The interior of Rama, also known as “The Central Plain”, is a large cylindrical landscape that is 16 kilometers in diameter and nearly 50 kilometers long. It is divided into the northern and southern plains, with a 10-kilometer wide expanse of water in the middle. Lord Rama, also known as God Vishnu, is a prominent deity in Hinduism and is considered the seventh avatar (incarnation) of Lord Vishnu. He was born to Dashrath, king of Ayodhya, and his mother’s name was Kausalya.
Rama is considered one of the most renowned avatars connected with many big Hindu festivals. He is known for his righteousness and discipline throughout his life. The interior of Rama is essentially a large cylindrical landscape, dubbed “The Central Plain” by the crew, with artificial gravity provided by its 0.25 rpm spin.
The Cylindrical Sea is enclosed between two cliffs, which completely circle the interior of Rama. The one on the north is only fifty meters. Rama is an ancient, hollow, cylindrical spacecraft that is 50 km long and 16 km wide. It contains a breathable atmosphere and its rotation provides artificial gravity on its inside surface.
Upon closer observation, it is found that Rama is a perfect cylinder, with a diameter of 16 km and a rotating interior of 50 km long and 16 km wide. It is a hollow cylinder that spins to maintain artificial gravity on its inside surface, similar to the O’Neill cylinder.
📹 Rama – HQ version
3D animation of a spacecraft freely inspired from the book “Rendez-vous with Rama” from Arthur C. Clarke. Making of: …
📹 The FULL story of Rendezvous with Rama (Spoilers)
Full story or Rendezvous with Rama! (Lots of Spoilers) If you dont want the story spoiled for you, but want to know about Rama, …
Rendezvous with Rama is one of my favorite novels of all time. It is the perfect science fiction story for me: it had real awe and mystery to it. It made you, the reader, think about the vastness of our universe, in both time and space. The eons of time, in which so many things could have happened and still are, somewhere out there, perhaps billions of lightyears away. Everyone needs to read this. And reading with science-fiction music/soundtracks in the background only magnifies the wonder. I remember reading Rama with Marty O’Donnell’s music from the Halo trilogy, it was perfect. There are so many tracks from the Halo soundtracks that matched the situations in the book exactly, evoking the feelings of awe and grandeur. The experience of reading it this way was literally breathtaking. I hope Morgan Freeman finally realizes his dream of making a Rendezvous with Rama movie. I can only begin to imagine the spectacle, combined with a deep and surreal soundtrack.
I think they took the book’s description of the island too literally. They described what looked like and island filled with skyscrapers in the distance “like New York” The island turned out to be a collection of buildings that housed some sort of record of its civilization and didn’t actually look like a city up close.
I’m reading the Rama cycle for the second time. I’m on the pages of Rama’s awakening and finding this article and Eric’s 3D simulation was a real gem. The article gives me goosebumps and I can finally visualize the emotions of Norton and his crew. One of my favorite books and it’s right there, in the Olympus of science fiction together with Asimov, Simmons and other great writers! I look forward to Denis Villeneuve’s project
A movie was planned led by Morgan Freeman, but it has been in production hell for many years for two main reasons. The first reason is the insane amount of complex CGI required. Fortunately, lower modern CGI costs make this reason increasingly moot. The second reason is the lack of “action” (aka no enemy aliens, no pitched battles, etc.), making it unpalatable to narrow mined studio execs who can only think flash cuts and light sabers. It’s very likely that for this movie to be made, some form of us vs them modification will have to be added, and probably some kind of tense romantic angle to increase female viewership. Both of these things would have been loathed by Arthur C. Clarke, one of the all time greats of “hard”, real science based science fiction.
Definitely needs to be redone. For a start the neatly farmed and maintained crop and grass fields were not a feature of Rama’s interior. No farmers; no bots; no light or heat in the interstellar dark. Next rendition should reproduce exactly what Norton et al would have encountered when Rama began to slowly wake up, as the Cylindrical Sea began to unfreeze
Part 2. About half of the 500 km² that isn’t kept open to admit light is covered by forest. That’s to ensure a regeneration of oxygen and the continuation of the hydrological cycle. That leaves 250 km² for crops and housing. Let’s suppose that 240 km² is used for crops. 1 km² = 247.105 acres. Let’s say you grow rice (high yield) on 60 km², wheat on 80 km², and beans on 100 km².
