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idea for a coin-shaped space habitat.
Here's a little idea that's been in my head for a while. I wonder if
I'm the first to come up with it (unlikely) or if it already has a name, or is just completely unworkable. I thought I'd run it past this group to see if it's original, and if it's possible. If it turns out to be not only an original idea, but a good one, I'd like like to stake a claim to it and get it named after me =-) I got to thinking about space habitats, and possible designs for them. I came up with a structure somewhere between a Stanford Torus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus ) and an O'Neill cylinder ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder ) that seems, in some ways, a little simpler than either. The problem I have with these two designs is that they both rely on huge arrays of moving mirrors to direct sunlight into the habitat. While this is might not be the biggest technical obstacle to such a structure, they will require rather a lot of maintainence. I have an idea to eliminate the need for them. Here's what I propose: Imagine a hollow coin shape. Basically, so far, it's a very narrow O'Neill cylinder. This gets very difficult to explain without diagrams, so I'm going to start labelling stuff. We'll stick with the 'coin' analogy and label the two circular surface 'heads' and 'tails'. I'm going to say that heads and tails are each x metres in diameter. The 'ring' shaped surface that connects heads and tails, well let's just call it 'the ring', shall we? The ring has a circumference of pi*x. It has a width of y metres. (To put it another way, heads and tails are y metres apart.) You can play with different values if you like, but I think an upper limit for y would be about 20% of x. I've not idea what real values for x and y would be feasible, and it doesn't really matter as far as I'm concerned, but in my mind they're in the kilometres/ tens of kilometres range. Because the whole structure is hollow, heads, tails and the ring all have both outer and inner surfaces. With me so far? Good. Align your coin so that heads and tails are in the same line as the direction of sunlight. In other words, if you imagine the direction of sunlight as a line drawn on a table, and then you were to roll a coin along that line toward the sun, you'd have the correct alignment. Spin your coin-habitat about an axis through the centres of heads and tails. One rotation per 24 hours would be ideal, because this is going to be the length of your day, but whatever you can manage is fine. This means that the outside surface of the ring gets all the sunlight, the heads and tails surfaces get very little sunlight (if any) and the inside surface of the ring gets the pseudo-gravity. Right, you've got the basic shape. First up, make heads and tails opaque to harmful cosmic radiation, with thick layers of whatever material you think is best. I'm thinking, lots and lots of rock, because there seems to be a fair bit of that kicking about in space. At the centre of heads and tails you can have your docking facilities, your zero-gravity fun-rooms, and lifts/ ladders down the inside of the circular surfaces towards the living space on the inside surface of the ring. Now, get inside your coin (having first filled it with a breathable atmosphere, of course), and stand on the inner surface of the ring. walk up to the "wall" that is the inner surface of heads. Now walk at a right-angle away from heads, so you are moving directly toward tails. When you have walked exactly y/3 metres, stop. Get a permanent marker, and start drawing a line on the floor. Maintaining a distance of y/3 metres from heads, do an entire circuit of the ring, until your line joins back up with itself. Depending on the value of x, you may need several markers. Now walk another y/3 metres away from heads, and do the same thing once more. You've just divided the inner surface of your ring into three equal, narrower rings. To avoid confusion, we'll call these the strips. In the outer two of these three strips, start dumping loads of heavy material. Again, rock would be good, because not only is this your radiation shielding, it's the 'land' that you will be living on. Try to keep roughly within the lines you drew, but it doesn't have to be too precise- minor irregularities will add charm. Pile it up high, and eventually you see that you have two strips of well-protected land running around the inner surface of the ring, and a deep valley seperating them. Now we're ready for the final and the (I hope) clever bit. Simply fill your valley with water. As I understand it, a certain depth of water is great for keeping out bad radiation, but lets in good radiation (ie sunlight) just fine. The valley floor (ie, the central strip) needs to be transparent, so that if you were swimming in your new pool, you'd be able to look down and see the sun below you. If you were to stay in the water for several hours, you'd notice that as the coin rotates, the sun moves from beneath you, along the strip of water, until eventually it is shining directly overhead, peeking between the two strips of land on the far side of the ring. A big boat on the far side might eclipse the sun altogether. People on the land near you will see the sun overhead as well, so this is midday. If you now hang around in the water for another half-rotation, the sun will be directly below you again, warming the soles of your now-wrinkly feet. However if you climb out of the water at this time, you will see that it's actually quite dark. The water would be lit beautifully from below, but the land where you are won't be getting any light at all, because the rock below your feet blocks it all out. This is midnight. Look straight up and all you'll see are sunbathers on the 'midday' side of the ring above your head, and starlight shining through the water. So there it is. (pi*x*y*2)/3 metres squared of living space, a huge reservoir of water for drinking, swimming in etc, well proteceted from harmful radiation but with a very natural day/night cycle and no giant motorised mirrors required. What's more, the movement of water created by the coin's roations combined with irregularities in the coastline ought to make great surfing conditions. All you need is a lot of rock, a lot of water and a very big box of permanent markers. Oh, and you might want some machinery to sweep the bottom of the pool from time to time- I don't think algae will be a problem, what with all the solar radiation, but junk and dirt collecting down there will reduce the amount of light that gets into the habitat. Now, who's going to be the first to tell me it doesn't work? |
#2
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idea for a coin-shaped space habitat.
