Bonsai Earth 200x

[GlobeMaker]

A big hotel was launched to orbit the Earth. It is called Bonsai_Earth_200x.
This is a 3D model of Earth, reduced in size 200 times with mountains
200 times taller than normal, compared to the size of the model.

The link to the ftp is at :
http://www.reliefglobe.com/video.html

The ftp location will have 2 files:

bonsai_earth_200x.3ds 2 megabytes
add_to_spacecraft.ssc small text file

Paste the small text into your data\spacecraft.ssc file.
Put the bonsai_earth_200x.3ds file in your \models directory
Run Celestia
You will see the 40 mile wide "mini-Earth"
rapidly orbiting close to Earth.

The idea is to have mountains the same size as Earth mountains,
but compressed into a 40 mile wide satellite hotel 200 times smaller
than Earth's diameter. The bottom of the oceans are shown as well
as landforms.

40 miles x 200 = 8000 (earth Diameter)

Visitors to this orbiting hotel will be able to walk near the Himalayas
and see the 20,000 foot high mountains that are as tall as real mountains.

Thanks to NoXion for the ideas.

[NoXion]

Thanks to NoXion for the ideas.

No, thank you! Without your models I would never have come up with the idea.

[NoXion]

I gave the Bonsai Earth an atmosphere and clouds, and the result was interesting:







The above image has had it's FOV widened, but hopefully you get the idea. Curvature is very noticable even at the surface.



A view above the clouds of Bonsai Earth.

Living on one of these world would be interesting and not a little bit disorientating.

[gradius_fanatic]

yeah...all it needs is a good texture

[Chuft-Captain]

That's pretty mad

yeah...all it needs is a good texture

.... and a mini black-hole at it's centre, so that the guests (and the atmosphere) don't float away... although come to think of it, being able to jump the himalayas could be a sold as an attraction!
( Might take a while to come back down though. )
I would guess a ball dropped at shoulder height on Bonsai earth would take a few minutes to hit the ground.


That said, there's a way around every problem...
You'll just have to turn it inside out, put the mountains, atmosphere, etc. on the inside, and spin it once every 6 minutes for earth normal gravity at the equator!

Problem solved!

[GlobeMaker]

Hi CC and GF,

Here is hotel row in orbit over Panama, Columbia, and Hispaniola:

The orbiting hotels have shapes the same sizes as the mountains on
Venus, Mars, and Earth. All three Bonsai Planets are to scale with each
other. The radii are 200 times smaller than the real planets, but their
mountains are just as tall as the real mountains on those planets.
You can download the .3ds models with the link at the top of this thread.

This is not just for amusement. A student can see how small mountains are
compared to the 8000 mile wide Celestia Earth just below the hotels. These
models are practical, because their 2 megabytes file sizes are small. The
data points occur every 1 degree of longitude and latitude.

[Telepath]

I tried to map a normal earth texture to your bonsai earth and it didn't work properly. Just seemed to flash different colors as I viewed it from different angles. (blue, yellow, white etc) and had some strange hemispherical "shadow" things on either side.

Do you know what I'm doing wrong?

"Bonsai_Earth_200x" "Sol/Earth"
{
Class "spacecraft"
# Mesh "amar.3ds"
# Mesh "oval2.3ds"
Mesh "bonsai_earth_200x.3ds"
Texture "earth.*"
NightTexture "earthnight.*"
...

[GlobeMaker]

It is not your fault. These models have tiny gaps at the South Pole
that prevent textures from working. The gaps are called "unshared edges".
I like the globes without textures, so people only notice the shapes, without
colors confusing the viewers. I do not plan on fixing this.

[Telepath]

It might however be educational to see something like an earthquake map such as the following superimposed on the exaggerated underwater structures of your model:



Just my humble opinion, but would that be enough to motivate you to fix it?

[GlobeMaker]

You read my mind. Yes, that does motivate me... Someday, somehow...
If anyone out there has a CAD tool, maybe they can mend the unshared
edges. There are about 6 gaps within 2 degrees of the South Pole. I am able
to highlight the unshared edges with my Autovue software. But I do not own
CAD software to edit the original design which is in the .stl format. I created
the globes in .stl format using a software program that I wrote in the Perl
language. I tried to debug my software last year for Buggs_Moran, who also
reported the texture failure. These gaps do not prevent me from producing
plastic globes using stereolithography, they only prevent textures from
being used in Celestia. Perhaps with a combination of telepathic powers and
psychokinesis, you could move mountains for me.

Tomorrow, I will try to mend the tiny gaps at the South Pole. You are
welcome to remote view my progress, if you are able. For those of you who
are not clairvoyant : here is a close up of the South Pole of Earth, next to
Mars and the North Pole of Bonsai Venus 200x :

Thank you for your interest.

[d.m.falk]

I've contemplated something similar to this "Bonsai Earth" posted here- Namely terraformed asteroids and artificial "mini-Earths" in which the surface is geodesic in nature, where each "face" is relatively flat, or approximately the same curvature as the Earth itself, with various geologic features, etc,. etc., etc... But anyway, a suggestion, to make it a bit more realistic, since the obvious problem is your cloud layer.

Make your clouds as nebulas, orbiting your mini-worlds. This gives a better 3-dimensional quality to the whole image, instead of the cloud layer looking like a protective force fiield.. Unless you want a force field, which in that case, needs to be a bit "higher" from the worlds' surfaces.

(As to the issue of gravity, yes, artiificial singularities are one way- Another is gravity plating. Especially if your artificial worlds are hollow, and you might want to use that hollow space as an internal spaceport... )

d.m.f.

[GlobeMaker]

Hi d.m.falk, That's a good idea using a nebula instead of a cloud layer.
And the hollow Earth is practical as a spaceport and to hold the hotel rooms.
Here is a picture of a hollow Earth with Inverted Seafloor. The idea is that
people inside would look "down" at the oceans while walking on smooth
continents. The synthetic asteroid would rotate to give "gravity" that would
hold the water supply in the Oceanic Basins. This has 300 times exaggerated
ocean depths compared to the radius. Data points are every third of a
degree of latitude and longitude :



The inverted seafloor model is called Amaria. The deepest parts of the ocean
are now the tallest peaks. In the first picture, the peaks on the lower-left
are called the Tonga Trench (-10,882m), also called Havre Trough. It is
located at 28 00'S - 178 40'W. Earthquakes that occur there on Earth are
so deep, they are in the mantle. In the second picture, at lower left, is
a tall ridge that is the inverted version of a deep trench off the coast of
Chile.

This type of .3ds model will be donated to Celestia without copyright
notices, after some debugging is finished. Textures fail to work on these
.3ds models, probably because numeric imprecision of the vertexes is
causing edges of triangles not to match exactly. For example, one triangle
may have an edge at z = 0.000 mm but an adjacent triangle edge has
a z coordinate of -0.000 mm. The algorithms that make these models
were checked yesterday and no flaws were found. The meshes of simple
.3ds prisms were put under a "microscope" using Solidview and Autovue
and the mismatch at one corner was visible. Textures do not work on
the 5 sided prisms, even though theirs shapes are simple and their
designs are perfect. It must be the numeric representation of coordinates
that is causing the unmatched edges. A picture of a prism over the Moon
can be seen here : http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8501