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#1 2016-06-28 10:01:52

Tom Kalbfus
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What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Found this article on the NSS website:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/physicstoday.htm
PhysicsTodayFig1a.gif
PhysicsTodayFig1b.gif
I redid table 1 including my own dates that are just as remote in the future as the original ones were in 1972.
possible_stages_in_the_development_of_a_space_solo_by_tomkalbfus-da8307c.png
What do you think, is it closer today than it was then? Perhaps with things like robotics and automation such a space development would be more possible.

In the long run, space-colony construction is ideally suited to automation. A colony's structure consists mainly of cables, fittings and window panels of standard modular form in a pattern repeated thousands of times. The assembly takes place in a zerogravity environment free of the vagaries of weather. By the time that the colonies are evolving to low population density, therefore, I suspect that very few people will be involved in their construction. Most of the workforce will probably be occupied in architecture, landscaping, forestry, zoological planning, botany and other activities that are nonrepetitive and require a sense of art and beauty.

What did O'Neill get right and what did he get wrong? Perhaps we're waiting on automation. 2032 is 16 years from now, what do you think the status of automation would be then? Would we have self-driving cars? How about SpaceX reusing its rockets? The Space Shuttle was just plans on paper, by the time this 1974 article was written, as envisioned it was to be a reusable "airplane" to outer space. Maybe SpaceX would have better luck with that. to get 10,000 people into orbit by 2032, when would we have to start? I'm thinking maybe 2028 perhaps, that is 14 years from now! We would have to have some amazing and disrupting technological innovations between then and now to make this a reality. Computer advancement can proceed rapidly after all, it has done so in the past. What jobs would be left for humans if it does? Would these space colonies end up as vacation resorts?

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-06-28 10:12:54)

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#2 2016-06-28 13:55:57

GW Johnson
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

I went and looked at the original O'Neill article.  O'Neill was a physicist,  not an engineer.  One needs to understand the difference to judge the claims.  Few do. 

Well,  I would never (!!) use 75% of yield as an operating stress for something in which people live,  in a lethal environment.  My usual choice,  if left to me,  is an operating tensile stress that is the lesser of factor 4 below ultimate and factor 2.5 below yield.  There's over 2 centuries experience down here behind that.  It alone raises considerably the mass of the space colony.  By about factor 2. 

But let O'Neill's 75% of yield ride.  He assumes mostly materials made from lunar material,  leaving something like 10,000 tons to be launched from Earth,  for his model 1 colony (the smallest one).  At today's launch prices to LEO,  which are around $6M per ton delivered,  you're talking about a $60B project,  just on direct launch costs.  Plus whatever it would take to put materials manufacturing capabilities on the moon or in L-5.  It actually costs (today) way more than twice that to escape the Earth and go to L-5,  but lets not quibble about that. 

This is inherently an experimental project.  You'll be quite lucky to have direct launch costs be as much as 20% of total program cost.  Especially if "big space" does it using the "usual methods".  For one thing,  I have grave doubts about mounting clear panels in a cable-supported assembly,  and actually getting the panels not to break upon spin-up,  much less actually seal gas pressure within. 

But,  let's assume 20% launch cost of total program cost is true,  just for argument.  That puts it,  at the very least (!!),  $300 B to build the minimum design,  and quite likely 4 or 5 times that,  just from the direct launch-to-escape effect.  Not to mention putting manufacturing capability on the moon or in L-5.  Or the experimental effects.  Factor 10 to 30 higher cost is actually more likely. 

This is starting to make the "90 day report" and "design reference mission" to Mars look cheap at twice the $0.5 T price quoted to congress by "big space".  So it will not happen.  Not as something government-funded,  to be sure. 

I don't think we're technologically ready to attempt doing this yet.  Nor are we motivated properly to take on all the problems,  and they are enormous.  Not until we have a commercial reason to go.  And some visionary commercial concerns to do it. 

I don't know about you,  but I don't like funding "government-tit-sucking" programs for "big space" as we have known it in recent decades.  The most likely outcome,  if we tried,  is multiple $T's spent,  and no colony to show for it.  That's been their recent history. 

