O'Neill habitat spin axis

In article ,
Ray Drouillard wrote:
If I was designing an O'Neill colony for my WIP, I would do a google
search on "L5 society". I'm sure they have a web site, and I'm equally
sure that they have done lots of design work on various colonies. Also,
you might want to google on "O'Neill Colony".

I'm pretty sure they don't have a website, since the L-5 Society
hasn't existed as such for many years (merged with NSS). Also, L-5 was
an advocacy organization.
If the newsgroup discussion isn't adequate, the original poster
might want to check out the Space Studies Institute (a research
foundation established by O'Neill) at www.ssi.org, and look at the
online material as well as the Proceedings of the conferences on space
industrialization and setttlement they've been holding since 1975.
Note followups to rasfs only.
Jon
__@/

On 31 Aug 2004 11:17:49 -0700, (Bill Bogen) wrote, in
part:

I thought that the two cylinders were parallel, there being no need
for a net angular momentum. I belive your last statement is correct,
though, since such a force arrangement would cause both cylinders to
precess so as to keep one end pointed at the Sun.

I'm in favor of having lots of angular momentum, and a fixed axis
perpendicular to the habitat's orbit. A light mirror can be rotated to
bring sunlight into the colony.

Such a design works well with radiation shielding as well...

http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/science/spaint.htm

shows a design I've proposed - borrowing much from previous designs
proposed, of course - in reaction to a claim that cosmic rays make an
O'Neill habitat impossible - because by the time you have enough
shielding to stop regular radiation, then you have too much dangerous
secondary radiation caused by cosmic rays.

Well, since life is possible on Earth, if you *just keep piling on the
shielding*, you will get to a point where even the cosmic rays are
stopped - and I illustrate a design that lets you do just that.

And it avoids use of consumables to move the colony around as well.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

In re orbiting the Moon -- NASA had a problem with so called "MASCONs": mass
of concentration, where the possibility of a Lunar orbiting station may
crash into the Moon. Check the Encylopaedia Astronautica for details, under
the term MASCON.

--
Leonard C Robinson
"On strange worlds beneath strange suns,
Time and the Gods are preparing for Man the sites of cities yet to be."
(Sir Arthur Charles, Lord Clarke of Serendip)

"John Savard" wrote in
message ...

Such a design works well with radiation shielding as well...

http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/science/spaint.htm

shows a design I've proposed - borrowing much from previous designs
proposed, of course - in reaction to a claim that cosmic rays make an
O'Neill habitat impossible - because by the time you have enough
shielding to stop regular radiation, then you have too much dangerous
secondary radiation caused by cosmic rays.

I see that I still haven't convinced you that this design is gross over-kill
where radiation shielding is concerned. Two meters of shielding is all
that's needed both to mop up primaries and their resulting secondaries. If
your diagram is for a habitat several miles across, this would be a
thickness a bit difficult to see if drawn to scale.

Please believe me that the Space Medicine Expert who confidently told your
group that space habitats won't work was just yet another person who felt
that they could confidently arrive at such a conclusion without spending a
lot of time or effort looking into the proposal in any detail.

Your habitat design might be the right design for a war-time situation, but
is not needed just to bring radiation down to acceptable levels.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make
much sense, but we do like pizza.

"Leonard C. Robinson" wrote in message
news:aA8%c.138252$Fg5.125421@attbi_s53...
In re orbiting the Moon -- NASA had a problem with so called "MASCONs":
mass
of concentration, where the possibility of a Lunar orbiting station may
crash into the Moon. Check the Encylopaedia Astronautica for details,
under
the term MASCON.

Lunar Orbiting Space Station, or LOSS... which would have been a true LOSS!


To my way of thinking, L-1 is right next door to the moon. That ought to be
close enough.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make
much sense, but we do like pizza.