redesign of ONeill cylinder mirrors

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Combs, Mike"
> From: Anton Sherwood [mailto:bronto@p...]
>
> > If one may pick a nit: the conical mirror-arrays of
> > Rosinante have a lot more than twice the area of
> > O'Neill's rectangular ones.
>
> And what this translates into is that someone at the anti-sunward
end of
> the cylinder might experience near-normal levels of insolation.
Someone
> at the sunward end of the cylinder would be getting rapidly cooked!
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs

Three points;

1. Re getting rapidly cooked.

Since the mirror would be composed of an array of small mirrors,
those [progressing toward] the sunward end would be gradually
dispersed, i.e., a pattern such as a checkerboard in which less
and less of the "squares" actually contain mirrors.

2a. Re non-rotating conical mirror.

The sheilding could also be cone shaped, non-rotating and exterior
to the mirror..

[Yes it would be Massive, but gradually thinner progressing
sunward. [same concept as above] [-this may need more thought:-]

2b. One problem would be keeping the cone mass aimed at the sun.

Assuming That Problem to be reasonably solvable [?] .., and:

If the mass were made sufficiently rigid and connected to the
cylinder via a bearing of some sort.. [Whew!] -The need for a
2nd counter-rotating cylinder might be eliminated. [Tending to
justify the concept.]

3. But back to the 3 [or 6 mirror concept, [-originally mine I
believe], it had occurred to me that if the mirrors were concave,
[thereby greater in area, tho not portions of a cone] with their
focus at the window, the windows could be narrower, resulting in
more land area.

RKH