The
Diamond Age
LITERACY
– THE DIAMOND AGE ( NEAL STEPHENSON )
Seeking
an alchemist in paradise
BLURB
(Main source of inspiration)
High
above the diamondoid bedrock of 21st Century New Chusan, powerful
neo-Victorians rule over Atlantis/Shanghai, which is still subject to the
rigours of Confucian law.
John
Percival Hackworth is one top Neo-Vick. A brilliant nanotechnologist. The
fugitive creator of an illicit copy of A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.
Poor
little Neil is a thete orphan, sharing a bed in Enchantment with her ruffian
brother Harv. She might have stayed there forever, but for one glitch: the
theft of the Primer. An interactive device to enable women to think for
themselves. Heaven help the future if it should fall into the wrong hands…
MORE
DETAILED INFORMATION
An
inner plateau about a mile above sea level, where the air was cooler and
cleaner. Parts of it were marked off with a lovely wrought-iron fence, but the
real border was defended by something called the dog pod grid – a swarm of
quasi-independent aerostats.
Aerostat
meant anything that hung in the air.This was an easy trick to pull off
nowadays. Nanotech materials were stronger. Computers were infinitesimal. Power
supplies were much more potent. It was almost difficult not to build things
that were lighter than air.
ENVIRONMENTAL
CONCEPT
A
design similar to Fuller's Cloud Nine might permit habitation in the upper
atmosphere of Venus, where at ground level the temperature is too hot and the
atmospheric pressure too great. As proposed by Geoffrey A. Landis, the easiest
planet (other than Earth) to place floating cities at this point would appear
to be Venus.[3] Because the thick carbon dioxide atmosphere is 50% denser than
air, breathable air (21:79 Oxygen-Nitrogen mixture) is a lifting gas in the dense
Venusian atmosphere, with over 60% of the lifting power that helium has on
Earth. In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself
and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. This means that any large
structure filled with air would float on the carbon dioxide, with the air's
natural buoyancy counteracting the weight of the structure itself.[4]
At
an altitude of 50 km above the Venusian surface, the environment is the
"most Earthlike in the solar system",[5] with a pressure of approximately
1 bar and temperatures in the 0°C-50°C range.[6] Because there is not a
significant pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the
breathable-air balloon, any rips or tears would cause gases to diffuse at
normal atmospheric mixing rates, giving time to repair any such damage. In
addition, humans would not require pressurized suits when outside, merely air
to breathe and a protection from the acidic rain.
Since
such colonies would be viable in current Venusian conditions, this allows a
dynamic approach to colonization instead of requiring extensive terraforming
measures in advance. The main challenge would be using a substance resistant to
sulfuric acid to serve as the structure's outer layer; ceramics or metal
sulfates could possibly serve in this role. (The sulfuric acid itself may prove
to be the main motivation for creating the structure in the first
place,[original research?] as the acid has proven to be extremely useful for
many different purposes.)