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-06-28 14:05:58)


GW Johnson
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"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#3 2016-06-28 15:38:49

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Who said anything about the government doing it? Obviously O'Neill's projections were a bit optimistic about our being able to accomplish these things. What About mine at the bottom?
possible_stages_in_the_development_of_a_space_solo_by_tomkalbfus-da8307c.png
I've adjusted the dates basically too the dates from the top, subtracted 1972 and added 2016 to them. Are we closer to building these colonies now than in 1972? 2032 is the date I listed for construction of a model 1 colony with 10,000 people, about equivalent to a Bernal Sphere. We have this newly discovered Moon/Asteroid, which is about the right mass for building one of these. We don't need a base on the Moon. We probably need some manufacturing in space in the vicinity of the asteroid. See Earth has captured a second moon, says NASA.
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7449
O'Neill originally planned on building it out of lunar material, and having a mass driver to fling it off the Moon's surface, but here is an asteroid ready to be worked on. Much of the work in getting it there is already done. What would we need to bring to that asteroid to convert it to the equivalent of a Model 1 Space colony.

The 90-day report only talks about sending a few astronauts to Mars, not 10,000 people to a habitat in space! I'd say O'Neill's vision has more ambitious goals that the 90-day report. With 10,000 people in space, you can do a lot more. A Bernal Sphere would be large enough to be the habitat sphere for a manned mission to Saturn!

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#4 2016-06-28 15:49:31

GW Johnson
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

No one touting using asteroid mass as a source of materials has ever shown a way to convert those minerals into real engineering materials that have both tensile strength and resilience. 

GW


GW Johnson
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"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#5 2016-06-28 17:02:14

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

GW Johnson wrote:

No one touting using asteroid mass as a source of materials has ever shown a way to convert those minerals into real engineering materials that have both tensile strength and resilience. 

GW

Has anyone tried? Nope! How do you know something can't be done until its tried? You assume that because no one has tried it, it can't be done? Are the materials of asteroids any different than the materials found on Earth? Are their any new elements in the asteroids that are not found on Earth? The reason no one has tried, is that all the missions up to now have been scientific, and no one was looking for a way to build stuff in space. Scientists would rather just write their journals and say, "Oh this is fascinating!" and be awarded a Nobel prize, and that would be the end of it, as they went on to something else. Sometimes scientists are disconnected from the real world, they don't know why they are doing it other than to write a paper in a journal and pat themselves on the back for good science. Scientists want to know how this asteroid formed, what it tells about the early solar system and what conditions are like, but they never get to the subject of commercial applications or what it could be used for! That has got to change, we need some prospecting! We need some more experimentation rather than just observation! We need to experiment on how to do things how to process materials, and not let the fact that we haven't prevent us from doing so!

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#6 2016-06-28 19:30:40

GW Johnson
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

"You assume that because no one has tried it, it can't be done?"  I never said that,  YOU did. 

"Are the materials of asteroids any different than the materials found on Earth?"  yes and no.  The materials there have counterparts or exact equivalents here,  but none of those as they exist out there are useful to us.  The iron oxides and bauxites from which we create iron and aluminum are missing.  The atoms might be there,  but not in a form we know how to use.  Maybe that could change in the future,  but not quickly.  It takes time to learn how.

"The reason no one has tried, is that all the missions up to now have been scientific, and no one was looking for a way to build stuff in space."  All science missions?  That's unmitigated bullshit,  Tom. 

Apollo launched 10 manned missions.  9 of those were engineering checkout missions.  One (the last one) had a geologist on board,  and sort-of qualified as a science mission.  100% of the Mercury and Gemini flights were engineering checkout missions.  No appreciable science at all. 

We have tried melting rocky minerals to make fibers down here.  None have ever really proved useful.  What we already do with iron,  aluminum,  titanium,  glass,  and plastic serves us better. 

The asteroid mining outfits want to extract volatiles like water,  CO2,  and CO from asteroids,  based on what I read about their plans.  Those folks,  who know more about it than I do,  are interested in the volatiles,  not the rocky minerals.  The problem to date is that the best science we have,  says the small ones are dry of volatiles.  The bigger ones are out in the main asteroid belt,  plus a small percentage of the NEO's in orbits as hard to reach as Mars.

The rocky minerals resemble nothing so much as granites and basalts.  We have plenty of that down here.  There's no point flying way out there to get more of what we already have down here.  We can't do much with them except use them as masonry items and rock wool insulation,  anyway.  And they have near-zero tensile strength.  Useless to build pressure shells. 

