New space themed movie coming this fall!!!

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Were discussing the upcoming movie Elysium over at the space settlers maillist

Regards,

Mike Combs

On Behalf Of Combs, Mike

Ive been pulling for a movie depicting life in an orbital habitat for many years. I finally get my wish and its this.

Granted that the premise as depicted is unjust. But the overriding question in my mind is: Is the correct solution to the injustice to build many more tori so that a greater number of Earth people can immigrate, or to bring Elysium crashing down in flames and
force all the mean old mega-rich to live on Earth with the rest of us? I fear I already know the answer Hollywood will favor.

But Ill be in the theater seat.

On to technical issues: My first impression was of a torus with maybe a diameter closer to an ONeill Cylinder than to a Stanford Torus. (I have every confidence such could be built in the real world.) The website describes Elysium as a 125 km torus. I initially
took that to means diameter, which would make it over 18 times the diameter of an ONeill cylinder. But they say Elysium provides 251 sq km of area (Island 3 provides 400). Assuming 125 km describes the diameter, this square area would make the width of the
torus only .64 km which seems too narrow. Assuming 125 km is instead the circumference yields a width of 2 km which seems closer to whats depicted. So Im now thinking thats the circumference. In which case, Elysium is only 6x the diameter of an ONeill
cylinder.

My initial assumption of 125 km diameter took us well beyond the material strengths of steel, aluminum, and glass, which is what ONeill always limited his calculations to. But this is science fiction, so we can forgive them. Carbon nanotube cables could probably
get us to that scale.

But if we instead assume thats the circumference, we have a diameter under 24 miles. The High Frontier did mention that a 12 mile spherical habitat could be build from titanium. So maybe Elysium is closer to just 2x the limits of current materials. (The windows
might be another issue.)

Seems to be in too low an orbit. It would get frequently eclipsed by the Earth.

Regards,
Mike Combs

JWS,

Yeah, I think youve hit it on the head. Only, I do believe that ol Matt Damon has a bit of destruction and mayhem in mind for fair Elysium. The exactly wrong picture to paint of space habitation, with homes starting at $250,000,000, I wont be invited, so
I guess Ill be joining Matt on his unauthorized voyage. It wouldnt be bad if they presented a scenario where Elysium is only the Top Echelon in Habitats, and there are dozens more in assorted shapes, sizes and purposes. A couple could be engaged in a
nice slow journey to the Jovian and Saturnian systems, three or four at locations in or near the Belt, some in cis-lunar orbit and several at Lagrange points. But to present a scenario where ONLY the rich get to go...inappropriate and volatile in my opinion.

Victor

I read that story by a different name 30 years ago, except it was not Earth
and it was in print I hope it is good and you do well with it.

JWS

In a message dated 4/11/2013 9:07:46 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
mailto:mjlinafe%40visi.com writes:

Title: Elysium
opening: August 9, 2013

Website: http://www.itsbetterupthere.com/site/

Youtube trailers:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=elysium&oq=elysium&gs_l=youtube.1.1.0i3l3j0l7.1854425.1857305.0.1860322.9.7.1.1.1.0.316.

1230.0j5j1j1.7.0...0.0...1ac.1.aSdgrXVVOpI

Basic premise, there is a torus space colony where all the super rich and
such live a life of absolute comfort and privilege. Everyone else lives on
earth where it is over crowded and almost inhospitable. One man is going
to do anything to get to Elysium.

By the sound of it, this is a story of just what I fear may happen to
space development. Only the privileged get to go, and have dictatorial say in
who and what happens.

But we will see just what is the whole story in August.

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