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Inspired by notions about thawing icy worlds inhere :: http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7333
If we use the taxonomy of Paul Birch's :
'toposphere' is an over-the-'underbody'-structure which gives surface gravity / acceleration / - be it tension one in rotating centrifugal habitats or static or kinetic one utilizing natural gravity wells.
'lithosphere' - includes the hydrosphere, too - and comprises the 'land' and 'water' of the habitat. Indeed it is THE habitat, because for humans habitat = walkable surface with gravity of 1-ish Gee under 1-ish Bar of breathable air. Water bodies interrupting the land are necessary for multiple reasons - irrigation, water source, leasure, aesthetic, transport... BUT per se, technically speaking water surface is NOT a human habitat - boat is, raft is, island is ... but NOT the water itself...
'atmosphere' - it is clear = the air blanket over the litho(hydro)sphere. For keeping it in place even in most cases it is not necessary to deploy a solid-state matter roofing ( paraterraforming ) - it is enough to install two cold traps : ONE at the top of the troposphere and SECOND at the base of the exosphere. Which is quite easily achievable by good old Optics.
'luminosphere' - the system providing light towards the habitable land/water down ( or up ).
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In case of a world - planemo which to be used as 'topospheric' 'underbody' - with too high proportion of ices which would thaw and form a global ocean, the correct 'lithospheric foundation construction' method would be instead of thick solid 'rocks' on top of less dense ices to be used less dense then water materials, but possessing comparable, or higher compression strength - similar to normal rocks or better.
The same way the Earth ocean floor solid rocks and continental cratons FLOAT over the more thermally plasticized denser mantle material, or a raft floats on lake, or kinetic toposphere hovers the habitat by 'inertial levitation' over the inhospitable surface or 'surface' of a unterraformable natural underbody as gas giant, brown dwarf, star or ... neutron star or blackhole ... :
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The ice-tops could be: woodlike meta-materials, foamed or fractally highly dendritic silica/alumina/carbon, bubbly coral-like or resin or plastic-like organic materials or combination of all ...
... all of them could be produced by SRA ( self-replicating automata ), or even GMO 'bio-robots' like bigger versions of the monocellular maths colonies on Earth 1b+ yrs ago.
The ices of the icy worlds are , as I noted , all dirty. The organics/rocks etc. are either close or at the surface or if body big enough to be gravitationally differentiated - under an internal liquid ocean. No matter how deep the 'dirt' is - it is accessible by 'roots'.
Visualize , say, Calisto encapsulated in a woody-corally bark - miles thick. On top of it more usual stuff - seas, lakes, rivers, fjords, ... soil, stones, sand, dirt, mud, ...
The atmosphere with embedded aerostatically several layers of Optic machinery administering electromagnetic radiation in such a way so to maintain paradisicle / heavenly / conditions onto the land and water and also providing other 'services' ( per instance global and interplanetary Li-Fi coverage, refrigeration of molecules to be kept into the troposphere and of ions to not leave the exobase, magnetic-plasmoid 4D effects , ultra high-resolution telescopy, global laser defense, momentum exchange for transport ... ... ... etc. etc. - you name it ).
The planemo 'luminosphere' shall be aided by orbital or rather statite Soletae swarms - to cover deficiency and/or to deflect excess of natural fusor / star light.
The whole system of add-ons = life-like and adaptive, thus you could have, say, :: ... tectonics, exchange between the surface and the deeps, pseudo-tidal and hydrological currents ... all what a natural habitable world has PLUS much extra.
Quite small seed-drone could deliver the SRAs which :: to grow the bark, let the roots melt down right through the icy crust, to fume-out the aerostatic optics of the lower luminosphere ... so in few decades the planemo to be ready for colonization.
There are OFICIALLY recognized estimates for MILLIONS of planemos per fusor. IAU admits thousands and thousands of 'dwarf planets' in KB alone ...
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