But volatiles can be used to make rocket propellants,  without having to ship them up from Earth.  There really is an advantage to that. 

The only thing you said that I agree with is that we need to get out there and do some prospecting.  And some experimenting. 

GW


GW Johnson
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"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#7 2016-06-28 20:39:59

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

You could always heat the rocks to high temperatures using concentrated sunlight to break their chemical bonds.

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#8 2016-06-28 22:23:01

RobertDyck
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Your drawing of a cross-section shows "Mountain profile". Why? Here on Earth the crust is moved and squeezed and stretched, resulting in rough textures to the crust. It's not required, it's just a natural result of tectonic activity. Why would you want to install huge mass of rock just to create artificial mountains? Those who live in mountainous states may have gotten used to it, but I live in a plain. In fact Winnipeg is built on the bottom of an ancient dried-up glacial lake: Lake Agissiz. It's one of the flattest places on Earth. I don't have a problem with flat ground. If you're going to build-up the interior of a space colony, do so for a reason. Is this a raised floor with a story beneath? Green grass and trees and flowers and food crops above, and factories beneath? That would make sense. 250 metre thick solid rock would not.

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#9 2016-06-28 22:32:11

RobertDyck
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

GW Johnson wrote:

We have tried melting rocky minerals to make fibers down here.  None have ever really proved useful.

Roxul - Origin & Properties

Stone wool (or mineral wool) was discovered on the islands of Hawaii at the beginning of the century. It occurs there naturally as a byproduct of volcanic activity. In its manufactured state, stone wool combines the power of rock with the characteristics of typical insulation wool. And, thanks to its non-directional fiber orientation, it also exhibits some unique and valuable characteristics.
   
Sound-Absorbent

  • Unique non-directional structure of ROXUL stone wool insulation content is denser than traditional insulations

  • Effectively reduces airflow and sound transmissions

  • Higher air flow resistivity means better sound attenuation

Sound Absorption

  • Non-directional fiber of ROXUL stone wool helps absorb acoustic waves and can reduce the intensity and propagation of noise

Fire Resistant

  • ROXUL stone wool can withstand temperatures up to 2150º F (1177º C);consequently it does not contribute either to the development and spread of fire or the release of toxic gases

Water Repellent

  • Water repellent yet vapour permeable

  • R-value unaffected by moisture

  • Completely resistant to rot, mildew, mould and bacterial growth- contributing to a safer indoor environment

Dimensional stability

  • Retains its characteristics over time

  • Minimal changes in size and performance are evident with changes in temperature and humidity

ROXUL COMFORTBATT® - same thermal insulation as fibreglass, but completely non-flammable

They have a few more products, but this is the one I think is interesting.

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#10 2016-06-29 06:06:23

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

RobertDyck wrote:

Your drawing of a cross-section shows "Mountain profile". Why? Here on Earth the crust is moved and squeezed and stretched, resulting in rough textures to the crust. It's not required, it's just a natural result of tectonic activity. Why would you want to install huge mass of rock just to create artificial mountains? Those who live in mountainous states may have gotten used to it, but I live in a plain. In fact Winnipeg is built on the bottom of an ancient dried-up glacial lake: Lake Agissiz. It's one of the flattest places on Earth. I don't have a problem with flat ground. If you're going to build-up the interior of a space colony, do so for a reason. Is this a raised floor with a story beneath? Green grass and trees and flowers and food crops above, and factories beneath? That would make sense. 250 metre thick solid rock would not.

I didn't make that Illustration, it came from the NSS website, just click on the link I provided, you'll find it.
Here it is again:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/physicstoday.htm
As for what I'd do, the whole idea of this space colony is to provide a "natural landscape" in space, the Mountain profile is part of that. as for what's inside, I would suggest storage, it would be a great place to store water for instance, a reservoir of water, to provide water pressure for all the homes and buildings in the valleys, this is so when they turn on their water faucets a steady stream of water comes out. So that's what I put there, water, those mountain profiles would make great water towers. They'd make great water collection areas too, some fans could draw in some air, wring the water out of it, water would condense on the mountain surfaces, also when the air is pushed up, it would rain there a lot, and various crags would collect water in tanks, the tops of which would be lakes, excess water would tumble over the sides to form waterfalls and streams. Make nice natural landscapes, people can climb them and go hiking. There would be plants and trees growing on the sides. It is only 8000 feet up, probably equivalent to 4000 feet up on Earth, as the gravity diminishes proportional to distance from the center, there wouldn't be glaciers there of course. The mirrors would reflect Sun there for part of the day.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-06-29 06:13:24)

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#11 2016-06-29 09:35:09

GW Johnson
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Yep,  here is where I meant to put my post about design stresses. 

