Links

Transhuman Space

• TS mailing list: lots of good stuff.
• GURPS errata: don't miss it!
• TS conversion project: suggestions for conversion rules to GURPS 4 for TS.
• David Pulver's Home Page: the main author of TS.
• Fudge TransHuman Space: not fond of GURPS? Try Fudge.
• Nelson's TS page: spacecraft charts, abbreviation list, Solar System and planetariy maps, and other good things.
• Stones Throw Shipyards: interplanetary travel time calculator, news and ad items, deck plans, spacecraft designs.
• TS Ship Design: spacecraft concepts.
• Evil Dr Ganymede: one of In The Well authors: space art, detailed maps of Mars and Europa, and more.
• The E-Realm of Aaron Kavli: the TS pages contain corporations and foundations, settings and places, equipment, advices for gaming, etc..
• Freehauler's TS page: spacecraft models.

Stuff I use

Everything here is free and most is multi-platform:

• POV-Ray: THE free raytracer;
• JPatch: a simple and performant spline-based 3D modeling tool in Java;
• HF-Lab: sober site of a sober but very good height-field generator;
• The GIMP: the ultimate image manipulation program;
• PlanetScapes: planetary maps and height fields;
• GQview: a nice image browser for Linux.

Plus a number of home-made macros and manipulation scripts.

Books

• Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson, 1993-1997.
  The unavoidable novel. Quite a few annoying technical errors but it could be a plausible vision of what Mars colonisation would be like.
• Do Your Ears Pop in Space?, R. Mike Mullane, 1997.
  Fun and filled with interesting trivia about the Shuttle and life in micro-gravity. The author is an astronaut.
• High Frontier, Gerard K. O'Neill and Freeman J. Dyson, 1974-2000:
  One of the pioneer books about micro-gravity colonies. It's a classic, buy it!
• Islands in the Sky, Stanley Schmidt and Robert Zubrin, 1996. A number of proposals for colonizing space.
• The Case for Mars, Robert Zubrin, 1997. Compilation of the author's articles making many suggestions about Mars colonisation.
• The Starflight Handbook, Eugene F. Mallove and Gregory L. Matloff, 1989.
  Overview of future starflight, a few highschool-level equations. A little bit superficial, but it's a classic.
• Rocket Science, Alfred Zaehringer and Steve Whitfield, 2003.
  Dry and technical, but lots of information about the history and the present status of space flight. It seems to contain a number of errors, though.
• Space Data, Northrop Grumman Space Technology, 2003.
  Free book (if you can find it) published as a service to the aerospace industry. Lots of technical information about present space technology.
• Introduction to Space Dynamics, William T. Thomson, 1961-1986.
  Undergrad textbook: derivation of Kepler's laws, gyroscope equations, etc..
• Design of Space Powerplants, Donald B. Mackay, 1963.
  In-depth professional book, a lot about cooling systems in vacuum.