The creator of this vid didn’t base it on the rama plan from the books. In rama, there were no clouds except in the closed habitats in the later books. There were no forests, roads ect, the buildings were not based on new York… in rama there were 6 strip lights which provided light to the interior, the central sea was frozen during certain times when it was entering a solar system, but was not frozen most of the time. Rama was not man made it was an alien research vessel which collected samples from space faring civilizations in order to classify them and return a sample back to its base. After initial contact it returned with a suitable habitat for whatever was encountered. it would make an awesome series of films as well if they could be bothered…
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Part 1. Very well, though I’d have thought it obvious. First, this habitat doesn’t contain a “vast” amount of interior space. It contains about 1000 square kilometers of interior surface. However, this design isn’t realistic in a number of ways other than the urban centers. For one thing, the light-entry surface will have to be about half the total inner area. Most O’Neil cylinder designs have it that way. In this one, you have the reflected solar radiation focused on a thin translucent rail.
When reading for the first time, I wondered how such a ecosystem would respond to acceleration from the side. Not very well, I assume, as there is lots of water in the soil, acting as a Lu recant. Stationary, sure. Accelerating at any meaningful stellar rate? Nope. Just nope. Original Rama is barren for a reason.
YouTube just LOVES recommending 11 year old articles lately. I’m NOT saying that’s a bad thing! I enjoyed this a lot but — and I hate to be THAT guy — I don’t recall that there were any suspension bridges inside the spacecraft when humans first encountered and explored it. That sure would have been handy, though, as it would have prevented that crewman from having to leap into the nasty, toxic water of the Cylindrical Sea.
I’d like to make this in the computer game, StarMade. Man, that would be a lifetime project, wouldn’t it? 🙂 This is neat. However, I have to say that it looks absolutely nothing like the alien craft from “Rendezvous with Rama.” OK, it’s cylindrical, but that’s the only similarity I can see. (This probably makes a better article, but why connect it with the book at all?)
Rama is great. Is it only me, or anybody else agrees that all the verbiage introduced in the sequels (by Mr. Gently Lee, I suppose – although I remember reading somewhere that Clarke’s characters, according to some literary critics, lack depth so, maybe, that’s exactly why Clarke brougth Lee aboard…) was unnecessary and totally dispensable?
So this is the famous Rama habitat I’ve been seeing people talk about. I haven’t read the novel but I am an avid large scale (100m diameter, not megastructure) centrifuge builder in the game Space Engineers. This type of far in the future habitat building is interesting to me. However, the thing about the O’neill cylinder is that there is a lot of wasted space in the middle reserved for an unecessary sky in my opinion. Pretty yes, but unnecessary. In reality, I think if such megastructures were to be completed by man we would layer the cylinder floors in concentric ever-faster spinning internal floors. Faster spinning as to keep the same centripetal force and layered to vastly increase the floor space. Think of onions and russian dolls. You would want as much livable space under the same protective outer shell as possible.
When these are built, any building constructed will have to have some kind of plant life on it, there will have to be water falls in key places with the rivers, lakes, and streams, and there will need to be kelp forests, algae, corals, and fish. Think of the biospheres that failed. There needs to be Enough Water for Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide to diffuse into.
Ya know, if you think about it, the Ramans had a good idea. They wanted to document all alien life in the galaxy, and judging from the eagle and his advanced A.I, the ramans could be immortal robots, allowing themselves to wait billions of years to create a sort of sanctuary for all life, to protect them from going extinct. Its quite beautiful.
What a magnificent view. I read “Randez-vous with Rama” without stopping after seeing this. Even though the Manatthan in the book wasn’t the real Manatthan, the impression of the interior of the ship is rendered perfectly in this majestic 3d version. What most impresses me is that the author managed to make this 3d model run on regular 2005 hardware, though. FInally, the choice of music is excellent, the low bass tune which accompanies it reminds of the low humming of Rama’s engines.
Great to see it, there’s something hugely intriguing about the Rama spacecraft – enough to keep me trudging through three sequels of soap opera dross just for those few extra glimpses into its architecture ;). I wouldn’t expect much from a film myself, it’ll just be hollywood melodrama, Sigourney Weaver or a lookalike playing mamma Ripley infront of a blue-screen. The human story was fairly trashy in my opinion, pretty transparent on the ‘girl power!’ front too.
