Science Hack Day San Francisco was held in the Github offices last weekend. It was brilliant!
This was the fifth Science Hack Day in San Francisco and the 40th worldwide. That’s truly incredible. I mean, I literally can’t believe it. When I organised the very first Science Hack Day back in 2010, I had no idea how far it would go. But Ariel has been indefatigable in making it a truly global event. She is amazing. And at this year’s San Francisco event, she outdid herself in putting together a fantastic cross-section of scientists, designers, and developers: paleontology, marine biology, geology, astronomy, particle physics, and many, many more disciplines were represented in the truly diverse attendees.
After an inspiring set of lightning talks on the first day, ideas started getting bounced around and the hacking began to take shape. I had a vague idea for—yet another—space-related hack. What clinched it was picking the brains of NASA’s Keri Bean. She’d help me get hold of the dataset I needed for my silly little hack.
So here’s the background…
There are many possibilities for human habitats in space: Stanford tori, O’Neill cylinders, Bernal spheres. Another idea, explored in science fiction, is hollowing out asteroids (Larry Niven’s bubbleworlds). Kim Stanley Robinson explores this idea in depth in his book 2312, where he describes the process of building an asteroid terrarium. The website of the book has a delightful walkthrough of the engineering processes involved. It’s not entirely implausible.
I wanted to make that idea approachable, so I thought about the kinds of people we might want to have living with us on the interior shell of a rotating hollowed-out asteroid. How about the people you follow on Twitter?
The only question that remains then is: which asteroid is the right one for you and your Twitter friends? Keri tracked down the motherlode of asteroid data and I started hacking the simplest of mashups—Twitter meets space rocks.
Here’s the result…
Give it your Twitter username and it will tell you exactly which one of the asteroids in the main belt is right for you (I considered adding an enterprise option that would tell you where you could store your social network in the cloud …the Oort cloud, that is).
Be default, your asteroid will have the population density of Earth, which is quite generously. But if you want a more sparsely-populated habitat—say, the population density of Australia—or a more densely-populated world—with something like the population density of Japan—then you will be assigned a larger or smaller asteroid accordingly.
You’ll also be told by how much you should increase or decrease the rotation of the asteroid to get one gee of centrifugal force on the interior. Figuring out the equations for calculating centrifugal force almost broke me, but luckily I had help from a rocket scientist and a particle physicist …I’m not even kidding. And I should point out that the calculations take some liberties—I’m assuming a spherical body, which is quite a stretch, given the lumpy nature of most asteroids.
At 13:37 on the second day, the demos began. Keri and I were first up.
Give Habitasteroids a whirl for yourself. It’s a silly little thing, but I quite like how it turned out.
Speaking of silly things …at some point in the proceedings, Keri put the call out for asteroid data to her fellow space enthusiasts on Twitter. They responded with asteroid-related puns.
@PlanetaryKeri So you’re not as investa’d in Ceres as the rest of the team? @motorbikematt @adactio #LordOfThePuns
— J.L. Galache (@JLGalache) October 5, 2014@jlgalache @planetarykeri @motorbikematt @adactio Don’t Juno better than to make puns like that? @brianwolven
— lukemonster (@lukedones) October 5, 2014@lukedones @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio Recruiting the rest of your astro Pallas to get in on the asteroid pun action?
— Brian Wolven (@brianwolven) October 5, 2014@brianwolven @lukedones @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio Your puns give me the Hebe jeebies.
— ｂｒｘ０ (@brx0) October 5, 2014@brx0 @brianwolven @jlgalache @planetarykeri @motorbikematt @adactio @paix120 At this point we’ve all been led Astraea :-(
— lukemonster (@lukedones) October 5, 2014@brx0 @lukedones @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio Ida feeling that might happen eventually.
— Brian Wolven (@brianwolven) October 5, 2014@brianwolven @lukedones @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio It’ like you’re Psyche or something.
— ｂｒｘ０ (@brx0) October 5, 2014@lukedones @brx0 @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio @paix120 With this crew, at least the pun Themis pretty obvious.
— Brian Wolven (@brianwolven) October 5, 2014@brianwolven @lukedones @brx0 @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio You guys sure know Alauda asteroid names.
— Renee (@paix120) October 5, 2014@brianwolven @lukedones @brx0 @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio Europa creek if u’re Wikipedia’ing like me. Thisbe the end.
— Renee (@paix120) October 5, 2014@paix120 @brianwolven @lukedones @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio The end? So this is the last Gaspra?
— ｂｒｘ０ (@brx0) October 5, 2014@brx0 @paix120 @brianwolven @jlgalache @planetarykeri @motorbikematt @adactio We should probably stop at Gaspra before we reach Eros.
— lukemonster (@lukedones) October 5, 2014@brianwolven @paix120 @lukedones @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio I Echo this sentiment.
— ｂｒｘ０ (@brx0) October 5, 2014@lukedones @paix120 @brianwolven @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio Too late. Pandora’s box has been opened.
— ｂｒｘ０ (@brx0) October 5, 2014@brx0 @lukedones @brianwolven @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio tho, someone might Summanus to the Psyche ward.
— Renee (@paix120) October 5, 2014@paix120 @brx0 @brianwolven @jlgalache @planetarykeri @motorbikematt @adactio Have Merxia on us all!
— lukemonster (@lukedones) October 5, 2014@paix120 @lukedones @brianwolven @JLGalache @PlanetaryKeri @motorbikematt @adactio Every other Twitter pun game Pales in comparison.
— ｂｒｘ０ (@brx0) October 5, 2014They have nice asteroids though: @brianwolven, @lukedones, @paix120, @LGalache, @motorbikematt, @brx0.
Oh, and while Habitasteroids might be a silly little hack, WRANGLER just might work.
