Cool indeed. A spin on it (also using POV-Ray), but using a photo (texture on an object) and animated (rotating that object, the texture, or the mirrors -- I forgot) in [0] and [1].
Delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN) seeks to address these kind of problems, using alternative techniques and protocols: store-and-forward, Bundle protocols and Licklider Transmission Protocol. Interesting stuff, enjoy!
Forth: FOURTH as in "4th generation software", "successor to 3rd generation compile-link-go languages", or "software for 4rd generation hardware", but IBM 1130 naming cut it short one char [2]
PostScript: after the postfix notation it uses and because it was to be the last thing that happened to an image before it was printed [3]
There's another guide [0] for wire wrap technique (solderless, cold welded connections to square posts [1]). Used extensively in telephony switching/patching in the past, as well as digital circuit construction like computers. Quite nice for prototyping, although qualitative sockets/posts can be hard to acquire at a reasonable price nowadays.
Rebuilt a unit with over 7,000 wire wraps in it back in 2009 for F/A-18 flight computer testing. An electrical short had caused several runs to melt and basically run a hot knife through the internal wiring.
Had to rebuild it from original hand written point to point wrap instructions (of which there was only the original) coupled with all the changes in the 30 years since original build.
I remember reading an Isaac Asimov story where aliens learned that we did all our nuclear detonation on the planet’s surface instead of on space and decide that humanity should be quarantined and not allowed into the interstellar society.
Of course living through the decades since Asimov wrote that story, it seems the aliens have plenty of other reasons to keep our species quarantined.
It's a common trope in sci-fi, but also silly when you consider the scale of space and how radioactive it already is.
And then consider that any civilization capable of interstellar travel would already need to be harnessing energies that make nukes look like firecrackers.
At some point in the far future it might make sense to renegotiate that treaty, but for now we're so far from being able to build a practical Project Orion type spacecraft that the issue is moot. And in the meantime there are other nuclear rocket designs which don't rely on explosions and would comply with the treaty. Those engines would be perfectly adequate to send manned missions to Mars and the outer planets, if we were willing to spend a few trillion dollars.
Personally I enjoyed IF like TATCTAE (Time: All Things Come To An End), Jigsaw and Curses! which where included in early GNU/Linux distributions (unbeknownst to me at that time that much other int-fiction was being created, since we were exploring the OS distributions offline, InfoMagic CDs etc.)
Before that, BBS door games existed (much avoided because exhuberant dialup costs). Typing in BASIC source code from books lent from the library (mostly text-based games). My interest was piqued by MUDs at one point afterwards, but never really got active (again because of dialup costs to connect to the Internet).
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJaBspDXgzs [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc5uEwwr6S8