Congratulations for the work. Could you tell me where I can find something about the creation of procedural cities? Study computer graphics and am developing a project very similar to the one shown in this article. But I’m having enough trouble in the generation of the cities in a world. I would like your help. Thank you.
I don’t know.. . I am still trying to figure out why you seem to think people on an O’Neil cylinder, or a Rama Cylinder would be living in some sort of primitive society devoid of any motorized devices. Apparently once we have the tech to build such colonies, we will need to revert to becoming the Amish to live on them? You have still yet to answer why on a Rama Cylinder cities are wasteful. Because we ARE talking about a RAMA Cylinder here.
Part 5. So figure on a max population in the range of 50,000 to 100,000 people, and local laws that deal ruthlessly with overbreeders and lazy non-performers. Ruthlessly as in, “you don’t work, you don’t eat.” And, “because you had that extra unlicensed baby, one of you parents will be pushed out the airlock without a spacesuit.” So the population density will be kept under 200 persons/km². (You can live in the forest, but can’t cut any of the trees, since they are the station’s life support.)
Part 4. I really wouldn’t want to push the colony’s food resources to the limit though. There’s the tragedy of the commons in relation to human reproduction. Each set of parents will figure that “only one more” baby won’t hurt anything, and then whammo, you’d suddenly have 100,000 new babies. Also, things are bound to go wrong with the agriculture, once in a while. Personal advantage and honesty about human or resource limits are often at odds in the minds of political leaders, for example.
I don’t have to be able to do better in order to know that someone could have done better. The article is a good article; it just has some departures with reality that are fairly easy to notice. A real O’Neil cylinder wouldn’t have the urban centers because there’s no point in creating such dense centers for housing, business, or administration in such a habitat. It would be a waste of resources at best.
@Otaku35 Jumping on the “ground” (inside of the ring world) would be very much like jumping on the surface of the Earth. You see, the ringworld is spinning, so you’re stuck to the ground in the same way you’re stuck to the walls in one of those spinning-cylinder carnival-rides. If you jump, you’re fighting against this artificial gravity, & the ground wouldn’t start rushing past beneath because you would already have momentum of the spin, (which would also push you back to the surface.)
Those are not windows, those are the linear suns, Rama has six ‘lights’ sort of like those long tube lightbulbs to heat and light it. And O’Neill cylinders proper do have windows, if not, how will they light up? Rama is unique like that as it is an alien craft, so they go the complex way instead of using windows. 😛
the scenery looks like the data was taken from any geo map of manhattan (new york), the hudson river, and the jersey coast are clearly discernable in the article… central park looking south at about mid article… and clearly manhattan island in the middle of the hudson near the end… verrrry coool though… –Mike
Just one problem among so many… You have to manually plant those ceders that surround so many areas! They are too perfect! You are simulating millions of man hours by the work of one person! The spacing of the trees is not random! The spacing of the trees is not specifically spaced! Hundreds and hundreds of people with different opinions of what is the perfect spacing have to have planted those trees before you can every come close! Give it up! As of the development of this vid the computers were dependant on Human interpretation of Human interpretation! Failure guaranteed!
In any kind of human habitat where you ought not use combustion engines to substitute for labor, you’ll need to have most people working to grow food all the time. Farm work is hard work, and it takes time to do. On the bright side, the work helps keep people fit and healthy. You could do worse than imitate the Amish lifestyle. Not everybody needs to be a doggone space station architect or airlock technician. Only one in a ten thousand colonists will need to be occupied in jobs like those.
Well, for one thing the distances involved are relatively small. Bicycles can get you down 32 kilometers of well-engineered highway in about 90 minutes, and there won’t be many trips farther than that inside an O’Neil cylinder. The volume of air in one of those habitats seems large, but the air can get polluted, and will, if you use combustion engines a lot. Solar powered electric engines would be OK, but you might as well get your exercise as you travel. Don’t high tech when you don’t need to.
Part 7. Another stupid scene in the article is the one where the jet fighter flies the length of the station. You don’t ever want combustion inside the cylinder, whether in open fire or inside an engine. You won’t be driving cars in there. You’ll be riding bicycles. You won’t be using tractors on your farm, either. You’ll be busting your butt behind hoe, shovel, rake, and wheelbarrow.
