Obtainable Ringworld around the Earth? Forum: Spacesettlers
Thread: Obtainable Ringworld around the Earth?
# 9453 bylucioc@... on Jan. 4, 2007, 1:39 p.m.
Member since 2021-10-03
On 1/3/07, Xenophile wrote:
(...)
> But could it hold itself up at 0.9 G? That's why I had the thing at
> orbital speed. But even if it is at orbital speed, why not have the
> maglev ring inside zipping around in the direction opposite the
> orbital? Then when it gets to exactly orbital speed in the opposite
> direction, the maglev ring is stopped, and you have that 0.9 G for the
> people living on it.
(...)
relatively to Earth - well, in fact it would rotate once in 24 hours
accompanying Earth, but at just, say 200Km of altitude, its speed
would be far lower than orbital. The inner ring, however, would rotate
*much faster* than orbital speed (in order to fake 1g gravity pointing
outward). Therefore it would press the outer ring outward,
counteracting the inward pressure of the outer ring weight; thus the
outer ring would not fall over Earth and the inner ring would not
centrifuge-rip itself apart. Of course the masses of the rings would
have to be precisely matched so that those effects would cancel
themselves exactly and the structure would be static around Earth.
I guess I need to draw a diagram of the forces involved to make the
idea clearer... Perhaps at night.