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#1 2012-08-31 10:33:01

dunwich
Member
From: dunwich
Registered: 2008-02-18
Posts: 30

orbital mirrors

In kim stanley robinson's mars trilogy One of the terraforming techniques that they use is a giant lens that carves out a massive cannal between the Northern basin end the hellas basin. Something I always found a bid sketchy nut for fun I've compared the numbres with something from zubrins works:

Zubrin says that by building a 125 km mirror with a mass of 200 000 tons could provide a 5°kelvin temprature rise for anything below 70° this is 20/180's (11%) of the martian surface a total area of 1,59E13m² (greater then the European continent)

But if you can double the temprature by halfening the surface area (a 10° rise for 7.96E12m²) you can actually get a 1280° rise by lowering your focus point to 6.22E10m² (the size of lake huron) or 40 960°K by 1.9E9m² If the reasoning fits then carving a canal wouldn't be all that impossible.


People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.

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#2 2012-11-08 10:57:57

RGClark
Member
From: Philadelphia, PA
Registered: 2006-07-05
Posts: 695
Website

Re: orbital mirrors

dunwich wrote:

In kim stanley robinson's mars trilogy One of the terraforming techniques that they use is a giant lens that carves out a massive cannal between the Northern basin end the hellas basin. Something I always found a bid sketchy nut for fun I've compared the numbres with something from zubrins works:

Zubrin says that by building a 125 km mirror with a mass of 200 000 tons could provide a 5°kelvin temprature rise for anything below 70° this is 20/180's (11%) of the martian surface a total area of 1,59E13m² (greater then the European continent)

But if you can double the temprature by halfening the surface area (a 10° rise for 7.96E12m²) you can actually get a 1280° rise by lowering your focus point to 6.22E10m² (the size of lake huron) or 40 960°K by 1.9E9m² If the reasoning fits then carving a canal wouldn't be all that impossible.

Heck, with a mirror that big we can find out what people are having for dinner on that planet around Alpha Centauri.


    Bob Clark


Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):

      “Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”

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