Steam across the water
A look at the early history of boats powered by steam
During the 1600s, very early in the development of steam engines, inventive spirits like the Frenchman Denis Papin dreamed of – and experimented with – boats driven by steam, rather than by the wind or human effort, but many decades passed before those visions became reality. Englishman Jonathan Hulls took out patents on a steamboat in 1736, but it was to be driven by a Newcomen engine, which was heavy and therefore inefficient, and would never be a success. In 1763, William Henry, an American, put a Watt steam engine in a boat, but it sank. Nearly 20 years later, in the 1780s, a steam-powered paddle-wheeler managed to last fifteen minutes against the current on the River Saone in France, but lacked the endurance for longer trips. Developments elsewhere included a boat driven by a steam-powered water-jet and able to do six kilometres per hour. However, all these steamboats were either too slow or too expensive to run. For example, American John Fitch successfully trialled his first steamboat in 1787, but although he tried a number of designs and solved many technical challenges – one of his boats could even travel at 13 km/h – he could never convince sceptics that steamboats would pay.
The 19th century came before real success could be claimed. In Scotland in 1802, Lord Dundas launched the steamboat Charlotte Dundas, which was driven by a paddle wheel and had an improved engine designed by William Symington. Barges, some weighing as much as 70 tonnes, were towed by this steamboat 30 kilometres along the Forth and Clyde Canal to Glasgow, Scotland's second city. Soon after, success came to American Robert Fulton, whose countrymen called him ‘the father of the steamboat’. Inspired by news of the Charlotte Dundas, Fulton ran steamboat trials on the River Seine, in an attempt to attract French support for his submarine Nautilus. He later imported a Boulton-Watt steam engine and built a boat to use it in. In 1807, the Clermont began a scheduled passenger steamboat service between New York and Albany, 250 kilometres up the Hudson River, taking 30 hours for the trip. Within a few years, steamers were running on the St Lawrence River in Canada and would soon appear on other rivers and lakes, including the Mississippi River, a most famous venue for the paddle-wheelers.
Back in Scotland, Fulton's ideas inspired Henry Bell, who launched his Comet in 1812 on the Clyde between Glasgow and Greenock. Inside a decade, dozens of steamboats were to be seen on the rivers, lochs and canals of Scotland, carrying cargo and occasionally passengers. The age of steamboats had come.
Once steamboats were carrying passengers and industrial goods along the inland waterways and sheltered coastlines of Europe, North America and elsewhere, the challenge became to send steamboats onto the open ocean, such as across the Atlantic Ocean, between Europe and the US. Travelling under steam power alone would require engines to use less coal so the ship could stay at sea for several weeks. In order to provide a reliable service, it was also necessary to replace paddle wheels as a source of power with something less affected by the rolling of the ship. Without waiting for such breakthroughs, crossings under a combination of steam and sail got underway in 1819 with the American ship Savannah. A regular service took another two decades and introduced the famous name of Cunard. Securing the British government contract for the mail service across the Atlantic, Samuel Cunard established a shipping line in 1840, soon carrying passengers as well, and offering guaranteed sailing dates. Cunard's first ships used a sail-steam combination, but the era of the passenger liner, using steam alone, was getting close.
When it came to building the ships, the versatile British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel set the pace. Brunel, brilliant and daring, had already built the Great Western Railway. He created ever bigger ships – faster, more luxurious and comfortable for passengers. The Great Western, launched in 1838, was 70 metres long and crossed from Bristol to New York in just fifteen days. The largest paddle steamer ever built was Brunel's Great Eastern. Ultimately too expensive to run as a passenger ship, it was leased to lay the first submarine telegraph cable from Europe to America. His 1853 Great Britain, nearly 100 metres long and luxuriously appointed, was the first ocean-going steamship made of iron, and the first to use the underwater screw propeller for powering movement in place of paddle wheels. The idea of the screw had been around since the experiments of the American John Stevens in 1803, but only in 1838 did a large steamer use one, the riverboat Archimedes built by Francis Pettit Smith. Later ships had twin screws for reliability.
In many modern ships, steam turbines have replaced engines with pistons, with fuel oil instead of coal to fire the boilers. Diesel engines keep others moving. The largest ships afloat now would dwarf Brunel's Great Eastern (launched in 1860); the Atlantic can be crossed in only four days. But in whatever form, the ever-evolving descendants of the original visions of Denis Papin and Robert Fulton continue to travel the seas in vast numbers.
