Books, Books, Books!

Just sent off the final edits to my Atlas of Human Prehistory! Samples are available at this site, where you can mouse over the 'files' control to bring up different samples. Four years' writing and illustrating and it feels great to have it off and in someone else's hands! Cover art for the preliminary edition has been set -- this will be changed for the next edition in 2017.

I've also just sent off final edits to my long-long-long project of the Iceland book, covering my adventures there, and the mind-boggling history of that strange land, spanning 2000-2004. This book will be in e- and hard-copy, published by Great Adventures Press in Los Angeles; the main outlet will be on Amazon. Below, one of many drawings for this book!

And, I am working on my forthcoming Principles of Space Anthropology, a graduate-level text for students of space planning. Below, a diagram I updated today regarding developmental biology and some implications of the altered gravity and chemical environments future populations will encounter in places such as Mars settlements.

Mind-Boggling Image of Comet 67-P

My jaw actually dropped when I first saw this stunning image of the 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko comet, as seen by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft. The white flecks are stars, drifting ice & snow grains, and long dashes are cosmic ray strikes on the imager. The image is not from on the surface, but from 20km as the spacecraft dashed by in one of many orbits of the comet. There's a lot to take in, and overall the image reminds me a lot of night diving, with my headlamp illuminating a million specks of debris, swirling like this in the water, and many nights in the Arctic, where wind flings ice crystals that flash and spark in moonlight!

To Google's SciFoo Camp!

I'm awfully lucky to have been invited to Google's annual SciFoo camp at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA this summer!

Permalink to announcement at Portland State University

Text:

May 2, 2016

Dr. Cameron Smith, Anthropology adjunct faculty, has been invited to the Google SciFoo event this summer. Each year, 250 thought leaders from the sciences and arts are invited to the free-form, three-day event at the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif. Smith was invited for his work in the reinvention of certain space exploration technologies and writings on human space settlement, featuring an anthropological and adaptive approach.

You can find some of my writings on the topic at my PSU Selected Works page.

You can hear about the reinvention of some space exploration technologies in my 2015 TEDx Portland talk.

Below, photo of current work developing a lightweight pressure suit / space suit helmet; you can follow that work with frequent short updates at my twitter account.

You can find out about the larger project at pacificspaceflight.com.

Steep Learning Curve!

We are learning a lot, and quickly, and moving very rapidly toward building the final high-altitude pressure suits...today Mathew l. and I fabricated two helmet mounting rings to work with our new, lightweight 'soft helmet'. More frequent updates are on the Pacific Spaceflight twitter account.

Silent Film of Pressure Suit Test!

Here is some silent video of a pressure suit test, I am in a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter going to just shy of 20,000 feet, but the suit is giving me pressure--through the 45-minute flight--that fooled my body to think that it was at just 11,000 feet! The suit held pressure, dumped my exhaled C02, maintained a good temperature, and gave me enough mobility to work the controls! All A-OK!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVtVPJUjSEo

Authorship

"The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tide pools and force him to try to report what he finds there..."
-- John Steinbeck

Developmental Biology and Human Space Settlement

Today I had occasion to work on a diagram addressing some reproductive issues in the prospect of human space settlement. In particular I feel that early developmental biology will be most likely to be upset by conditions different from Earth's one-g gravity field, which has shaped land animal reproductive biology for over 300 million years. This October, Elon Musk will reveal SpaceX's plan for a city on Mars. I say Bravo! Bold and important! But we will need to learn a lot about our biology on Mars, where 1/3 gravity of Earth will be sure to affect reproduction; and we may have to ensure the health also of our domesticates, plant and animal, who will accompany us to the Red Planet as well! All good reasons to begin research and planning now, as I'm doing in my forthcoming graduate-level technical book "Principles of Space Anthropology".