don't feel lucky.
Even after all these years, I still don’t know much about the people we were fighting. I didn’t want to know. I rationally know that they were fighting for their homes, their culture, their families. Their land and culture will never be the same again. I know that they lost more than we ever could.
That was what I was here to say, not to listen to them prattle on about the necessity and honour of it all. I was here to present the cost; my childhood, a doctor's sanity, flyer's dreams, a warrior's life, an engineer's sight, a child's mother, a people ruined, so many things that was why I was here on this flying monstrosity, listening to some flyer, who was too young to remember the galaxy war, babble on.
I have this thing about my hair. I had to keep it short for most of my life. Long hair gets in the way when you try to plug into the computer. Long hair itched and tangled and got in the way. It wasn't practical for an implant, for someone who scurried through tangled wreaks and ran through forests. Someone who leaned over consoles and couldn't afford the second it took to brush his hair away. The longest I let it get was when I was on the floating piece of junk known as 40779 medical station or Hades, depending on who was speaking. That was when I could let it go down to just below my jaw. At its shortest, I was practically bald. I mostly cut it myself. I didn't mind, never really had the time or patience to be a girl and think about my hair. I was a child running through the motions of being a solider, not really much time for hair.
The moment I was free, however, I tried hair growing products. I yelled when people even thought of cutting my hair. I didn't want to be that person. I wanted to be pretty, to be human again. Short hair was for running across a strange planet or sitting on a space station, not for home. Not for working on my farm and dancing with my wife. No, I needed long hair. I needed to be a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter. Not a solider, not an implant, not a tech, not a medic, not a stranger. I got it down to my waist and it tangled, got in the way and I didn't know what to do with it, but I needed it. Short hair was for boys, short hair made you stand out, short hair showed people where you had been, short hair showed the implant. Short hair wasn't practical for a wife and mother and daughter.
The problem was that I stood out with long hair or short hair. Long hair, and makeup and dresses couldn't hide what had happened to me, what I was. Just because I looked the part didn't stop my nightmares. Didn't stop the agoraphobia, the hallucinations, the memories that no one understood. I didn't smile at the jokes that they said. I didn't want to go to dances anymore. I screamed every time something dropped and I couldn't stand crowds. I had grown to be a different person while I was away and they had grown too. I wanted to be the person they wanted, who laughed and danced, and rode horses and played in fields and was everything to her child and family, but I couldn't. I wasn't a daughter, I wasn't a wife, I wasn't a mother; I was a stranger. Two days after my wife left me and took her son, I chopped off all my hair. If long hair can't make me that person again, then why should I try?
My stomach lurched to my throat as the shuttle docked on the station and the young flyer apologized for the rough landing. I had to inwardly laugh. Compared to some of the aerodynamics Redbird and Starlight subjected me to over the years, it was a walk in the park in fact, quite smooth. However, I said nothing. The two of us had developed a nice uncomfortable silence halfway through the ride and I had no desire to ruin it now. It wasn't that I hated or even disliked young people, it's just that I didn't really understand them and they didn't understand me (Especially my 'son' and daughter. To them I was a blank wall that could never be understood and shouldn't even be tried). Besides, it wasn't the cycle that had disturbed my stomach, it was the memories that insisted on invading my consciousness.
I had finally stopped seeing war everywhere. The sight of red hair didn't make me think of a young woman with big dreams and a big attitude stripped of everything she dreamed of, just one of so many broken young people. The smell of rust and smoke didn't transport me to the death trap of a station and a situation born in Hades. I could hear the rumble of thunder without breaking into a cold sweat of terror and feel the rush of adrenaline surge through me. I no longer expected the floor under my feet to roll or the air to push in around me and I don't flinch from the touch of metal. I had finally left all that behind on a station that no longer existed and a world that we had no business pursing. I was free.
I wish that it had happened years ago before I was saddled with the mantle of crazy because I flinched at things that weren’t there and blinked and moaned in the dim sunlight. Before, my wife left me because she didn't recognize the woman she was with, because it was so much easier to pretend that everything was OK when a solar system and a video link stood between us. I wonder sometimes if she regretted marrying me because I know she didn't regret the divorce. She found someone better, someone who didn't still reside in space, who hadn't left her sanity on a planet so similar to ours yet so different. She found someone who could be there for her son, who didn't stare at him, wondering why a little boy wasn't staring back. It was for the best, I suppose. My second marriage lasted less time and my daughter loves me because she has to. Which is another thing that I regret. The second marriage confirmed something for me though. The reason that my first marriage had lasted so long was because we were able to turn off the video link. But I had sorted those issues now; I was ready to be a mother despite the fact that it was too late. Then this happened.
All that work to forget and all it took was one message to bring it all back. All it took was one message to remind me that it would never be over. They could demolish all of the medical and war stations. They could declare peace treaties and start attempting interspecies healing. They could even remove all the implants that made my life hell, that stole my brother and twelve years of my life. They could do all these things, and they did, but they couldn't fix what had been done to me. They couldn't remove the memories of the horror, of the pain, of friends slowly losing their minds as they patched people and machines up as if they were interchangeable. They couldn't make it so one young flyer could stand up and walk, could recover her dreams of being the first flyer to search the Jemison asteroid belt, the one to give humanity the resources it needed. Peace treaties could never give a doctor back his sanity, his youth, his hope, his home. Demolishing the stations would never give a mechanic back her faith, her love, her determination. Words would never return the lives lost, not simply the dead but the living. The dead remained dead, my friends remained broken, my brother would remain in a coma and I would remain alone. Yet here they were offering their apologies and a celebration.
So my stomach clenched as the memories that I had fought so hard to suppress found their way through and I stepped onto the space station. I had never been here before, but the moment my boots hit the floor with a metallic bang it felt achingly familiar. As I stood there I had to ignore the feelings coursing through me, especially the horrific feeling that I was coming home.
STARCRASH.
I watch this film at least once a year, I think it's eclipsed Plan 9 From Outer Space as my favourite/most watched film...
What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth?
A time lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. Beginning over the Pacific Ocean and continuing over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, El Salvador, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Lake Titicaca, and the Amazon. Also visible is the Earth’s ionosphere (thin yellow line), a satellite and the stars of our galaxy.
