08-03-2015, 06:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-03-2015, 07:22 PM by FlyingSinger.)
This should be right up my ally as an optical engineer, but I don't know much about QD's right now. I do know that it can be very challenging to scale technologies that work well in the lab to product-level size, lifetime, efficiency, cost, etc., though it's true that QD LEDs sound promising as far as non-exotic materials and fab techniques. OLEDs (organic LED's) have been in development for years and even used in some small displays in products. Samsung has shown OLED TV's at lighting shows, but I don't think they reached production. At one point (maybe 6 years ago?) many articles in the illumination world suggested that OLEDs would eventually replace regular LEDs (and their associated reflectors, lenses, etc.) and other light sources in many or most applications, at least for displays if not for lighting. But OLEDs didn't scale well to larger sizes and higher efficiencies and lifetimes. And regular LEDs just get better and better and cheaper as they make zillions of them.
Artificial lighting is clearly the way to go, as mentioned in that blog post and other sources. In Stan Robinson's new book "Aurora" the space habitat is actually a generation starship that has been underway 160 years. Solar power not an option for most of that time (nuclear fusion is -- he sets this book in the 2700's). He doesn't describe their technology, but the the "sky" of each of the micro-habitats in the Aurora sounds like a QD-like device, huge panels of them with greatly tunable light output and spectrum, so it can be set to simulate different seasons and latitudes and altitudes for the flora and fauna of each module (each such "biota" is about 4 km long and there are 12 of them in a ring, IIRC). The rings are spun for 0.83g which is the G of the Earth-like planet they intend to colonize (moon of a gas giant orbiting Tai Ceti, actually), so when the 6th generation people who plan to live there arrive, they will have lived their whole lives in this G. But watch out for Coriolis force changes when you start to decelerate the ship... could plants be sensitive to such changes? This is the level of detail that KSR can reach.
It will be interesting to see if I (or someone) can build a model of the Aurora in High Frontier sometime. Here's a picture (notice it has two independent rings, though you can move between them via the spine):
Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora generation starship.
If you are interested in space habitats, Aurora is one of the most vivid and detailed depictions I have ever read. So many interacting factors. And a good story. I just transferred a discussion of the book from my journal to my blog here.
-Bruce
Artificial lighting is clearly the way to go, as mentioned in that blog post and other sources. In Stan Robinson's new book "Aurora" the space habitat is actually a generation starship that has been underway 160 years. Solar power not an option for most of that time (nuclear fusion is -- he sets this book in the 2700's). He doesn't describe their technology, but the the "sky" of each of the micro-habitats in the Aurora sounds like a QD-like device, huge panels of them with greatly tunable light output and spectrum, so it can be set to simulate different seasons and latitudes and altitudes for the flora and fauna of each module (each such "biota" is about 4 km long and there are 12 of them in a ring, IIRC). The rings are spun for 0.83g which is the G of the Earth-like planet they intend to colonize (moon of a gas giant orbiting Tai Ceti, actually), so when the 6th generation people who plan to live there arrive, they will have lived their whole lives in this G. But watch out for Coriolis force changes when you start to decelerate the ship... could plants be sensitive to such changes? This is the level of detail that KSR can reach.
It will be interesting to see if I (or someone) can build a model of the Aurora in High Frontier sometime. Here's a picture (notice it has two independent rings, though you can move between them via the spine):
Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora generation starship.
If you are interested in space habitats, Aurora is one of the most vivid and detailed depictions I have ever read. So many interacting factors. And a good story. I just transferred a discussion of the book from my journal to my blog here.
-Bruce