NASA in SecondLife: Plans for a Synthetic World in 2007

Greyark Hightower¹ talked about his work at NASA's Learning Technologies office today. The office is currently overseeing a prototype NASA game project and is planning to start the development of a science-based synthetic world in 2007. This, of course, was very interesting and I expect that there will be a transcript. You can check up over at the International Spaceflight Museum, I'm not waiting to post.

The general idea is that NASA's Learning Technologies Office got a small amount of funding to start a prototype NASA-based game. They are now working with the America's Army development team and the Federation of American Scientists to make a short(10 to 20 minutes) prototype. They are using the Unreal 3 engine from Epic, so they're hoping for commercial quality results.

The prototype is expected to be an introduction to NASA's Vision for Space Exploration - apparently, NASA is planning to head back to the moon by 2020, and by 2035, a human on Mars is planned. The prototype is expected to introduce the vision and give people a chance to appreciate the experience of being on the International Space Station and on the moon - separately, of course.

When asked about metrics by Poinky Malaprop, Hightower responded:

We are combining the efforts of a commercial game developer, two universities and two NASA mission directorates into the project. If we can't check off all three boxes at the end, then we'll have done a poor job.

Of course, he mentioned physics in the virtual world, which is one of my [many] interests - so I asked if the physics would incorporate known quantum theory². He responded that the computing demands to work seamlessly between Newtonian and Quantum physics is a little too high on processor requirements at this time. One solution is to allow Quantum theory to work in certain areas, while Newtonian physics works in others.

Overall, it was pretty startling for me to realize what NASA had been up to, and the audience showed it's appreciation while a few members asked Hightower to moonwalk. Instead, Poinky Malaprop showed off his new steamers. Conversations broke out; the talk got some inductive kick in a few minds - including my own.

I took some more pictures of the SecondLife International SpaceFlight Museum which you can see here. It's well worth a visit - here's the SLurl: Spaceport Alpha (115, 145, 22).

The meeting was setup by the Kuurian Expedition. You can find out more about the Kuurian Expedition at Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University and at Synthetic World News.

¹ He identified himself as Daniel Laughlin, Ph.D. project manager for NASA Learning Technologies, and Research Faculty at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, but he works out of Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland.
² The idea I have is one I've been kicking around for about a year. Using Fuzzy Logic, one could mix equations between Newtonian physics and Quantum theory based on the truth values of both. Maybe someone else has thought of that... if it's practical in experimentation, that could be really useful in moving things toward a more unified theory. Or it might not work at all, but...