The 1972 Film “Silent Running” directed by Douglas Turnbull has a central plot of a future where scientists have sought to protect the environmental diversity of Earth’s natural resources by creating a protected “island” in space – on converted commercial space freighters. The featured spaceship, the “Valley Forge”, has biodomes with service drones – Dewey, Huey and Louie – looking after the spaceship and the plant life on board. SciFi and futurist novels and films give us a way to explore our own joint future and to consider the consequences of our actions.
Dewey, Huey and Louie
This post will have some details of the Valley Forge service drones.
Sketchfab 3DWarehouse Models by Martin T. Drone 1 (Dewey), Drone 2 (Huey), Drone 3 (Louie)
Destiny Models Resin Model Kits of Drones – https://www.destinymodels.co.uk
Bronson Canyon Resin Model Kits of Drones and Cheryl Sparks (who at age 17 portrayed “Huey”) Articles – http://www.bronsoncanyon.com/
Concept Sketches of Drones – http://filmsketchr.blogspot.com/
Fred Beckhusen Drones for OpenSim
Fred Beckhusen (avatar: Ferd Frederix) is creating a build for the DreamGrid Outworldz OpenSim-based grid based on Silent Running. It is called “Silent Refueling” and is set a few days before the events depicted in the film. Valley Forge is in the rings of Saturn harvesting material for fuel.
Fred has used the Sketchfab 3DWarehouse drone model by Martin T. and simplified it a lot to make it suitable to import into OpenSim so that an OpenSim avatar and NPC can be used in his build.
The Making of Silent Running – Documentary – 1972