I like the idea of an O'Neill habitat.  I don't like the working stress numbers he used to size his ideas long ago.  Here's why (repeat of item mis-posted in another thread):

When I look in data references like Mil Handbook 5,  I simply do not find properties for  “1920’s steels” as high as O’Neill used in his calculations.  The structural steels really haven’t changed much in over a century,  anyway,  other than some really tough new alloys for high-temperature service in jet engines. 

For low-carbon steels like an AISI 1025, you have ultimate tensile strength near 80 to 100 kilo-psi (ksi),  and yield near 36 ksi.  These have quite a lot of strain at failure,  so the stress-strain curve integral (“resilience”) is high.  They will deform quite a ways before they break,  absorbing quite a bit of energy.  They usually do not heat treat very well,  if at all.  About 700-800 F is the max temperature exposure allowable,  and strengths are rather low (around factor 5 to 10 reduction) when that hot.  Density is 0.283 lb/cu.in (pci), compare that to water at .0361 pci.  Strength/weight is measured by ultimate tensile strength divided by density:  80 to 100 kilo-psi/pci = 283 to 353 kilo-inches.

High carbon steels like a tool steel can have ultimate strengths near 200 ksi,  with a yield well over 80 ksi,  but they have very low strain at failure,  which is inherently a low resilience.  These give little warning and just suddenly shatter-crack in a brittle fashion,  like a piece of glass.  These are the heat-treatable alloys.  Not heat-treated,  their properties look like the low carbon steels.  (You get the high strengths by heat treat.)  You pay for such strength with loss of resilience.  These are also limited to around 700-800 F exposure,  or you lose your heat treat and your strength.  Density 0.280 pci is typical.  Strength/weight is near 700 kilo-inches.

The 300-series stainless steels are usually around 90 ksi ultimate,  30 ksi yield.  They are not heat treatable,  but they are cold-workable to higher strengths.  Usually they are produced in the annealed (not cold-worked) condition.  Resilience is quite good in the annealed condition,  far lower when cold-worked stronger.  Temperature exposures allowable are generally up to 1200 F with crudely half he annealed strength,  knowing it will be fully annealed after even a modest temperature exposure.  Some alloys (310 and 316) can go even hotter (near 1600-1800 F) without severe corrosion and scaling.  Density near .289-.290 pci is typical.  Strength/weight ~ 310 kilo-inches.  The advantage here is higher temperature exposure for about the same strength to weight at room temperature as the low carbon steels.  Strength to weight hot is better than any carbon steel hot. 

The titaniums are no better in strength than the high carbon steels,  and cannot be worked-to-shape the way most steels can.  Titanium has very poor resilience.  It goes no hotter than carbon steel does.  Its only advantage is about half the density of the steels.  Density  from 0.161 to 0.175 pci is typical.  Strength/weight is its sole advantage at ~ 1170 kilo-inches.  The two beta-phase titanium alloys that actually can be worked-to-shape unfortunately age at room temperature over time,  which means their crystalline structure gets coarse,  they lose all their strength,  and they spontaneously crack. The alpha-phase alloys cannot be worked-to-shape,  you have to “carve” your parts out of solid blocks. 

Plain pure aluminum is really soft and crummy:  around 13 ksi tensile strength at best.  You have to alloy it properly with copper to create the alloy “duralumin”,  in order to get useful properties.  Some of these are heat treatable,  some are not.  Aircraft-type heat-treated alloys might have as much as 60-68 ksi tensile strength.  They’re all irreversibly “soft butter” at about 300 F,  and a white-hot molten puddle at 900 F.  Density from .098 to .100 pci is typical.  Strength/weight 680 kilo-inches explains its widespread use in aircraft structures that do not get hot:  just like high-carbon steel,  but much lighter.  You cannot use it where things get hot,  like engine mounts,  or for skins flying at or above just about Mach 2 through cold stratospheric air (air friction boundary layer recovery temperatures near 200-240 F).   