Part 6. Who needs high-rises to cover that population density? Nobody. And what does concentration of people really do? It shortens the walk for face-to-face meetings, but it lengthens the walk to the field where you grow your food. Walks to work are, or should be, more frequent than walks to chat or trade, so keeping the population spread out is actually the more efficient plan. Travel to trade at intervals, instead of commuting to your own farm every day. Markets, yes. Cities, no.
Part 3. An acre can produce 5000 pounds of rice, or 1800 pounds of wheat, or 1200 pounds of beans. A pound of any of those foods contains about 1400 kilocalories (food calories). Let’s assume you have two growing seasons per year. With that ratio of crops, you’ll harvest 3.9e11 kilocalories per year in food, if you can get enough sunlight and refreshed soil, that is. A farm worker needs 3000 kcal/day, making the maximum sustainable population, if nothing ever goes wrong, about 350000 people.
@ELuhn Thank you for the excellently detailed answer. I’ve read one of the books in the series, and now this makes me interested in checking out more of them. I find it intriguing how the sun lamps, ocean, and the two sky-blue caps preserve the feel of an open sky even though these take up much less space than a traditional O’Neil cylinder. I’d definitely have a picnic by the bright blue cap on the grassy field that the jet flew over!
I wrote a novel titled “Teen Girl From Mars”. The setting is an American colonized Mars in the year 2191. The stories involve space stations like the one you so magnificently created. I am in awe. What a splendid age to be alive where such high technology is affordable, easy to use and, when it is properly employed, so beneficial to the human spirit.
Would you look at those completely unnecessary urban centers? They put Manhattan Island and the original World Trade Center in the middle of the circular sea, an obvious sop to New Yorkers, and completely unjustified in a habitat that would carry 50,000 people best, sustain 100,000 if it had to, and hold 200,000 in an emergency for a short while. They should redo the article after taking out the darn skyscrapers. All you need is farm houses and small villages and agricultural land.
This is incredibly cool. I have never read the book, but that aside if there was a game on a world like this (fantasy, modern, scifi, or whatever), it would just be amazing. Especially a free roam game like an RPG. You could make a truly amazing story for it and exploring a world of this design would just be…breathtaking.
I had been reading all of the Clarke books since well before the movie “2001”. Many years later, when he wrote the “Rama” books, I become eager to see movie versions of these stories, but knew that the movie special effects technology of the time could not do justice to the story. However, the movie “Avitar” has shown that special effects technology has improved to the point where “Rama” movies can successfully be created. I am now 80, but hope that I will live lon enough to see them.
RwR remains one of the best SF novels that hasn’t yet been made as a motion picture. The CGI/special effects have matured enough now that the story is ‘doable’ at the level it richly deserves. With the right Producer (looks like Denis Villenueve is directing, so hopeful!)), this has the potential to be a modern masterpiece, a contemporary 2001:ASO. I desperately hope that the Hollywood System doesn’t pervert this into just another ‘Star vehicle’ (heh) and or another Space Alien monster/horror movie…looks like Villenueve stays faithful to source material, so I’m already excited. 😉
This is a great recap of the book. There were many parts I had forgotten from many years ago. Hits all the high points without wading through a cylindrical sea of one-dimensional characters. (I would not have been upset if Jimmy got disassembled by the crab. Or perhaps just removing his filings, and any possible metal pins in his leg from a childhood injury) The Science of Rama would make for an interesting series.
I do hope this gets made into a movie someday, especially with today’s special effects ++Spoilers++ With Rama everything comes in 3s, there’s 3 ships total, 2 more ships on the way and 3 more books, it’s been a long time since I read them but I remember being not exactly happy with how the last book plays out to be honest, the story changes genres and theme dramatically from wonderous voyage of space travel and discovery to something like commentary on discourse in society, cults, etc.
I read Rama decades ago. I probably would have forgotten a lot of it, but I bought picture book of the Top 10 Sci-fi’s. The pictures of Rama, Dune, Ringworld, et al keep me remembering. Nevertheless when I see the movie, it will be all new and enchanting. Hey that green crab is from my picture book. And that starfish with Manhattan and raft. Thanks for the memories Quinn. I enjoyed your reading.
