Finally, after lots of manipulation and tweaking, I am pleased to release the long awaited Celestia Educational Activity, the Terraforming of Mars. The Activity takes you to the 26th century and beyond to a time when man begins to terraform the surface of Mars, preparing it for colonization. As you journey through 1000 years of time, you will see Mars transformed from a dry, cold, lifeless world to a terraformed planet with shallow seas, oxygen atmosphere, plants and vast human colonies spread across its surface.
The work showcases the incredible talents of Don Edwards, Jack Higgins and Grant Hutchinson.
In response to my request for some textures to use, Don went all out and prepared a set of 19 complete transitional textures for Mars, showing it change from what it is today to a flooded, green world with colonies. He not only created amazing surface textures, but also bump textures, night textures and cloud textures for each segment in time. Here are just two screenshots of his amazing work:
A fully terraformed Mars
and ...
showing Mars in transition. Notice the ring of eight giant mirrors in space beyond Mars.
As a result of very impressive research by Grant, Jack, Selden, myself and others on the forum, we developed the Activity on the basis of an engineering plan to terraform Mars by melting the polar ice caps with huge mirrors in space, over the course of hundreds of years. There are several good papers on the subject published on the web. The combined efforts of several people had to be tapped to bring this to fruition in the Activity. First, we had to design the mirrors. Grant, Jack and I worked up a great model and Jack Higgin's exceptional talents designed a great 3ds model for the mirrors. It was then Grant's challenge to position the mirrors in space in such a way that they reflected sunlight directly onto the North and South poles of Mars (at least some of the orbital year). We also realized that to keep them on station, steering rockets could not be used (the mirrors are too large and flexible). Rather, orbiting lasers would have to be used to turn, adjust and steer the mirrors. Again, Jack and Grant came through with great designs, positioned to adjust the angle and orbit of each mirror.
The result is spectacular. Here are just two screenshots of the mirrors and lasers in use in space. The photo above shows them from Mars.
We even have video animation. A fantastic home movie with sound, taken from the surface of Mars which documents changes to the planet over 1000 years, has been custom designed for me for this Activity by David Smallwood of First Inspired, LTD in England. Here is a screenshot from it, showing the "Celestia Biodome" located in the Hellus crater.
The good news is that we think you will thoroughly enjoy taking this journey into the future of Mars. The bad news is that this Activity was a bear to get ready for download. It is very large (over 110 MB) and has to be downloaded from my website in eight (8) separate zip files. Each needs to be unzipped into the Celestia folder directly. They will install themselves into the extras folder. Make sure to read the instruction file in zip file A.
Because of their size, please be considerate in downloading. My website is being hosted on a friend's business server and it is in use a lot, particularly during the day. My webpage is a "lower" priority usage so when the server is in use for other things, downloads from my page will go slowly or be interrupted. If you have a dial-up modem, this Activity may simply be too big to try downloading, unless you schedule it for late at night.
One last point. In use, Celestia will draw a total of 32 separate models in space where the mirrors and lasers are (each mirror set has 4 3ds models associated with it). You may find that if you do not have a good Nvidia card or one with lots of Video RAM, Celestia may lock up in trying to draw all of the mirror meshes. You'll just have to try it out.
I want to thank Don Edwards, Grant Hutchinson and Jack Higgins for their contributions to this Activity. It could not have been designed without them.
Get the Activity on my website at :
Frank
http://www.fsgregs.org/celestia
I am also releasing a new Activity, just completed, titled the Spacecraft of Celestia. Part 1 will tour 18 of the craft in orbit near Earth, explaining what they are, why and how they got launched, what their accomplishments were/are, etc. Part 2 will cover the spacecraft beyond Earth, including some of the great fictional ones we have added to Celestia (Captain Kirk, here we come!!). Look for these activities also on my website..
Enjoy.
Grant did try HARD to talk me out of the light beams in space. In the end, I felt it would be OK to have "something" to see bouncing off the mirrors toward Mars.
(see my other posts today or my website homepage for details) I'd just like to say well done (claps on the back all round lads 