Diary of a Network Geek

Another game this week.

This one takes a bit more time than the last one.  500 years, actually.

Okay, not five-hundred actual years, but five-hundred game years.  The game is called Super Planet Crash, but the goal is to not crash planets.  The idea is simple, design a solar system that will last at least 500 laps around the Sun.  You add in planets of various sizes and densities and let them go.  The more planets and more complicated your solar system,…
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For those of you who don’t know Star Trek, that’d be “space”.

I’m kind of obsessed with space and space travel, really.  Doubtless, the few regular readers left here have picked up on that.
I guess my obsession is really about getting out and away.  Some days, it seems like the only place to escape is, well, to get off the planet!  And, if the environmentalists are to be believed, I think we’ve done such irreparable damage to this planet that the only way to deal with it is to get off Earth and head somewhere else.  So, yes, space travel and the colonization of other planets seems like a really good idea to me.
Anyway, when I think about space travel, I think about all the science-fiction movies and TV shows that have visuals of all the planets whizzing by at high speed.  I’m sure it won’t look like that to us, but, still, I think it’s an inspiring image.  And, that’s why I liked SpaceEngine, because that’s just the visual they give you.    With their app,  you can zoom to the far reaches of space, showing the celestial bodies with, or without, labels in a theoretical spacecraft you can control.  It’s pretty awesome.

But, hey, it’s Friday, so why not download it yourself?  Or at least go and check out the video on the home page, which gives you the basic idea.

No, really, go ahead and try.

It’s not quite as easy as science-fiction would have you believe.  Honest.  Don’t believe me?  Then head over to Extreme Planet Makeover and try for yourself.
The folks at NASA have brought us a pretty challenging, little game; make a planet habitable.
On the surface, that seems fairly straight-forward, but that’s only because we over-simplify just how miraculous it is that this happened on our own planet.  There’s actually a pretty narrow margin by which life becomes possible and taking an existing planet and forcing it into that margin is way, way harder than fans of science-fiction, like me, generally want to believe it is.
Go ahead and try the game yourself.  I think you’ll find it an eye-opening experience.

We live on a paradoxically robust and delicate world.
This place has existed for millions of years and “modern” humans have existed for just a few hundred thousand years.  This magnificent ball of dirt and rock has seen more kinds of life come and go than we can even imagine.  We tend to think of ourselves and the world as it is right now as “life”, but I firmly believe that life, in some form, will continue on even if we do the unthinkable and foul our own dwelling place to the point that we, as a species, can no longer inhabit it.  The Earth will continue and, I think, life in some form will, as well.
Though, we may no longer be here to see it.

Well, in any case, take a minute and go play the “game” at their site.  You may be surprised at just how big a miracle life on Earth is!  Besides, it’s Friday, so what else are you going to do?