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Helium! (It's only a model.)
05-11-2013, 11:04 PM
The perfect 3D model for the City of Helium (at least in my opinion) has been created by Herminio Nieves.
Downloading it now, renders ... when I have time - maybe before summer, but don't bet on it unless somebody beats me to it. Don't forget to give credit if you use it somewhere.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/69075/browse/5 ... onial-City
[img]http://www.sharecg.com/get_image.php?type=large&upload_image_id=120523]
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Rob Kelk
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That is awesome... and particularly fennish in that the smaller dwellings look like classic flying saucers with accompanying rocket ships! 
Ross Van Loan
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A bit too Bespin for my tastes. The architecture in Burrough's Barsoom is garish, gaudy & gilded. However, it is a very nice colony.
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Ah, but Helium is still under construction...
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I'm sorry, I can offer no reaction to Helium.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Bob Schroeck Wrote:I'm sorry, I can offer no reaction to Helium. You are not thinking nuclear enough! 
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We'd beta be careful unless we want another pun thread. Never mind, wrong Greek letter. "Alpha" is harder to pun.
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Okay, it's obviously time for a quick render or two. No lights, no background, nothing but the model.
Helium-1: front view
![[Image: 4a616a1442a52b1c07e45737e7113690fc9628f1.png]](http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/forumimportfiles/4a616a1442a52b1c07e45737e7113690fc9628f1.png)
Helium-2: top view
![[Image: 81216d184ba02c1505c58f671d32b082d246b993.png]](http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/forumimportfiles/81216d184ba02c1505c58f671d32b082d246b993.png)
(And that's enough for now. There are enough incorrigible punsters in the thread already; no need to incorrige you with the next logical name in the sequence.)
Looks like the smaller dwellings aren't included.
This is obviously early Helium. While I'd say the style is "Art Deco" rather than "Warsie-Bespin," I can see where one could argue some influences. Perhaps the Heliumites hired a crew from Mos Eisley to help with the original construction...?
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It keeps the dust from settling on top and corroding the surface. Seems more a logical idea than aping a specific style of architecture.
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I like the dusty texture. From what we know Martian dust gets everywhere and is a right bitch to clean off of anything, so having Helium this sort of dun color makes sense until the terraforming traps more dust & gets enough water into the system to make cleaning a possibility.
That said, not one of those topless towers is tall enough to be the Jeddak's Tower. I am sad. 
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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The Jeddak's Tower is still under construction...
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*Snrk* That could be a fun running gag among the Martians.
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No, seriously. The silly thing is supposed to be a mile tall - that's going to take some time, even with handwaved construction equipment.
(However, it does make for a good training ground for construction workers who want to build a space elevator, which would be even taller...)
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But wouldn't the reduced gravity of Mars play a mitigating role in the construction? Just for lifting the building materials you could build a temporary linear motor elevator along the side of the building and move several tons at once... and at a rapid rate as well! Thinner air plays a role, too - loads on cranes tend not to move around as much in the Martian breeze as they would in a Terran breeze. Altitude would be an issue if the workers didn't need to be suited anyhow, so no worries about altitude sickness.
Besides the sheer height, are there any real drawbacks?
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I've been told that the "Martian breeze" is gale-force more often than Earth breezes are. And if you're going to use a crane, it'll have to be very tall ...
These aren't insurmountable, but figuring out how to surmount them will take a while. Then there's the fact that any mile-tall (or mile-long) structure is a megaproject that won't be completed in just one decade.
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Quote:Proginoskes wrote:
We'd beta be careful unless we want another pun thread. Never mind, wrong Greek letter. "Alpha" is harder to pun.
on second thought, lets not. Tis a Silly place!
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
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It's very thin air,however. 300 kilometres an hour is a barely felt whisp. The actual mass flowrate of martian air would be very low, even when compared with a gentle breeze on Earth. Winds might be a hundred times faster, but the air's a hundred times thinner. It's just about enough to stir up the dust every now and then.
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Fenspace has anti-gravity technology... I don't think floating the next level of a high building up onto the top would be a problem.
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