• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Vacation to Mars: Antarctica’s Dry Valleys

C

CWOJackson

Charter Member
Most of Antarctica has about 2 1/2 miles of ice covering it, and that cold, white wasteland is what most people picture when they think of the South Pole. But a series of dry valleys in Antarctica, about 4,000 kilometers square, have no ice on them at all. The moisture is sucked from the dry valleys by a rain shadow effect — winds rushing over them at speeds up to 200/mph — leaving a bizarre and fascinating landscape, which looks more like Mars than the rest of our planet.

don-juan-pond-malcom-mcleod-565x423.jpg


labyrinth-peter-rejcek-565x423.jpg


sand-chris-kannen-565x423.jpg



Following these links for more photos:

http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/46482.html

http://www.mcmurdodryvalleys.aq/home
 
I will require a nice space station with a mars vehicle to stay their an extended period of time.. As well as a full lineup of Mac computers, and.... high speed internet.

That does look cool.

I hope you are not going to tell us that this was once covered with snow only 5 years ago.


On a similar note, they test for the Mars mission up in Northern Arizona which has quite a few dead mini-volcano's and a terrain that is similar to this, but no majestic mountains as like Antarctica.. They did have a group of people staying in a pod 'somewhere' simulating a Mars group. They had to wear suits when outside, work in the mud, do things like travel several miles to check rock zones, etc.. It was pretty trying on that team to do it. They were at each others throats alot..
 
Always thought the Dry Valleys were just too cool. Wish FSX had them! (Does it?)
They are the driest parts of the driest continent.
 
Lionheart said:
On a similar note, they test for the Mars mission up in Northern Arizona which has quite a few dead mini-volcano's and a terrain that is similar to this, but no majestic mountains as like Antarctica.. They did have a group of people staying in a pod 'somewhere' simulating a Mars group. They had to wear suits when outside, work in the mud, do things like travel several miles to check rock zones, etc.. It was pretty trying on that team to do it. They were at each others throats alot..
Click to expand...

I Remember seeing this on the Discovery Channel i think it was, fascinated me no end... the pod was atop a hill if i recall, and tubular in shape... now what was that program called (It had me designing Mars style colonies on paper, even planned to make one for FSX :icon_lol:)
 
Smoothie said:
I Remember seeing this on the Discovery Channel i think it was, fascinated me no end... the pod was atop a hill if i recall, and tubular in shape... now what was that program called (It had me designing Mars style colonies on paper, even planned to make one for FSX :icon_lol:)
Click to expand...

Yep.. Thats the one I watched. The guys were always mad about the mud, getting stuck, etc. One guy took his helmet off when he was walking back to the pod, lol.. The others were getting mad about his tantrums.

The pod was cool. Its just like the design for the landers, giant cylinder, two stories high (if I remember correctly), some windows..

It was sort of like a reality show.


It would be cool to have a Mars Flight Simulator. I was trying to get resources together that would convert FS2004 into Mars. Bill Lyons found a way to easily place desert tiles everywhere, and he was able to change them into reddish soil. He made a zone of just red tiles of Mars in FS... I created the boot screens for Mars. It was pretty cool. Thats how we came up with Golden Wings. I was asking Bill if we could create Mars as a seperate sim with the same internal parts, but a different name of the sim. Bill Lyons figured out how to do it and a few months later came out with Golden Wings. Awesome concept. (Golden Wings was all Bill Lyons idea. I didnt know he was doing it till he released it. I was only out to create FS Mars).

I cant believe Aces didnt want to do things like that. Having a Golden Wings version of FS9, a 50's or 60's version as well with prop liners (Silver Wings), and possibly other planets like Mars..

XP9 has Mars, but for me, its never worked on my computer. You get to altitude and you see these odd tiles.. Looks more like its malfunctioning.

Oh well...




Bill
 
i'll go back to designing Martian Landers and colonies :icon_lol: if only i knew how to map and export from 3DS :icon_lol:
 
Smoothie said:
i'll go back to designing Martian Landers and colonies :icon_lol: if only i knew how to map and export from 3DS :icon_lol:
Click to expand...

Mapping was a hard one for me to learn. Once I had it down, it was super easy. Learning the steps is the hard part. Just remember to have the blue and white checkered button depressed/on... ;) (I missed that part for a week or so.. arrghh... )


Exporting is only difficult when you are first setting up your Max rig. Once you have all the systems linked to the SDK, you just select some parts, click Export Selected, click the 2 or 3 question ticks it asks, and in seconds you have a MDL file. Setup is the only hard part. Some forums will have a nice checklist for you to read.

Bill
 
i'd better get reading, i won't embarass myself by showing any of my WIP's or previous modelling attempts :icon_lol:
 
Pic number two reminds me of the map "Kasserine Pass" in Forgotten Hope/BF 1942.

Interesting place, but too cold for my taste. :icon_lol:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top