Artificial Biospheres In Space

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "victoriatangoman"
wrote:

> Yes. By placing the lens at the top of the mountain ridge that
runs
> the length of the cylinder, you avoid all the debris. Youu still
> have to deal with rain, but because the lenses aren't strucutral
> components of the pressure vessel, you'd probably have a lot more
> leeway in designing an automated process for cleaning the lens.
> Think of a streetcleaner.
>
> Also, the mountains break the monotony of flat, curving landscape
> within the cylinder. The border the length of each land mass.
>
> Further, in the corridor underneath the mountains you have ample
> room to have many stations of mirrors because the slope can be
> extended to the height of the mountain.
>
> Here is a rough sketch of the idea and it includes the light rays
> within the cylinder.
>
> The file is loaded into the FILES section of the spacesettlers e-
> group. You can find it there under the title "Colony Design" in
> addition to many other interesting titles posted by other members,
> or just go here:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2zz68
>
> Note, that the strips of land and mountain(glass) are not all 1/6
of
> circumference. The land is larger and the mountains are smaller
> because of the lens effect. [snip]
>
> TangoMan

Very nice,

I just sketched out another simple concept that takes 3 or 4 mirrors
to provide vertical illumination coming down from along the axis.
I'm not sure if someone else has thought of it or not. It should be
simple to make, though.

I stuck it on my blog here.
http://armor.typepad.com/bastardsword/2004/02/space_stations_.html

Yesterday also wrote down some thoughts on a small station (crew of
100) using electric illumination, mostly aimed as a general purpose
station or design concept for a Mars craft.
http://armor.typepad.com/bastardsword/2004/02/long_duration_s.html