Science Fact From Fiction

Embedded Geek writes "The European Space Agency maintains an ongoing project called Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications (ITSF) (Cliquetez ici pour la version française). Its goal is "to review past and present SF literature, artwork and films in order to identify and assess innovative technologies and concepts described which could be possibly developed further for space applications." While I had known about Clarke first envisioning the geostationary satellite, the site also lists some other interesting ideas first pitched in SF: planetary landers, rocket fins, and space stations assembled in orbit. Visitors to the site are encouraged to submit technologies from SF works, although they should look at the master keyword list to avoid duplication first. Also of interest is a spiffy little brochure and a writing contest. Even if it never results in any new technology actually being developed, the site is a nice resource for science educators and science fiction fans."

Comments

new innovations from space movies!

[ohzero]

Does this mean that we could finally end up with a guy named dark helmet flying commuter routes to Duran Duran? "Today's inflight meal provided by Pizza the Hut"

Spaceballs

[craigtay]

Remember the giant maid in spaceballs? That could be reality in a few years.

What about other fields?

[GothChip]

This is a great idea. I always thought that other fields should pay more attention to turning science fiction ideas into reality.

The two inventions I'm looking forward to are credsticks to replace cash (like in Shadowrun) and reactalight contact lenses to reduce glare from the sun.

Re:What about other fields?

[IncarnationTwo]

Credit cards.
Cash (debit?) cards.

Both of these are widely aivailable in europe, though it is fairly hard to pay with EC("electronic cash"), as not so many shops have needed readers for EC cards.

Why is that?
Because there is no market for "credstics" or EC
in consumer markets. People like to see how much money they have.

Maybe when you can get visa electron 2.0 that has lcd-on-creditcard that shows your current balance... or maybe not even then.

And you should remember that whern you use EC, all you transactions are _tracable_.

And what about Scifi view of EC-on-skin... I find that a horrible idea. An electronic tracing instrument planted on your skin.

Re:What about other fields?

[swillden]

That's not necessarily true. It could be implemented that way, but there's no technological reason for it. You just need a way to ensure that one value token can only be decrypted by one owner at a time, and we can do that easily with key-pairs and signatures, so long as there's a TTP to actually issue the cash.

Yes and no.

In theory, perfectly anonymous digital cash that can flow from person to person is feasible. Many cryptographers have proposed schemes that have various strengths and weaknesses, but most of them are pretty solid, theoretically.

In practice, we run into the fact that there really isn't any place we can store private keys with adequate security and mobility. The obvious answer is auditability: if the technology can make counterfeiting moderately difficult and we can establish a solid audit trail that tracks every penny, then anyone who does crack the technological barriers wil have to risk exposing themselves in order to spend their counterfeit cash.

Of course, auditability is pretty much the opposite of anonymity, although there are various compromise positions that can offer a reasonable solution.

Mondex goes the route of complete anonymity, and even allows person-to-person exchange of value, through an arbitrarily long chain, with no records. The result is that Mondex is highly vulnerable to counterfeiting, since it depends almost entirely on the security of the electronic tokens (smart cards) carried by the end-user. I say "almost entirely" because the Mondex scheme also includes some mathematical models of cashflow which theoretically allow the scheme operators to obtain an estimate of the amount of electronic cash which is in circulation. If this estimate turns out to be significantly larger then the amount that has been issued, then the system may need to be shut down.

Visa Cash goes the route of complete auditability at a device level, as opposed to a user level. Every transaction that loads value onto a device is archived and most transactions that spend value from a device are also reported back. If the value spent by a given card ever exceeds the value placed onto that card, then that card has been compromised, and actions can be taken to (a) disable that card and (b) attempt to aprehend the criminal. To allow users to divorce their own identity from that of the card, Visa got the idea of providing vending machines that would sell preloaded cards, unassociated with any particular user. Unfortunately, you must use some form of payment to buy the anonymized card and most payment mechanisms require you to identify yourself, thus re-establishing the identity link. The exception, of course, is cash. But why would you want to use paper cash to buy electronic cash?

