Cylinder

Would you please supply the dimensions of the sphere and cylinder that
you're using, so that we can check the calculations?

Anyhow, the sphere beats the cylinder only if one assumes that the
population is distributed along the volume. (Because the sphere has
the highest volume-to-surface ratio.) If one assumes that the
population is distributed along the *surface*, though, then I think
that the cylinder is the best option, because in the cylinder (if you
do not consider the endcaps) the ratio of shield surface to usable
surface would be 1 and in the sphere it would be higher than 1.

So, I tend to think that spheres would be better for arcology-like
colonies - big rotating 3D cities - while cylinders would be better
for really "earth-like" colonies with forests and hills and stuff.

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 21:41:14 +0530, Saatvik Agarwal
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I plugged in a population of 30,000 in the Belmont calculator and
> surprisingly the cylinder required the least radiataion shielding.
> The tours required something like 70 megaton, the sphere around 46
> megaton and the cylinder only 4 (yes that's four) megaton.
> Is this true or is there a bug in the calculator? If this is true why
> was the cylinder eliminated for such small population sizes?
>
> Thanks and regards
> Saatvik Agarwal
(...)