Thank you so much! I loved Arthur C Clark’s Sci Fi books. They were mostly “hard” sci fi, and his scientific knowledge and the mystery of space fascinated me. He was not so interested in the human characters in his stories. That’s why I ‘ve never been fond of the other Rama sequels, those he wrote with Gentry Lee. Please keep on doing these…
I remember reading this as a teenager. In hindsight it feels very lovecraftian in places, as trained astronauts repeatedly stop and stare, like Victorian explorers at the Mountains of Madness, at things that (frankly) shouldn’t be that surprising or mysterious. “Why is the other cliff so high?” really shouldn’t have been more than a three minute mystery.
Amazing. Thank you so much for this wonderful summary. I was looking for exactly this after learning there is a movie about this story coming out (but not for a few more years). I’m off to watch your other Rama articles. Thank you again. I thoroughly enjoyed this and you were funny too. I laughed at the ramen joke, and being hugged like a long lost brother bit. By the way, a funny thing happened to me while perusal this at 28:02. I thought my browser glitched and when I minimized it I realized that background image of Mars just so happens to be the exact one I am using as a wallpaper on my computer. What are the chances! :p
I went to lecture by Clarke before this book came out. He talked about living in Sri Lanka and how its foreigness helped inspire him how aliens would seem so unexpected. He still found new things there after living there extended time. I was lucky enough to see 2001 in its first release in 70mm, 6 website sound on a big curved screen with audience of about 8 people. We knew nothing about the film other than it involved space travel. Immediately became one of my favorite films with the sheer wonder of it. After reading Rama, my big fear was how it could be ruined by being made into a film.
Love the Rama series… Totally got me into the Sci-Fi genre and made me a solid fan of Arthur C. Clarke. (Check out “Childhood’s End” and “The City And The Stars” too!) I think Morgan Freeman owned the movie rights for a long time! Perhaps still does? I’ve waited for a film about Rama for decades. It can be done. I just hope it’s done good and with love and care…
Thanks for your take on this and the upload. It takes an effort to put these commentaries and edits together and it is appreciated. Perspective is needed with any older novel in the terms used and particularly racist or sexist elements. Times were different back in the day. Much like the Sci Fi novels and short stories of John Wyndham also, which I prefer as they are less about his knowledge of tech (like Clarke) and more about character, relationships and the story. Stephen King agrees on that point by the way – Wyndham a significant influence on his character-led story telling style. Many of these were written 1930s through 50s and so the language and time consideration require acceptance. Also, bear in mind that ACC worked with NASA at times and so there is an element of US propaganda and mis-information in his work. He was also a homosexual who moved to Sri Lanka to avoid scandal over his affairs with young men (some would say boys). He was used to getting his own way, had a high regard for himself and was also good at keeping secrets. Interesting to take this on board when considering his stories.
I loved “Rendezvous with Rama”, it’s one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time in my opinion. After I finished it, I immediately got the sequels; Rama II, The Garden of Rama and Rama Revealed, written by Gentry Lee and Arthur C. Clarke. Oh god, they were so bad. I could really feel how with each sequel, Clarke got less and less involved in the series and gradually handed it over to his much inferior co-author. Those books had the intellectual depth of a Michael Bay movie as well as the action and excitement of a Swedish film production. Rama II, the first sequel was already a kitschy and banal piece of pulp, filled with shallow and lazily written characters like the female antagonist, who was about as interesting as the most boring comic book villain and had no redeeming qualities. The next book was even worse, with a completely unbelievable premise about governments using prison inmates to colonize an alien spacecraft. I was unable to finish it because it was so bad. I just tossed it in a corner of my room and tried to forget it. After that, I didn’t even touch the last book of the series, but I read a brief summary online and it’s a piece of drek filled with incest. Read “Rendezvous with Rama”, but ignore the sequels.
i dont know why somebody doesnt turn rama into an anime. there is so much great artwork on rama, it will be easier to make and cheaper by a long shot, It wont take away from the book either seeing the depiction in an aime instead of a potential live action flop. Most live actions flop because the die hard fans need to compare the live action to the book or comics.
From a scientific perspective, Rama needs to be traveling at a speed faster than the solar system escape velocity. That would make rendezvous very difficult, if not impossible. Clarke, the inventor of the geosynchronous communication satellite, would have known that, but this did not prevent him from writing a very interesting and compelling story.