What kind of structure will make living in space comfortable for us?
A In the future, says Brent Sherwood, there will be a different kind of holiday. Imagine a hotel with a view that's constantly changing, where there are 18 sunrises a day, where food floats into your mouth. Sherwood trained as an architect and aerospace engineer. He is convinced it's only a matter of time before space becomes a desirable destination, and we're living on the Moon, and then, Mars. There's only one drawback. 'Nobody knows how to cook in space,' he says. 'No one would pay $1 million a night for a space hotel and put up with microwave meals.' Until now, says Sherwood, space habitats have been about the basics. But as more people stay in space for increasingly long periods, their physical environment is becoming more important.
B Experts like to contrast the first space station, Skylab, with the current International Space Station (ISS). Skylab was a generous habitat in comparison to the ISS because it was recycled out of a tank formerly used for storing fuel on an obsolete rocket. Designer Raymond Loewy put in a tiny window, which became a popular feature with the astronauts. When engineers designed the ISS, one of the things they had to consider was greater comfort, and this resulted in a number of design innovations, particularly when it came to the highly unusual beds the astronauts use - always a big problem in a zero-gravity environment. One ongoing issue is the transportation of essential cargo into space. It is extremely expensive to send essential deliveries to their destination by spacecraft - for example, it would cost $500,000 to send a single brick by spacecraft to the Moon.
C Consequently, the challenge has been to develop lightweight materials and kits. For this reason, attention is shifting towards inflatable structures, allowing entire habitats to be folded and packed on board. Aerospace company Bigelow won a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to install the first inflatable on the ISS. It looks like a flimsy tinfoil balloon, but the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module is constructed using one of the most advanced fabrics ever developed by scientists. It has a layer of 'liquid crystal polyarylate superfibre', which makes it immensely tough and can survive the impact of small meteoroids. Inflatables have improved greatly since the 1960s, when NASA commissioned tire company Goodyear to design an enormous galactic inner tube – a giant version of what you would find inside a normal bicycle tire – for astronauts to live in. This assignment was never completed, and the 9m-wide rubber doughnut never went into space. However, the idea stimulated the imagination of architect Guillermo Trotti, who copied aspects of it in 1974 when he designed an inflatable habitat for the Moon that could house 200 people.
D Trotti went on to co-found the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture, which offers a space architecture master's program. Trotti explains that every year, one aim of the program is to inspire young students to work on projects that will "push established NASA scientists to dream further, with creative and inspirational visions for future spaceships and buildings on the Moon, Mars, and beyond." 'If you look at the history of the industry, what we do in space is a mirror for our contemporary values on Earth,' says architect Neil Leach. Just like our earthly priorities, environmental sustainability is now top of the space agenda. The Apollo program was part of the rivalry between the old USSR and the USA; the ISS was a defining moment of international collaboration, and now we're seeing private entrepreneurs leading the way.
E Scientists at NASA have begun to consider the possibility of using things such as moon dust and meteoroids for building. "The Moon's surface is an open mine of potential resources," says space architect Madhu Thangavelu. "It is full of accessible minerals and compounds that could be used to produce metals, bricks, and glass." Thangavelu has worked to develop a method of Moon-based 3D printing, using moon dust, concrete, and sulfur. The technique they use would create structures that have high, rounded ceilings and walls of many layers, resembling the Gothic designs that emerged in European architecture from around the 12th century. Another leading architectural company has been developing a technique for 3D printing for the European Space Agency, based on building up a moon dust shell over a network of round domes.
F Getting to Mars is likely to cost $100 billion, spread over several decades. "Mars is the new world," says Robert Zubrin, engineer and president of the Mars Society. He imagines a world of greenhouses initially transported from Earth, "opening up the planet to both human habitation and agriculture." It is a plan the Mars Society illustrates with images of people in spacesuits watering crops and holding hands among radiant red rocks. Although this may seem somewhat far-fetched and optimistic, at least for the foreseeable future, it is certain that deep-space exploration will be the biggest challenge for international architects, Trotti says. "The key question is how to build an environment in which you can live for three years in a confined space, with the same people, in peace. Virtual reality could be an answer, allowing people to escape mentally, reduce anxiety, visit their hometown, or study remotely."
