Island One, Two and Three

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Saatvik Agarwal
> I'm not clear about what is better - the Stanford torus or the Bernal
> sphere, or is there no clear answer?
> Does the answer depend on RPM? If yes, what happens at 1 rpm and what
> happens at 3 or 2 rpm?
>
> Sorry for being such a pain but O'Neill's book isn't available in my
> city, I looked for it everywhere...I've asked someone to bring it
for me
> from the US though.
>
> Thanks once again and regards
> Saatvik Agarwal
>
To put it bluntly, we don't know. We can make good guesses. How good
is another question. I got my engineering degree in 1968. Computer
aided design was just starting.

Computers are nice, but there is no substitute for building a working
prototype and testing it to destruction. It is impractical to do this
with something as big as as a torus or sphere.

But I still believe that we will have to build a few and use them a
while before we understand all the advantages and disadvantages. We
will probably have to fix stuff as we go.

The trouble with a computer model is that you need to put in all the
factors. Miss some and your answer will be distorted. Miss an
important factor and your answer will probably be useless.

It's good to do the theory work first and it will clear up a lot of
potential problems. But I can't believe that it will clear up all the
problems.

It would be very good if we could solve everything on the ground. But
I'm afraid, we will have to go out there and muddle through as best we
can.

Rick Brooks