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Seems to me that if the rings of Saturn are the materials of a broken up moon or moons, its seems that there should be a lot of construction material in this orbital ring plane for people to build structures in which they could inhabit. The typical Stanford Torus is 1.8 km in diameter and rotates once per minute for a one Earth gravity on their insides.
Lets say we place a Stanford torus so that its aligned with Saturn's ring plane, and we further build it out of the material of Saturn's rings. Now how many Stanford torii do you think we could make out of Saturn's ring material, assuming much of it is ice, but a broken up moon is not just ice, there is probably a lot of rock in their too. In order to maximize the number of torii we can build, we need a solid stable ring structure to hold those space colonies in place and prevent them from bumbing into one another. So we have each Stanford torus within a larger ring that rotates more slowly than the 94 meters per second that each torii's spin at. The larger rings they are nested in rotate clockwise in the opposite direction to the orbital motion of Saturn's rings. The inner Saturn rings orbit faster than the outer rings, so we fashion the ring materials into rings that spin clockwise so the inner rims move faster in relation to Saturn than the outer rims of each wheel. Along the the inside of each outer wheel is a belt that moves at the same velocity as the tangential velocity of the wheel rim that is closest to Saturn. There is also another belt that moves at the tangential velocity of the wheel rim that is furthest away from Saturn, and both belts are in orbit the outer wheel is between the inner belt and outer belt, each in its own circular orbit which which completely encircles Saturn at a constant distance from the planet's center, and we pack as many Stamford torii of the same radius as we can one in each outer wheel.
So we have a Stamford torus spinning at 94 meters per second at the center of each outer wheel which spins more slowly that is between two belts each is in orbit around Saturn, and we can create more such ring structures going all the way to the innermost ring of Saturn and going as far away from Saturn as we have material to build these structures with. The relative velocity between something in circular orbit around Saturn and something orbiting a little closer is not much. To give an example:
Within the B ring 92,000 – 117,580 km at 100,000 km from Saturn's center.
I am using the calc tool
http://www.calctool.org/CALC/phys/astronomy/circ_orbit
for determining orbit velocity for those of you who wish to follow me.
Mass A 95 Earths
Mass B 10,000,000 metric tons (Stamford Torus)
Distance 100,000,000 m
Relative Speed for Saturn: 19,459.3 meters per second
Orbital Period: 8.96912 hours
Since each stanford torus is 1.8 km in diameter, we'll space them out by 2 km each, that means the next orbit inside will be 2000 meters closer to Saturn and we have this:
Mass A 95 Earths
Mass B 10,000,000 metric tons (Stamford Torus)
Distance 99,998,000 m
Relative Speed for Saturn: 19,459.5 meters per second
Orbital Period: 8.96885 hours
A difference of 0.2 meters per second So lets say each outer ring is 2 km in diameter, or about 100 meters outside each Stanford torus radius, each stanford torus rotates at a different rate inside the 2 km diameter outer ring which at 2 km radius rotates once every 8.72665 hours. As you can see this is slow compared to the rotation of a stanford torus, which is 1 minute for a complete rotation. Lets go outside the initial orbit and see what happens:
Mass A 95 Earths
Mass B 10,000,000 metric tons (Stamford Torus)
Distance 100,002,000 m
Relative Speed for Saturn: 19,459.1 meters per second
Orbital Period: 8.96939 hours
Again we have a difference of 0.2 meters per second we have the same outer wheel rotation rate of 8.72665 hours.
Lets now try the C-ring we'll assume a orbital radius of 80,000 km.
Mass A 95 Earths
Mass B 10,000,000 metric tons (Stamford Torus)
Distance 80,000,000 m
Relative Speed for Saturn: 21,756.2 meters per second
Orbital Period: 6.41778 hours
Now lets go 2 km closer:
Mass A 95 Earths
Mass B 10,000,000 metric tons (Stamford Torus)
Distance 79,998,000 m
Relative Speed for Saturn: 21,756.4 meters per second
Orbital Period: 6.41754 hours
Again a difference of 0.2 meters per second, Lets go closer to the D-Ring, in this case at 70,000 km:
Mass A 95 Earths
Mass B 10,000,000 metric tons (Stamford Torus)
Distance 70,000,000 m
Relative Speed for Saturn: 23,258.3 meters per second
Orbital Period: 5.25287 hours
and we'll go 2 km closer:
Mass A 95 Earths
Mass B 10,000,000 metric tons (Stamford Torus)
Distance 69,998,000 m
Relative Speed for Saturn: 23,258.7 meters per second
Orbital Period: 5.25265 hours
Now we have a difference of 4 meters per second which means the outer wheel would rotate once every 4.36332 hours So the outer wheels rotate faster the closer one gets to Saturn and more slowly the further one goes from Saturn. These relative velocities are slow enough that we can have direct contact between the outer wheels and belts, they really rotate very slowly. As for the Stanford torii, they rotate once per minute at 94 meters per second at about that same amount relative to the outer wheels. It is an interesting exercise to determine how many Stanford Torii we could fit within the area of Saturn's rings. Let me start with just 1 ring of torii, assume each torii center is 2 km from the one behind and ahead in its orbital ring at 100,000 km how many torii is that? I calculate 314,160 Stanford torii can fit within that belt ring alone! Each Stanford Torus can house 10,000 people, so we have living space for 3,141,600,000 people, or a little under half the population of the Earth!