Also, Visa permits member banks to choose whether or not they will reimburse cardholders for lost card value. Since transactions are fully auditable, the bank can know how much money is on a given card. So, if you have an identity-tagged card, the value can be replaced if you lose it. Convenience, but no anonymity.

Many other approaches have been recommended that take a middle path, and achieve security by moving the keys out of the public's hands and into bank vaults where they can be protected. Perhaps the most promising of these a few years back was David Chaum's "DigiCash", which had a number of appealing properties. First, it was truly and completely anonymous if and only if you never tried to "double spend" a digital coin. If you did spend the same money twice, there was a very high probability (Chaum suggested (2^32 -1)/(2^32), but it could be made arbitrarily high) that your identity would be revealed. Second, it was partially auditable, in that after you received an electronic payment, you could not use that money to pay someone else, you had to deposit the "coins" you received in the bank. You could then withdraw spendable "coins" from the bank. The result is that while it's not possible to know where or how you spend money, or who you receive money from, the bank does know exactly how much money flows through your hands. Governments like this feature.

Other approaches address some of the "limitations" (the scare quotes are because some don't see them as limitations) of DigiCash, allowing respending, and deferring auditing while retaining the essential "anonymous unless you double spend" character. Most of these proposals are horrendously complex, so much so that it's hard to verify their properties analytically, much less build a secure implementation. Every one that I've looked at is impractical as well, although advances in hardware may change that, eventually.

So, no, I don't think we can "easily" implement a secure and untraceable electronic cash system. The answer depends heavily upon your definitions of "secure" and "untraceable", of course.

Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[91degrees]

Has anyone actually read this report? While the concept was quite clever, it was clearly written long before anyone had got into space.

His proposal was to build no more than 3 comsats. These were huge beasts that would be constructed in space, and manned permanently. Each comsat would deal with communication over 120 degrees across the earth.

This is a far cry from dozens of highly specialised and semi disposable comsats that we actually use. I don;t mean to be too hard on Arthur C. Clarke, but people really ought to remember how wrong he was with a few gems of being right.

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[anonymous cupboard]

I read his original report, he was showing how a minimum system could be built for full earth coverage. He wrote this at a time when space flight was still very much fiction (about ten years before Sputnik) and there were vacuum tubes rather than semiconductors. Tubes need regular replacement, hence the need for a manned presence.

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[alistair]

For people who wish to read the report itself, the London Science Museum has images of the entire Wireless World article available here.

Personally, I think he got the most important points correct in anticipating the advantages of a Geostationary orbit. I suspect he suggested only three of them due to the huge cost of building them and he does show (correctly) that these three satellites would cover the major regions of "Africa and Europe", "China and Oceana" and "The Americas" (page three) while allowing point to point communication between the three satellites.

True, he did predict huge manned stations powered by valves with people to replace the valves but it seems harsh to critisise him for not inventing Moores Law 20 years early. Much of the rest of the text is both valid and visionary. For some other examples of his work the site has a short information page here.

While browsing the site you may also want to look at the Quicktime VR movie of the inside of Apollo 10. The Science Museums Space Gallery has always been one of my favourites and this is a nice attept to put some of it online (plus I helped in the making of this a few years back :-) ).

Re:Bluetooth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you paid attention to Star Trek? Whenever Kirk and crew got their hands onto some alien technology they would immediately be able to control it, often using their tricorders. You'll notice that these have nearly 100% inter-operability with any tech out there (alien or not), and it is wireless.

Bluetooth is much the same. The reason you don't see many UFO reports these days is because the aliens are now afraid some madman with a bluetooth-enabled mobile phone will hijack their ride. That's how good those phones are.

Bluetooth: yesterday's SF, today's reality! ;-)

Death Star

[rde]

Under normal circumstances, I'd suggest a Death Star. In these heady days when we're considering technologies that might, in our lifetimes, get us to other star systems, it's important to have something that'll enable us to blow the shit out of anything that looks at us funny.