Your working stress has to be well below the theoretical material strength because you need factors of safety to cover the things you do not know,  or the risks you cannot quantify.  These factors are entirely experience-based.  Take for example a high-carbon steel at 200 ksi ultimate with about a heat-treated yield of 100 ksi.  Use my industrial equipment design preferences.  Factor 4 below ultimate is 50 ksi.  Factor 2.5 below yield is 40 ksi.  The lesser is 40 ksi,  and that’s my design stress level,  not O’Neill’s 100+ ksi. 

And,  I would only go that high if there were no cyclic loads (a fatigue risk),  and no heat exposures (direct strength reduction plus a creep failure risk).  Both of those limit and reduce the working stress allowable in your design,  sometimes rather sharply. 

For example,  I might allow a working hoop stress in a 304 stainless steel pipe to be 12 ksi at room temperature.  That’s yield-limited with my industrial factors from 75 ksi ultimate and 30 ksi yield.  Hot (1200 F),  it is creep-limited to about 10 ksi.  But,  hot  (1200 F),  it is yield-limited to only 6 ksi,  because of the strength reductions with temperature (44% ultimate,  50% yield;  yeah,  they’re different!).  Thus I would size wall thickness for hot service based on hoop stress not to exceed 6 ksi,  and with no other loads applied. 

I would use different knockdown factors for an aircraft flight structure.  Generally I use factor 1.1 below yield,  except where reduced for fatigue life limitations,  or also reduced by hot creep failure in a hot-structure situation.  But,  either way,  you cannot just use the theoretical strength the way O’Neill did. 

Most physics majors do not understand such nuanced issues in design,   because that kind of thing was not in their education.  The mechanical engineers are actually trained to do this by their education. Those who do it for a living have years of real experience doing this.  Old guys like me did it for decades with nothing but a pencil and paper and a slide rule or pocket calculator,  which means we know the complicated nitty-gritty of it very,  very intimately. 

We old guys would never trust somebody else’s computer code solely for these answers,  either.  There are too many garbage-in/garbage-out problems with computers,  especially if the person setting up the inputs doesn’t know how to do it by hand for himself.  Ignorance really is quite dangerous in design. 

BTW - you really do want resilience in the material you make a space habitat from.  Meteoroid and debris impacts,  or a minor spacecraft collision,  could cause it to shatter and explode under its internal pressure,  if the material lacks a lot of resilience. 

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-06-29 09:36:02)


GW Johnson
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"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#12 2016-06-30 04:32:52

Terraformer
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Perhaps it would be best instead to adopt more of a "Virga" set up, with the space habitat being non-rotating and having smaller, more manageable centrifuges within it. There's no point rotating your radiation shielding, at least, and if you can use magnetic bearings to have a (comparatively!) lightweight centrifuge supported by a heavier, stationary structure...

Of course, you'd have to dispense with the window floors. Perhaps using light tubes down the centre instead, with mirrors to direct light into them?


"I'm gonna die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy." - If this forum was a Mars Colony

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#13 2016-06-30 06:55:29

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Terraformer wrote:

Perhaps it would be best instead to adopt more of a "Virga" set up, with the space habitat being non-rotating and having smaller, more manageable centrifuges within it. There's no point rotating your radiation shielding, at least, and if you can use magnetic bearings to have a (comparatively!) lightweight centrifuge supported by a heavier, stationary structure...

Of course, you'd have to dispense with the window floors. Perhaps using light tubes down the centre instead, with mirrors to direct light into them?

PhysicsTodayFig1a.gif
Why not rotate the radiation shielding? If a colony rotates as a piece, it is less complicated and requires less maintenance, and in this case the shielding is the floor.
circumferential_cylinder_rotation_by_tomkalbfus-da8bpit.png
However, you could rotate a colony this way. This drawing is not to scale, it is drawn this way only to show how the cylinder rotates. If we could build this in Geosynchronous Orbit, and connect it to Earth's surface with space elevators, the curvature at Geosynchronous orbit is only slight when compared to the width of this cylinder. The surface of the inside of this torus is for all practical purposes the same radius as the outside of this torus if it were drawn to scale with the Earth and the orbital distance. The length of the inside is only slightly shorter than the outside, and normal materials can stretch and compress to accommodate a "smoke ring" rotation inside and out as this diagram demonstrates. One can build a cylindrical space colony completely around the Earth with no end caps and rotate it as the red arrows indicate. Since there are no end caps, there can be no O'Neill mirror geometry to reflect sunlight within. The best alternative would be to place linear solar power satellites to either side of this cylinder as it rotates or perhaps cover the outside with solar panels, though I think you would need more surface area than is available on the outside of this ring cylinder to provide enough energy to reproduce sunlight artificially within, due to the inefficiencies of converting electricity to light. I think covering the outside with microwave receivers and of course attaching radiators on the outside to control temperature would be how this would be done.

