Kalpana one

It will be published in 2006 in the beginning of may

At 06:46 PM 4/27/2006, you wrote:
>I couldn't find a publication date on this. Does anyone know?
>We might invite the writers of the paper here to discuss it and answer
>our questions.
>
>Ralph wrote
> >>... its a shame to use artificial light for crop raising when
> >>theres so much natural sunlight. Agricultural is by far you
> >>main power requirement. A way around this is to attach solar
> >>collectors to the outside of the colony's hull and divert the
> >>sunlight into the agricultural areas with fiber optics.
>
>It does seem strange to allow sunlight into the habitable areas, but
>use artificial light for agronomy. I wonder why was this was chosen?

To avoid using 1g area for agriculture. The size of the 1g area drives the
surface area, which drives the shielding, which drives the mass
requirements, which is probably the tallest pole.

>Also, I can't see how sunlight enters the habitable area; From the
>endcaps which are parallel to the sunlight's incoming direction, with
>no mirrors?

Diffusion and/or mirrors on the interior

> With no light pipes or directed lighting, we must assume that all
>lighting in the inner low-G decks is artificial.

Yes.

>Again, with light
>pipes, sunlight can be brought in anywhere, with no moving parts.
>It'd be interesting to see a study of the relative mass and cost of
>conventional electric lighting and light pipes for different
>applications.

A detailed trade is needed for light pipes vs electric lights. Since this
is awhile in the future, you might need to assume LED electric lighting --
which is much more efficient but might not be sufficiently powerful for
agriculture.

Issues include
-- size of collecting area
-- constraints on colony pointing
-- size of the routing cables/light pipes