HOLOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT SIMULATORS

	Since before the first satellite launches within the Sol system, fiction 
writers and engineers alike assumed that long-duration space flights would 
require certain measures to keep the travelers happy and psychologically fit 
for continued duty. During the first Earth orbital and lunar landing missions, 
crew members listened to cassette tapes of their favorite music, and flight 
controllers periodically passed up capsule versions of the daily newspapers 
of the day. Documentation and video recordings were routinely transmitted 
to orbital stations and planetary outposts into the early part of the twenty-
first century.
	The desire to experience images, sounds, and tactile stimuli not 
normally encountered on a space vessel has followed explorers across the 
galaxy for the last four hundred years. Computer-driven projection imagery 
has filled starship crewsÕ needs for provocative spaces and, with the 
addition of certain sport and recreational gear, provided an enjoyable model 
of reality. Various holographic optical and acoustic techniques were applied 
through the years, finally giving way to a series of breakthroughs in small 
forcefield and imaging devices that not only did not seriously impact starship 
mass and volume constraints, but actually nurtured hyperrealistic, flight-
critical simulations. In the last thirty years, the starship Holodeck has come 
into its own.  Æ