Meet the First Realistic Martian Woman

What would we have to do to our bodies if we wanted to live on Mars? io9 consulted scientists, our imaginations, and a designer, and came up with the most realistic-possible portrait of a Martian colonist who might truly exist on the Red Planet in 100 years. She's really tall, doesn't have to wear a bra, and has some pretty awesome photosynthesis and water-reclaiming implants in her exosuit. It's time to meet the first Martian woman. Click through for full frontal.

Link

Somebody had better check the air composition in the io9 comments section -- they're getting awfully giddy over the notion of braless Martians. Let's hope these lads have the waist drawstrings of their exosuits nice and tight so their errant emissions don't end up fogging the faceplates of their suits.

Listen. The same lower gravity which would not pull so much on breasts would allow them to bounce upward more. Breasts move in three planes of motion. It's that motion that causes discomfort, and stretching of the ligaments. That's why a good sports bra will suppress the motion in all directions.

If Martian tits go wibble wibble wibble all the time unsupported in the weak Mars gravity, there's a chance that centrifugal force will eventually lead to them being stretched out so much that buxom Martian lasses will be able to do the classic "tie them in a knot" and "tie them in a bow."

Lower gravity would "require" her to be tall? Why?

So you figure 100 years of living on Mars (4 or 5 generations) will make Lamarckism suddenly kick in? Or that a Mars colony has so many potential parents that they can afford to be choosy about which colonists the eugenicists will allow to breed? Or that screwing around with genes or our endocrine systems will be routine on a frontier colony that needs to focus on basic survival?

In her boots and strapped to her thighs, she has water drilling/processing packs. A cannulated drill can extend out of it, go deep under martian crust, suck up water, run it through a filter to get the salt and acid out, and then store it close to her body to keep it liquid so she can sip from it.

If she's outside long enough to need enough water that she's got to drill for it and process it, rather than carrying her own supply of potable water with her, what will she be doing with the piss, shit and menstrual blood she'll be producing during that time? Does that mean she needs a separate, parallel processing unit for those wastes? Maybe a menstrual cup? Will the solids and liquids somehow be collected and jettisoned? Or saved for their precious composting value back at the colony?

There are elaborate waste collection devices for shuttles and space capsules, designed to keep both liquids and solids from floating free in zero gravity. Current space suit designs seem to employ a version of an adult diaper to simply trap any wastes generated in the few hours the suit will be worn, until the suit can be removed.

Special thanks are due to the team whose very informative draft paper on"Waste Management in Space" for Space Science Outreach and Research (SSOAR) is available online. Their work seems to confirm that you really aren't going to be wearing a space suit for any longer than you can handle pooping in your diapers and not wiping your butt. Given that the weight of any drinking water you'd need in that time would far lighter than the water you'd carry for a few hours hiking on Earth, the notion that you'd need to drill and process water using your martian Uggs is just plain goofy. Perhaps that is why the scientists and designer allegedly consulted for this are un-named.

Other than the titillation of bra-less women, there is nothing in io9's piece that seems to be gender-specific. Perhaps someone has been doing too much drooling over pictures of Dejah Thoris.

Let me repeat the realization that came out of writing my response to the io9 article. While there are occasional articles on how astronauts go to the bathroom in space, what this means has not been taken further.

We are a clever and ambitious species, who may eventually walk the surface of many of the planetary bodies in our solar system if we don't kill ourselves first. But without nano-bots who can carry away those particles which would create diaper rash, our direct space-suited exploring and experience of the surface of Mars, the moon, or any other bodies will be limited to the number of hours we can handle wearing poopy diapers.

Post-Apocalypse Statue of Liberty

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair

It was my week to post at culturemonkey this week, and I delivered with a post about the motivations for apocalyptic fantasy, what it is and what it's for. Check it out. Comments, criticism, and elaborations of all sorts are very welcome.

While writing the post, in connection with Ryan's theory that the most salient feature of apocalypse in science fiction is the way in which the same images are simply repackaged for us over and over again, I was struck by the recurrence of a ruined Statue of Liberty as perhaps the quintessential icon of disaster since the 1940s. So struck, in fact, that I began to obsessively collect these images from the 'net wherever I could find them. -- Gerry Canavan

Full article with lots of illustrations

Thanks to Rigorous Intuition blog

Movies that Smash the Statue of Liberty. io9's list.

If anyone knows of any bibliographies or checklists of science fiction that is set in New York City or upstate New York (preferably short stories or novels), I'd love to hear about them.

Dior Haute Couture Cellular Automata

The fashion press so far appears to have missed a mathematical reference in one of the gowns presented by John Galliano for Dior, in the current Paris Fashion Week presentation.

This purple gown features trianglar patterns quite reminiscent of cellular automata. Cellular automata are diagrams which grow and change according to simple rules, yet which can produce very complex structures and behavior.

It's a concept that can illustrate the relationship between the haute couture and the read to wear collections. The haute couture collection, usually flamboyant, conceptually sophisticated, and labor-intensive, supplies the basic rules for generating the ready to wear trends that will follow in its wake. The couture outfits are not to be taken literally, but offer gestures of color, shape, line, pattern that will be picked up by the mass manufacturers and mutated according to their reading of the zeitgeist.

Steven Weinberg, "Is the Universe a Computer?"

The Wikipedia page on Conway's Game of Life shows some of the patterns animated.

Gorey/Star Trek Tribbles mashup

Who'd have guessed that Edward Gorey turned into a Star Trek fan in the late 1970s? Shaenon K. Garrity speculates what a Gorey version of The Trouble with Tribbles might have been. She offers deadpan renderings of Gorey's black and white crosshatching, and appropriately understated narration such as "Dr. McCoy commented that he was a doctor, and not of some other profession unrelated to medicine."

A newspaper clipping from the time indicates Gorey was able to hold his own when discussing the the merits of the various Disney "Herbie" movies. As a long-time Gorey fan, that's probably the most disturbing tidbit I've ever heard about him.

http://shaenon.livejournal.com/48834.html

Thanks to Boing Boing