What do you think of this idea?
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Not sure whether this falls under the category of terraforming, but it could be a start for terraforming Saturn, all this industrial activity in Saturn's rings could support it. Remember a tokamak fusion reactor is essentially a ring. Now we could build very large tokamak fusion reactors in tubes circling Saturn, this could power a source of artificial illumination for the clouds of Saturn. In the long run a floating planetary shell could be built by automation around Saturn. My guess it would be easier to build the fusion reactors and artificial light sources that to built the giant mirrors that would be required to concentrate natural sunlight on Saturn to make it habitable. Terraforming proceeds in stages, and just like at Venus, it starts in space.
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cryogenic temperatures water ice is pretty good ( indeed excellent ) bulk construction material, BUT ... dare NOT to touch the rings of Saturn!!! I believe they as they are have much-much higher economic value ( as decoration, landscape and tourist destination ), then as mining site for construction materials , given the enormous plenty we have around ( centaurs, kbos, tnos ) of the same stuff...
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They'd still be rings if inhabited, they'd be solid rings instead of rings made up of particles. The rings are a broken up moon, 100 million years ago, the ring might not have been there, in another 100 million years those rings might be gone. A terraformed Saturn would be prettier. The rings are a possible resource for inhabiting Saturn in the near term as well. Imagine you have floating balloon habitats Saturn's atmosphere. A lot of the materials for construction can be obtained from the atmosphere, but much of it cannot. Unlike Venus, we can't dredge the surface of Saturn for minerals, instead we have to mine the sky, and fo Saturn the closest resource for mining are the rings. Energy wise it is easier to mine the rings than Saturns intact moons.
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What? The delta-V requirements aren't much for the moons. Though, being differentiated may be a disadvantage, rather than an advantage.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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With Saturn's rings, you got the whole of whatever moon was broken up all the way down to its rocky core. Most intact Saturnian moons are covered with ice because ice is less dense than rock. If you want to build something in Saturn's atmosphere, you will probably need some other stuff beside's plastic, and the only way to get rocky minerals is to mine them from space, the closest place to mine it from are Saturn's rings.
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They'd still be rings if inhabited, they'd be solid rings instead of rings made up of particles. The rings are a broken up moon, 100 million years ago, the ring might not have been there, in another 100 million years those rings might be gone. A terraformed Saturn would be prettier. The rings are a possible resource for inhabiting Saturn in the near term as well. Imagine you have floating balloon habitats Saturn's atmosphere. A lot of the materials for construction can be obtained from the atmosphere, but much of it cannot. Unlike Venus, we can't dredge the surface of Saturn for minerals, instead we have to mine the sky, and fo Saturn the closest resource for mining are the rings. Energy wise it is easier to mine the rings than Saturns intact moons.
Solid? Dynamical problems?
Age :: The latest findings hint that the rings are there since formation. ( http://www.indiatimes.com/technology/sc … 20880.html )
Prettier :: of course! but still the trillions of inhabitants of terraformed Saturn most probably will prefer ( vote and/or pay for ) to keep the rings intact is my guess. ( The same way oceanic nations prefer their coral reefs intact ).
Sky ( atmospheric ) mining indeed may and shall go deeper and deeper - mining for energy and materials, down to the diamond icebergs...
Moons - better for mining, because they are higher and yield more energy.
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Much of the rings are made of ice, shine Earth level daylight on Saturn and much of the shiny material the rings are made of will evaporate anyway. Besides, we can always make rings around Jupiter by breaking up one of its small moons. I'm just saying of all the places to inhabit, the easiest place would be inside the rings, as the ring particles shield from radiation. charged particles which collect in Saturn's magnetic field are swept clean in the vicinity of the rings by their colliding with the ring particles. The radiation belts are further out than the rings, but the rings themselves are one location where it would be safe to build free floating space colonies. Much of the material we would construct them out of is already their, we just need to process the ring material rather than having to go to the intermediate step of setting up a moon base to mine the material we'd build our colonies out of. Besides, if we build a Stanford torus out of ring material, you'd hardly notice the difference, as the rings contain way more material that we'd need, as we're doing this, we can always mine more material from the nearby moons to replenish the rings if you like. The rings are just low hanging fruit, we could set up a colony there as soon as we're capable of sending people to Saturn, its something we can do before we are ready to set up floating colonies in Saturn's atmosphere.
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