Of course, there would be problems. Remember the arguments about the status of Pluto? That'd be nothing compared to something like the death star.

"That's no moon."
"Yes it bloody is"
etc

Re:Death Star

[fredrikj]

He's more like a combination of Jar-Jar and the Emperor.

Not space related but...

[idletask]

Jules Vernes has led the way to modern submarines with its "twenty thousands leagues under the sea" novel. Remember Captain Nemo? :)

Re:Bluetooth?

[Longjmp]

You don't need UFOs. This is even more scary.

Translation of screen display:

New hardware detected.
(spoiler omitted)
Start auto-configuration now?
[Start] [Cancel]

We should...

[Anonvmous Coward]

...reclassify Animaniacs as Scifi. Remember that garage door opener that Yakko had that could turn women upside down?

IP.

[DaBj]

The site is also a nice resource for finding prior art.

Hope that doesn't make companies avoid inventing the stuff, since they can't really patent it, and we all know that it's the patent that creates a profit, not the invention...

Hard sci-fi

[sql*kitten]

Its goal is "to review past and present SF literature, artwork and films in order to identify and assess innovative technologies and concepts described which could be possibly developed further for space applications."

Anything that is "space fantasy" (like Star Trek) can probably be dismissed out of hand, since it all relies on an inconsistent physics model. The physics of the Star Trek universe are mutable to suit the story, they are functionally indistinguisable from magic spells in traditional fantasy genres. Babylon 5, Farscape et al are no better. - altho' to be fair, both of those place far less emphasis on technobabble than Star Trek.

But there is a lot of good stuff in hard sci fi. My favourite author at the moment is Alastair Reynolds. In his books, humans have colonized other worlds relying on cryogenic suspension (theoretically possible, actively being researched now) and relativistic time compression (a known fact), rather than an FTL drive. If a ship is in orbit it's internal "down" is outwards as a section of the hull rotates to simulate gravity, but while its underway, down is backwards because of drive thrust, and you have to reconfigure somewhat before switching modes - no "artificial gravity". There are no "deflector screens" - if you want to protect your ship, find some cometary ice and wrap yourself in it. Other technologies he uses, like nanotech manufacturing are all extrapolations from current research.

Of course, it is fiction, so there are a few things that are made up (the Conjoiner's power source, for example). But if fiction is to drive research, it could do a lot better than what passes for mainstream sci-fi.

Re:Wait...

[anonymous cupboard]

our space program takes its cues from scientists who are serious professionals with years of training

Regrettably it gets its money from the lunatics on the hill and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. With an obsession with providing rewards for the backhanders received from the aerospace inducstry, a lot is spent on inappropriate and/or ineffective technologies (Star Wars).

post hoc ergo propter hoc

[The Fun Guy]

Disclaimer: I love science fiction, always have, always will, however...

Science fiction did indeed predict (in some form, anyway) communications satellites, cell phones, rocket fins, particle weapons, the floppy drive, etc. However, it also predicted antigravity, rolling roads, matter converters, mind control rays, time machines and stasis fields. The trouble with looking back at science fiction and picking out the accurate predictions is that you ignore the 99.9% that was inaccurate, and distort the perceived value of the source material. It's like finding one potato out of a thousand that's shaped kind of like Elvis... you would not seriously conclude that potato fields are a good place to look for new sculptures, would you?

Conspiracy Theory 101

[infolib]

Someone from the CIA admitted this.

Pleeease! Rumours are true when, and only when CIA denies them.

On the other hand. . .

[kfg]

I've got a credit card right here just itching to dump it's entire purchasing power in one swell foop on anyone who can install a "somebody else's problem" field around my home.

KFG

...and Heinlein's Waterbed

[Caradoc]

Heinlein also "invented" the waterbed, being a method to support a body that wasn't acclimated to higher gravity.

Supposedly, he came up with this idea when he was still in the Navy, and would sneak over the face to float in a pool at night.