Digest Number 713

On Tuesday 23 September 2003 21:55, victoriatangoman wrote:
(...)
> I'm not so sure that you can add onto a completed Habitat. You can't
> stop the thing from spinning or there will be all sorts of mayhem
> inside. You can't start willy-nilly adding mass all over because
> thay might affect the balance, precession, etc.
>
> I tend to think of a Habitat as a completed piece of engineering. It
> would be interesting to contemplate how one could add onto a Habitat.
(...)

I have already thought lengthly about modular habitats and the best idea that
I came with was something that I call simply "the matrix" (a worn-out name,
but I was too lazy to come up with a better option :-).

Think of a grid in space. For sake of simplicity, assume a square grid (though
I would prefer a triangular one). The grid is composed by bars, say, one
kilometer long, interconnected in squares. The hubs (points where four bars
get together) have contactless (magnetic) docks for space habitats and each
hub has an habitat with one of its "poles" docked to it. The rotation with
one habitat will not affect the others or the grid, since the system is
contactless. (And it would be advisable to keep equal numbers of habitats
spinning clockwise and counterclockwise, so that you cancel gyroscopic effect
and then can keep the structure pointing toward the Sun.)

Then you can have a variety of habitats of different shapes and sizes
interconnected, provided that (a) their maximum allowed diameter is the grid
cell length (one kilometer in my example) and (b) they use a standard dock.
The grid can have a transportation system that exchanges cargo and passenger
pods between the habitats. The system would be infinitely expansible: if you
need more habitats, just add more cells (i.e., interconnet some bars) and
then you have new habitat docks where you can construct new colonies in the
matrix.

One may ask what would be the advantage of the Matrix when compared to simply
building a lot of habitats in different orbits or different places in the
same orbit. The answers are:

- The habitats would be much closer in the matrix, and transit times between
any two habitats would be much shorter than when dealing with orbit
transfers.
- Transportation pods would move without the need of propellants, using just
electric energy, thus reducing consumption of volatiles.
- At some extent, the grid architecture would allow some redundancy and thus
more safety. For instance, instead of having one energy supply per habitat
(which would leave the habitat powerless in case of catastrophic failure) you
can put your solar generators in the grid itself and make power generation
and distribution a shared system, completely robust to failure in isolated
cells.

Hmmm, I'm having a dejavu feeling... Have I already exposed this idea here? I
think I'm getting old. :-)

Lucio