I would suggest using holographic light panels in place of the Solars between the valleys, preferably a holographic image of the Sun produced at normal solar intensity. I wouldn't want to put a florescence tube in the center of the cylinder as it would get to hot as you got too close. With a holographic light panel, one could walk across the surface of it without getting burned by the light intensity. One could look down and the Sun would appear just as far away as if you were standing on the opposite valley and looking up at it.

On the other hand you could just attach the solar panels to the radiators on the outside of the cylinder. the panels can stick out and rotate with the cylinder, if they are strong enough to withstand several gravities of centrifugal force, that should be enough surface area to power the artificial sunlight holograms, and since the curvature is slight at that radius, the panels should grate against one another when they are on the inside of the torus.
cylinder_with_solar_panels_by_tomkalbfus-da8bx82.png
This is a more to scale drawing of that same cylinder, the solar panels are also radiators and hang downward from the curved floor of this cylinder. This cylinder wraps all the way around the Earth at this orbital distance and so do the solar panels, some are always exposed to the sun and collecting energy even while others are in shadow.

Of course it would take a long time to build, I'm not disputing that, but we can start with a short segment and elongate.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-06-30 08:19:17)

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#14 2016-06-30 08:42:17

GW Johnson
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Myself,  I'd be looking for a design geometry that doesn't have to strain in order to move.  I know it's not much unit strain (it had better not be very much at all, or the structure will fail quickly in fatigue),  but it's a huge volume of material that must undergo it.  The stress-strain integral works out in units of energy per unit volume.  Because of the enormous volume of material proposed here for the pressure shell,  that's a huge amount of energy that must come from somewhere.  You will have to have rockets (or something) thrusting continuously just to keep the spin going against the dissipation into strain energy,  which will show up as heating. 

Not to mention the fact that our species is as yet incapable of undertaking works on such a grand scale.  I don't think we are as yet ready to attempt the smallest of the O'Neill cylinder designs,  spinning around flying in a simple orbit.  We gotta start somewhere,  but it will have to be small. 

What if we used a modification of the Bigelow 330 design that allowed it to be spun for gravity?  Dock,  say,  6 of these together end-to-end,  with one small hard module in the middle.  That center hard module has the airlocks,  docking ports,  and solar panels.  It also has flywheels for spin up and spin-down.  The whole baton would be on the order of 100 to 110 meters long.  Its center of mass is pretty near its geometric center.  That's a radius pretty near 50-55 m,  requiring only 4 rpm to create 1 gee at the two ends,  and every level of partial gee down to zero in the middle.  There would be about 2000 cu.m usable volume inside.  At 150 cu.m per person,  you could have a crew of 14 or 15 on board,  and never experience any crowded conditions. 

Later,  as money becomes available,  add a second set of B-330 arms perpendicular to the first. That doubles the volume (and crew size) in a spinning cross geometry.  It's just 6 more of the B330's.  You do have to plan for this in the design of your center module. 

Later still,  you'll need slightly-angled docking ports and some connection modules to add a ring of B330's all around the circle described by your spinning baton ends.  There you went and built a true spinning-wheel space station of enormous volume,  most of it at one full gee spin gravity.  And you did it with simple modifications to items we already have today,  including the launch rockets to put it up there.  Doesn't require an SLS or an MCT to do it. 

No futuristic yet-to-be developed technologies,  no scale-of-construction beyond that we can afford,  much less attempt.  And yet we get our first small space habitation,  in a form resembling a smaller version of the space station depicted in "2001 a Space Odessey".  That's how this could really be done,  and right today,  too. 

