Build Your Own

JoshNH4H · 2018-11-15 00:44:11

Let me give you all a scenario:

You're riding through the asteroid belt on your rickety skiff with a cargo of self-replicating settlement seeds when you spot* a fast-rotating (2-5 hrs), largish asteroid (100s-1000s of meters diameter?). The asteroid has everything you'd want: metals, volatiles, carbon, and oxides. You've struck gold! But more importantly its rapid rotation means it's the perfect place to build a momentum exchange tether that will give access to and from both the inner and outer solar system.

Your self-replicating machines build a long tether, the end of which has a centripetal gravity of 2/3 of a G (7 m/s^2). This is where you're going to build your town. You might expect a few hundred to a few thousand people to live there at first.

You have millions of tonnes of material to work with and no limit to your manufacturing capacity. What do you build?

Do you build a sun-drenched, Mediterranean-style town on an island surrounded by water? Do you build a little English village? Do you build an American suburb? A desert oasis? A town of treehouses like the ones the Ewoks from Star Wars live in? Do you build a little waterworld where people float around on boats?

What I've laid out here is just a platform. Feel free to make changes as convenient! I want to see what you all come up with. I'm going to be thinking about it myself and write a post when I'm happy with what I've come up with.

*Yeah, I know you can do this from a hundred million kilometers away with a single telescope, suspend your disbelief please.

JoshNH4H · 2018-11-16 00:16:05

OK, here's mine:

The habitable volume is circular in shape, and covered in a clear dome. The circle is 2 km across and the surface is mostly freshwater, but shallow, perhaps 10-30 m thick on average. Perhaps 20% of the area is composed of islands, which are rocky and very steep (taller than they are wide). People live in cottages made from rock and brick and canvas perched upon outcroppings of rock, as well as smaller boats which moor to the islands or travel around from one to another, or float on the water. People can travel up and down the islands either by hiking/climbing or by taking little gondola trams. To get between islands you can either take a boat or a zipline, or swim I suppose. The climate is mild, averaging 20 C, with low wind.

Mirrors reflect sunlight into the habitation, with a lengthy sunset and a 30 hour day/night cycle. Access to the vacuum outside is via ports which stick up like little islands from the water.

There's some fish in the water and small mammals living on the islands. No birds, though. I hate birds

Much of what people eat is fish coming from the water. There's also some farm-barges where food is grown, which typically dock around the edge of the habitable volume.

I'm a bit torn on what to call this: It feels too big to be a "Space station", and a "Settlement" or "colony" is too broad. It's not a "Ship" because it's not going anywhere.

clark · 2018-12-04 22:16:01

i choose madness.

reduce material into energy and blast off into interstellar.

I journey to what I cannot reach. I seek what may not be sought.

SpaceNut · 2018-12-05 09:55:19

Where's my warp driving when I need it...

Oh well I will settle for my old chevrolet, rust and smoke, the heaters broke and the door just flew away....

tahanson43206 · 2020-12-28 11:20:06

For SpaceNut re topic

In searching through the index, I found this topic created by JoshNH4H.

It fit with the concept I'm advocating in your Internal Combustion engine topic.

JoshNH4H led off with a somewhat advanced concept, and it quickly branched to warp drive ....

In the context of the near future of settlers ON Mars itself, the concept of "build your own" is relevant.

I'd like to see settlers on their way to Mars equipped with a Handbook for Life on Mars (in electronic form).

This forum has already accumulated a lot of the wisdom that would be stored in that Handbook, but it is scattered over 20+ years of posts that are not indexed and which are difficult to follow from the top because it is the nature of forums like this to stimulate creative thinking.

It is just exactly that kind of creative thinking that inspired JoshHH4H in the first place, soon followed by clark and SpaceNut.

A Handbook for Life on Mars would be the result of such creative thinking, but it would be organized so that information needed is only entered once, and it is easy to find, and find again, and again, because human memory is so fragile.

I'd like to see the principles RobertDyck has established for his Large Ship stored in that Handbook, and wrapped in a solid block of diamond, never to be disturbed.

The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (if it still exists) would be an appendix in such a Handbook.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2020-12-28 15:06:29

The issue is that the dream location is not so dreamy as it requires nuclear energy to create the power to do more with nothing but raw insitu materials which will need to be reduced and refined so that the self replicators can build the kingdom of JoshNH a fictions realm that does not exist...
The wiki pages are for creating a handbook of knowledge from the think tank of NewMars talent.
As the reporting can be 1 person consolidating just the one thought from concepts through to a full informational page.
Topics no matter what we envision them to be will not make for singular concepts or full designs there in.

tahanson43206 · 2020-12-28 18:16:34

For SpaceNut re #6

Thanks for this encouraging post!

The wiki pages are for creating a handbook of knowledge from the think tank of NewMars talent.
As the reporting can be 1 person consolidating just the one thought from concepts through to a full informational page.

By any chance, are you in a position to make an update in the Mars Wiki?

I'm set up as an editor in the Main Wikipedia platform, but so far I've contented myself with the most minimal possible changes, trying to learn the procedures.

The Mars Wiki may be completed (or very) different.

(th)

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#1 2018-11-15 00:44:11

Build Your Own

#2 2018-11-16 00:16:05

Re: Build Your Own

#3 2018-12-04 22:16:01

Re: Build Your Own

#4 2018-12-05 09:55:19

Re: Build Your Own

#5 2020-12-28 11:20:06

Re: Build Your Own

#6 2020-12-28 15:06:29

Re: Build Your Own

#7 2020-12-28 18:16:34

Re: Build Your Own

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