Super-habitats

On 07/09/06, Darren wrote:
> Now before I go on I want to say something about the size of the habitat
> that Ive been talking about. The Ring is a cylinder 5,000 Km in diameter
> and 15,000 Km long, these number are kind of arbitrary, the 5,000 Km came
> from an Analog article about a large space structure, discussions I seen and
> things Ive read talk about problems with stability in long cylinders, short
> squat cylinders are supposed to be more stable, the magic ratio talked about
> was 3:1, so 5 x 3 = 15, the numbers are not exactly random but they are not
> special, just large.

That diameter probably isn't practical.

The issue is the rim speed is almost 5km/s. I think that that is
practically unbuildable unless you build the whole habitat out of
carbon nanotubes; even if you add spokes and such like. Carbon
nanotubes of that type are currently not practical and may not ever
be. (Although we can hope.)

If you don't use CNTs, then most of the mass of the habitat would be
in the spoke region and not in the living area, massively pushing up
the costs. To give you some idea, we're probably talking orders of
magnitude more stuff in the spokes than at the rim.

--
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."
For your own security, the Department of Homeland Security is watching you.