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-06-30 09:03:03)


GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#15 2016-06-30 09:52:28

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

What's required to build it, I think is automation. We tell the automatons what to build, and they figure out how many of themselves they need to make and how much raw material they will need to do this job, and then they build it! I think the way we would build the ring, would be to erect multiple space elevators are points along the equator, then attach rings to each space elevator. The space elevators would come in pairs, one slightly north of the equator and the other slightly south, and between them we put spacers to keep them parallel. At Geosynchronous orbit we place a ring between the pair of space elevators. (One handles traffic up, the other one handles traffic down to avoid collisions) Within the ring between the space elevators we place the cylinder, within the ring is an electric motor and a track which keeps the cylinder spinning. Part of the cylinder is inhabited, and the rest beyond the pressure wall is a continuous construction project, where we elongate the cylinder in the direction of the orbit in both directions. As the cylinder gets longer, we will need to build another space elevator to hold it parallel to the surface of the Earth and keep it lined up in the direction of its orbit. Or maybe a better way is to run a cable around the complete circumference of the orbit threading the ring of each space elevator. If we need to keep the cable taut, then we spin it around the Earth in its orbit at slightly faster than orbital velocity, just enough to keep the cable rigid. then we build the cylinder around the cable, extending it further and further to the right and left of each space elevator, until the ends of all the cylinders from each space elevator meet to form a continuous ring completely around the Earth.

This would all be done with robots of course, and AI computers, electric motors would keep the ring spinning, and they would push against the tension of the space elevators which would be held in a vertical position due to gravity.

Is this a near term thing? depends on how rapidly artificial intelligence develops. Some people think machines will reach human parity intelligence in 10 to 20 years, they point to exponential growth in computer processing power as their evidence. Once you get that, we will have machines that can build more of themselves out of raw materials, and can create a work force of any size we need within the limits of material resources, and the limits of the Solar System is huge, but its hard to wrap our brains around that.

The question is, will there be any time before the onset of human parity artificial intelligence, for us to colonize and settle space ourselves, or will we let the smarter-than-us machines of the future build it for us?

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#16 2016-07-01 07:47:12

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

dfd8ba78-dfb8-4929-9f6b-6e7935367114.jpg?w=600
Well they are cylindrical. Maybe if we had a B330 that was 100 meters in radius, we could spin it once every 20 seconds to create 1-G at the outer wall.
Kalpana-exterior-7-1920.jpg
Probably would look a bit like this, except smaller. this is the Kalpana Cylinder, it is smaller that the Bernal Sphere, I think it houses about 3000 people, it is designed to be built in low Earth orbit unlike some of the others.
swtf9oq1bxheaqrjgeyb.jpg
This is a view of the interior, as you can see the soccer/football field to give you a size comparison.
469803443_640.jpg
Here is another view.
Kalpana-43-Aa2-1920.jpg
A view of a patio.
ojsir0fdaebqsedtmjmm.jpg
A view of a lake and golf course. I think playing golf in this environment would be tricky.
versteeg_kalpana_cam5-jpg.14917
Here's a view from one of the side ledges.
60619553.jpg
Here is a diagram of the various parts, it has power beamed to it from a separate Solar Power Satellite, since this one houses only 3000 people, the power requirements are smaller than for a big city such as New York. The sides are covered with a microwave rectenna, and there is a single radiator fin projecting out to regulate heat.

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#17 2016-07-01 09:07:07

GW Johnson
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From: McGregor, Texas USA
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Posts: 5,423
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Financially and technologically,  we as a species are just not yet ready to do anything on a scale like you illustrated.  I doubt we could even build the 1000 ft diameter wheel of the "2001" movie. 

We're talking about a species and a civilization that cannot yet behave itself and quit waging wars.  Or keep parts of itself from starving. 

The B330 is a solid core about 15 m long with a 6 m diameter inflatable wrapped upon it. It'll be a while yet before there's anything any bigger.  Variations on the same basic small item could be available far sooner.  What can you build with tinkertoys like that?   

You and I just differ on what potential there is to assist us in "AI",  which I think is an oxymoron.  There are some awfully sophisticated programs that emulate human behaviors out there,  but that's all that's going on inside the robot:  execution of a program upon whatever data the machine is presented with. 

Not one computer has ever had what we humans (and a lot of other animals) would call a thought,  nor can they,  not as long as we build only the programmable version of Von Neumann adding machines.  And that's all we currently know how to build.  I don't think that will change very quickly.  When it does,  the technology and architecture will come from biology,  not Silicon Valley. 

