asteroid habitats

From: victoriatangoman [mailto:tango_dancer@...]

"What's the span between the columns? I'd venture a guess that it's
far, far off from the miles envisioned in a Habitat. "

Okay, It seems we're making assumptions about how we each envision the
design. I don't see a completely hollowed-out asteroid, with an interior
similar to an O'Neill design; you're right about the tensile strength issue
in that case. Think instead of a series of large, interconnected man-made
caverns. A better example than those mines I mentioned before would be
Cheyenne Mountain, which has chambers hundreds of feet in length, large
enough to contain multi-story buildings, with enough mountain left over to
survive a direct hit from a multi-megaton nuke. You can check it out at:
http://www.cheyennemountain.af.mil

> Decades after
> these mines were played out, they're still being used as underground
> offices, warehouses, industrial parks... even a few restaurants.

"I've been in some. Pretty cool, heh? "

Very cool. They're small compared to The Mountain, though; I wish my time in
the Air Force had included a tour of duty Inside.

"Here are my assumptions:
The asteroid will have to be spun to induce coriolis forces.
It will have to be pressurized to contain an atmosphere.
There are substandard parts which don't meet specifications for
today's machinary. "

I'll agree with your first two assumptions. As to the third, I'm not really
concerned about part of the rock being "substandard", if there's a hundred
feet or so of it between the floor of the chambers and the outside.
Again, I'm thinking of a floating Cheyenne Mountain, not a stone O'Neill.
I'm with you about the implausibility of the latter.

"If you're referring to a Metallic class asteroid, I'd hate to be
tasked with the job of digging it out. Blowing up whole chunks of
metal in a controlled fashion is not going to be an easy job."

Yeah, I thought about that after I included the M-class in the potential
asteroids I listed. Good point. Still, the stony and stony-iron asteroids
offer at least a few hundred potential sites among the NEOs.

"I'd have to go back and check but I thought the premise to the
question was a melt operation. Though, even with tunneling, I think
that the problems discussed above are still present. "

Somehow, I missed the original post in this thread, so I don't know about
the initial premise. Does my version of an asteroid habitat seem more
plausible, now that I've described it better?

Dave