Game theory
Computer software that models human behaviour can make forecasts outsmart rivals and transform negotiations
According to game theory, our chances of success in negotiations are based on the choices of others. Computer models have been developed to work out how events will unfold as people and organizations act in what they perceive to be their own best interests. Numerical values are placed on the goals, motivations, and influence of players, and likely options are considered. Game theory software then evaluates the ability of each of those players to influence others, and hence predicts the course of events.
Although many individuals would feel uncomfortable having a computer make decisions for them, many organizations run such computer simulations for law firms, companies, and governments. But feeding software with accurate data on all the players involved is especially tricky for political matters. Reinier van Oosten of Decide, a Dutch firm that models political negotiations, notes that predictions may become unreliable when people unexpectedly give in to 'non-rational emotions', such as hatred, rather than pursuing what is apparently in their best interests. However, sorting out people's motivations is much easier when making money is the main object. Accordingly, modeling behavior using game theory is proving especially useful when applied to economics.
Using game theory software to model auctions can be very lucrative. Consulting firms are entering the market to help clients design profitable auctions, or to win them less expensively. In 2006, in the run-up to an online auction of radio-spectrum licenses by America's Federal Communications Commission, Dr. Paul Milgrom, a consultant and Stanford University professor in the United States, customized his game theory software to assist a consortium of bidders. He was apprehensive at first, but the result was a triumph. When the auction began, Milgrom's software tracked competitors' bids to estimate their budgets for the 1,132 licenses on offer. Crucially, the software estimated the secret values bidders placed on specific licenses, and determined that certain big licenses were being overvalued. Milgrom's clients were then directed to obtain a collection of smaller, less expensive licenses instead. Two of his clients paid about a third less than their competitors for an equivalent amount of spectrum, saving almost $1.2 billion. Such a saving makes one wonder why everyone isn't using game theory software. And, if they were, how would that affect the game?
PA Consulting, a British firm, designs models for software based on game theory to help its clients solve specific problems in areas from pharmaceuticals to the production of television shows. British government agencies have asked PA Consulting to build models to test zoning rules that govern how many of a certain type of business should be allowed to operate in one area. To give a simple example; if two competing ice-cream sellers share a long beach, they will set up stalls back-to-back in the middle and stay put, explains Dr. Stephen Black, a modeller for PA. Unfortunately for potential customers at the far ends of the beach, each seller prevents the other from relocating - no other spot would be closer to more people. Introduce a third seller, however, and the stifling equilibrium is broken as relocations and pricing changes energize the market. By studying a chain of events such as this, software designers can assess the effect of change and see the patterns in possible outcomes that may occur. As a result, the use of modeling makes clients more inclined to look at future repercussions when making business decisions, Black says.
Where is all this heading? Alongside the increasingly elaborate modeling software, there are also efforts to develop software that can assist in negotiation and mediation. Two decades ago, Dr. Clara Ponsati, a Spanish academic, came up with a clever idea. She accepted that, as negotiators everywhere know, the first side to disclose the maximum amount that it is willing to pay loses considerable bargaining power. Without leverage, it can be pushed backward in the bargaining process by a clever opponent. But if neither side reveals the concessions it is prepared to make, negotiations can become very slow or collapse. However, difficult negotiations can often be pushed along by neutral mediators, especially if they are entrusted with the secret bottom lines of all parties. Ponsati's idea was that if a human mediator was not trusted, affordable, or available, a computer could do the job instead. Negotiating parties would update the software with the confidential information on their bargaining positions after each round of talks. Once positions on both sides were no longer mutually exclusive, the software would be used to split the difference and propose an agreement. Ponsati, now head of the Institute of Economic Analysis at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, says such 'mediation machines' could be employed to push negotiations forward by unlocking information that would otherwise be withheld from an opponent.
Could mediation which has been achieved using software based on game theory spread from auction bids and utility pricing to resolving political and military disputes? Today's game theory software is not yet sufficiently advanced to mediate between warring countries. But one day opponents on the brink of war might be tempted to use it to exchange information without having to engage in conflict. According to some game theorists, opponents could learn how a war would turn out, skip the fighting, and strike a deal. Over-optimistic, perhaps - but game theorists do have rather an impressive track record when it comes to predicting the future.
