Difference between revisions of "Space habitats"
| Line 15: | Line 15: | ||
==Material== | ==Material== | ||
| + | [[Image:Lunar mass driver.jpg|thumb|250px|Lunar mass driver]] | ||
It would be far too expensive to built these huge structures from material brought up from the surface of the Earth, so for colonies near Earth it has been proposed to use material mined from the moon or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_object near-Earth objects] such as asteroids and comets, and transported using solar powered [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver mass-drivers]. | It would be far too expensive to built these huge structures from material brought up from the surface of the Earth, so for colonies near Earth it has been proposed to use material mined from the moon or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_object near-Earth objects] such as asteroids and comets, and transported using solar powered [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver mass-drivers]. | ||
---- | ---- | ||
| Line 21: | Line 22: | ||
See also: | See also: | ||
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_O%27Neill Gerard O'Neill] | *[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_O%27Neill Gerard O'Neill] | ||
| − | *[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder | + | *[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder O'Neill cylinder concept] |
<!-- | <!-- | ||
| Line 33: | Line 34: | ||
===Lunar orbit=== | ===Lunar orbit=== | ||
| − | In '''lunar orbit''' the moon is within easy reach but the habitat will be subject to the moons two-week long day / night cycles which might not be to everyone's taste, although of course the normal light | + | In '''lunar orbit''' the moon is within easy reach but the habitat will be subject to the moons two-week long day / night cycles which might not be to everyone's taste, although of course the normal light rhythms can be replicated internally with lighting. |
===Surface of the moon=== | ===Surface of the moon=== | ||
Revision as of 19:59, 21 February 2007
Main Page > Colonising Space > Space habitats
Space is a very harsh environment and it may be hard to imagine wanting to live in such a seemingly bleak place, but taming it is only a matter of some (admittedly fairly serious) engineering and is entirely within our current technical capability.
There are many challenges to enable building these towns and cities off-Earth. Two prominent ones are raw materials and gravity. A colony of any size will have to be self-sufficient in materials as it will not be practical to ship them up from the surface of the Earth due to the enormous energy required to climb against its pull. Escaping this pull long-term also causes major problems for the human body. Muscles get very weak, including the heart, and bones de-mineralise. The only real solution is to generate artificial gravity by rotation. (Moon-bases too)
There have been many studies over the past thirty years to understand what kind of habitats could be built and what size constraints there are. Surprisingly the answer in the 1970s was that based on bridge and ship-building techniques it is possible to build cylindrical megastructures up to 30 kilometres long and 6 kilometres in diameter with a single one able to comfortably house millions of people.
Being mega-scale engineering projects, it is not hard to see that similar techniques used in the habitat's construction could be used to make the interiors of these habitats be like beautiful places on Earth, like rolling green English countryside for example. Some designs even have enough atmosphere inside them to make the sky appear blue.
Material
It would be far too expensive to built these huge structures from material brought up from the surface of the Earth, so for colonies near Earth it has been proposed to use material mined from the moon or near-Earth objects such as asteroids and comets, and transported using solar powered mass-drivers.
<rather unfinished>
See also:
