Knowledge base archive

From: Paul Chancey Gowan [mailto:pcgowan@...]

When I was young in the 70's, I remember watching two british shows
on t.v. involving space. One was about a Space Academy based among
asteroids

I'm sure you're thinking of an American show called "Space Academy". The
space academy was built on an asteroid, but I'm not sure if it was ever
established that they were in the Belt. I suspect they were supposed to be
in another solar system altogether.

But I would dearly love to see an SF adventure series set in the Belt...

and the other was about a SPACE ARK and the adventures of
two people Rachel and Garth and another man who discover they live on
a space ARK with many different biomes. On the Space ARK show Rachel
and Garth consulted computer expert systems that always started by
saying "May I be of assistance?" Does anyone know the proper names for
these shows?

That would be "Starlost". It starred Keir Dullea. It's widely regarded as
one of the worst SF series of all times, but I'd like to make up my own mind
on this, but have never gotten to see so much as a single episode. The
premise certainly sounded less fantastic than most things we see on TV, and
sounded intriguing to me.

Is anyone making efforts to create some kind of archive of human
knowledge to take into space? What would be put on 650 MB?

I'm sure that such an archive would be a lot closer to 650 GB in size. I
hear what you're saying about how it's good to be able to fall back to
simpler technology when needed, but by the time we begin to colonize space
in earnest, 650 GB will probably be considered pretty low-tech.

Regards,

Mike Combs

From:
Paul Chancey Gowan [mailto:pcgowan@...]
When I was young in the 70's, I remember watching two british shows
on t.v. involving space. One was about a Space Academy based among
asteroids

I'm sure you're thinking of an American show called "Space Academy". The space academy was built on an asteroid, but I'm not sure if it was ever established that they were in the Belt. I suspect they were supposed to be in another solar system altogether.

But I would dearly love to see an SF adventure series set in the Belt...

and the other was about a SPACE ARK and the adventures of
two people Rachel and Garth and another man who discover they live on
a space ARK with many different biomes. On the Space ARK show Rachel
and Garth consulted computer expert systems that always started by
saying "May I be of assistance?" Does anyone know the proper names for
these shows?

That would be "Starlost". It starred Keir Dullea. It's widely regarded as one of the worst SF series of all times, but I'd like to make up my own mind on this, but have never gotten to see so much as a single episode. The premise certainly sounded less fantastic than most things we see on TV, and sounded intriguing to me.
Is anyone making efforts to create some kind of archive of human
knowledge to take into space? What would be put on 650 MB?

I'm sure that such an archive would be a lot closer to 650 GB in size. I hear what you're saying about how it's good to be able to fall back to simpler technology when needed, but by the time we begin to colonize space in earnest, 650 GB will probably be considered pretty low-tech.

Regards,
Mike Combs