wrote in message
oups.com... Here's a little idea that's been in my head for a while. I wonder if I'm the first to come up with it (unlikely) or if it already has a name, or is just completely unworkable. I thought I'd run it past this group to see if it's original, and if it's possible. If it turns out to be not only an original idea, but a good one, I'd like like to stake a claim to it and get it named after me =-) snip Align your coin so that heads and tails are in the same line as the direction of sunlight. In other words, if you imagine the direction of sunlight as a line drawn on a table, and then you were to roll a coin along that line toward the sun, you'd have the correct alignment. Spin your coin-habitat about an axis through the centres of heads and tails. One rotation per 24 hours would be ideal, because this is going to be the length of your day, but whatever you can manage is fine. This means that the outside surface of the ring gets all the sunlight, the heads and tails surfaces get very little sunlight (if any) and the inside surface of the ring gets the pseudo-gravity. Right, you've got the basic shape. First up, make heads and tails opaque to harmful cosmic radiation, with thick layers of whatever material you think is best. I'm thinking, lots and lots of rock, because there seems to be a fair bit of that kicking about in space. At the centre of heads and tails you can have your docking facilities, your zero-gravity fun-rooms, and lifts/ ladders down the inside of the circular surfaces towards the living space on the inside surface of the ring. snip Now we're ready for the final and the (I hope) clever bit. Simply fill your valley with water. As I understand it, a certain depth of water is great for keeping out bad radiation, but lets in good radiation (ie sunlight) just fine. The valley floor (ie, the central strip) needs to be transparent, so that if you were swimming in your new pool, you'd be able to look down and see the sun below you. If you were to stay in the water for several hours, you'd notice that as the coin rotates, the sun moves from beneath you, along the strip of water, until eventually it is shining directly overhead, peeking between the two strips of land on the far side of the ring. A big boat on the far side might eclipse the sun altogether. People on the land near you will see the sun overhead as well, so this is midday. If you now hang around in the water for another half-rotation, the sun will be directly below you again, warming the soles of your now-wrinkly feet. However if you climb out of the water at this time, you will see that it's actually quite dark. The water would be lit beautifully from below, but the land where you are won't be getting any light at all, because the rock below your feet blocks it all out. This is midnight. Look straight up and all you'll see are sunbathers on the 'midday' side of the ring above your head, and starlight shining through the water. snip Now, who's going to be the first to tell me it doesn't work? It seems sound in principle. There are several restrictions that go with it, though. If it spins perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, the sun will only be visible through the floor-window twice a year, so you'll probably want to have it spinning flat in the plane of its orbit, or else paired with a second one spinning in the opposite direction to give zero net angular momentum, such that the pair can be rotated to keep the floor-windows always facing the sn as they orbit. You can't make the water too deep, or it'll filter out too much visible light. If you get thinking really big, you also have to worry about the weight of the water and the land, but for O'Neill cylinder sized objects the internal air pressure actually produces more strain on the hull than the weight of the ground. In order to have twenty-four hour day and 1g of apparent gravity, you need to make it Really Big. You've already got hull strength issues before you start building quite that big, and you'll probably have a harder time finding transparent high tensile strength building materials than you will finding opaque ones, which will further restrict the size of the habitat. Thus, you need to make do with either a shorter day or significantly less than 1g of apparent gravity. -l. ------------------------------------ My inbox is a sacred shrine, none shall enter that are not worthy. |
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