Stanford Torus vs Bernal Sphere

Thanks for trying anyway.

Since a Bernal Sphere is clearly superior to the
Stanford torus I read up on it's design on the
internet. Although not as well documented as the
Stanford Torus, I did find some useful info at
www.l5news.org. While looking at some of the artists'
renditions I was confused as to whether the sphere is
flattened from the bottom or not and about how
sunlight is reflected into the sphere.

Any pointers to more detailed information (other than
what Googling for Bernal Sphere brings up) will also
be helpful.

Thanks and regards
Saatvik Agarwal

--- "Combs, Mike" wrote:

From: Saatvik Agarwal [mailto:asaatvik@...]

> Since you say a sphere is more
> efficient of building materials, can you give some
sort of an idea
about
> what would be the difference between the structural
mass of a sphere
and
> a torus (of course, keeping all other factors
constant)?

Well, since I'm neither a scientist nor an engineer,
all I can really do
is compare published and peer-reviewed studies (the
webpage calculators
others are referencing may well function beautifully,
but bear in mind
that's not peer-reviewed work). Since the Stanford
Torus and the Bernal
Sphere both have the same population, I think they are
directly
comparable. The published figures of 10 million tons
mass vs. 4 million
tons would seem to imply about a 2:1 ratio. Bear in
mind that's total
mass, which would include shielding as well as
structural mass. But
that's the figure for how much total mass must be
processed.

Regards,

Mike Combs