Cities in space - Singles or clusters?

Mike,

Given time I can see that such a structure could be built and could even be
maintained. But I just sent a reply to Robert asking why you would want such
a thing, it seems to me that all you are doing is sprawling your habitats
out in a way that doesnt make a lot of sense or at lest it seems to me that
you would be better off doing things in a more compact way.

I think that the idea of telescoping joints would need joints that expanded
a lot, a real lot.

An orbit that was not around the Earth might be better, I will have to think
about this more.

Darren

From: "Combs, Mike"
Reply-To:
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:18:00 -0500
To:
Conversation: [spacesettlers] Re: Cities in space - Singles or clusters?
Subject: RE: [spacesettlers] Re: Cities in space - Singles or clusters?

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
] On Behalf Of Darren

> Mike,
>
> This would also be true of an arc, if it was large enough,
> I wonder just how much stress this would put on a structure.

I suppose telescoping joints at some points would be called for.

You were talking about the slight irregularities in the Earth's
gravitational field. So the kind of structure we're talking about might
be more practical in its own independent solar orbit than in an Earth
orbit, although I'll have to admit that while my story talked about the
former, in the past I've thought about both.

> At certain parts in its orbit one part of the structure is going to be
pulled and try to speed up, other parts are going
> to try to slow down, the change in speed is going to mean some parts
will want to move into a higher orbit and others a
> lower orbit, in essence it would be like some giant stretching it to
make it longer and at the same time bending one end
> up and the other end down. Alas my maths is not up to calculating the
forces without a pile of reference books that I do
> not have with my right now.

I'm a math lightweight, but my notion of it is that (sans telescoping
joints to compensate), the structure would come under tensile load
approaching perigee and come under compressive load (possibly buckling)
approaching apogee.

Regards,

Mike Combs