I know NSS has been (and still is) pushing for the construction of a large solar power satellite.  Most of the designs I have seen are very much larger than the ISS which we were just barely able to build,  and then only funded by multiple nations.  I don't think projects that large will come within humanity's reach during our lifetimes.  Especially not with a fair fraction of our population waging terrorism on the rest,  who in turn still wage wars on each other.  It's just unrealistic to expect otherwise.  Those difficulties will Trump (please excuse my choice of words there,  ha,  ha!) any large space projects for as long as we continue to suffer those difficulties. 

You have to think much smaller,  or else be forever frustrated by nothing at all ever getting done. 

On the other hand,  the growing awareness of asteroid defense presents an opportunity to go out there and do some real things,  as long as the scale and costs are of a size where we can handle them.  It provides a real reason to have a government space program outside of competition with other nations.  And it presents the possibility of doing this as the public-private partnerships that were so successful 500 years ago,  since we now have some private entities interested in mining those same asteroids. 

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-07-01 09:12:42)


GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#18 2016-07-01 10:16:45

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

GW Johnson wrote:

Financially and technologically,  we as a species are just not yet ready to do anything on a scale like you illustrated.  I doubt we could even build the 1000 ft diameter wheel of the "2001" movie.

I hope you are wrong! I think watching a couple astronauts walking on Mars after a hundred billion dollars is spent to get them there is a pretty pathetic accomplishment for the 21st century, if you ask me! If that's all we're going, to do, then frankly, we might as well send robots. 
Kalpana-exterior-7-1920.jpg
Now this space colony is the smallest of the O'Neill's, unlike the others, this one can be located in low Earth orbit, at the same altitude as the ISS, and it houses a modest 3000 people.

Kalpana One is intended to improve on the free space settlement designs of the mid-1970s: the Bernal Sphere, Stanford Torus, and O'Neill cylinders, as well as on Lewis One, designed at NASA Ames Research Center in the early 1990s. These systems are intended to provide permanent homes for communities of thousands of people. The Kalpana One structure is a cylinder with a radius of 250m and a length of 325m. The population target is 3,000 residents.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/Kalpana/index.html

Kalpana is a small community in space, a space village really, unlike the others, this one doesn't have a mirror geometry, it produces its own artificial illumination within. Which is why if can be located in Low Earth orbit, it doesn't matter if it orbits the Earth every 90 minutes or so. Being located this close to Earth puts it under the Van Allen belts and provides natural radiation protection from solar flares and the like. Now what can Kalpana be used for? Judging from the pictures, it could be used as a destination for space tourists. If launch costs get low enough, it might be profitable to build one. Being able to reuse parts or rockets is a step on the way towards building this, I think that asteroid, I previously mentioned could provide enough raw materials for building this. And naturally we'd want to locate this as close to Earth as possible while still being in space. I think the Mars Colonial Transporter would be a good vehicle for getting to this space station, as it is said to be able to transport 100 people to Mars. Kalpana with some shielding and engines could also be used to settle the outer solar system, a Trip to Titan might be one in a vehicle which incorporates the Kalpana design as part of its crew quarters. It looks big enough to grow food crops inside, possibly the crew would be smaller to make room for food storage and supplies, and nuclear reactor would substitute for the SPS.

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#19 2016-07-01 23:33:47

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

GW Johnson wrote:

Financially and technologically,  we as a species are just not yet ready to do anything on a scale like you illustrated.  I doubt we could even build the 1000 ft diameter wheel of the "2001" movie. 

We're talking about a species and a civilization that cannot yet behave itself and quit waging wars.  Or keep parts of itself from starving.

 
Well the problem is the Human race consists of around seven billions individuals, some of whom choose good and some of whom choose evil, and get evil results! I am not about to let the excuse that some of us are evil prevent us from colonizing space, that is a ridiculous argument! Are we going to let every barbarian on the planet hold us hostage and prevent us from colonizing space, to get away from these monsters!

There is ISIS, there is Iran, and there is North Korea and other uncivilized places and peoples, I think our civilization, the United States is quite advanced compared to the others, we are civilized, do not start wars like the others do. I don't see why we should wait on the rest of the Human race, particularly the Third World to catch up to us, before we can consider ourselves ready to colonize space, that just doesn't make sense to me. the Human Race isn't a collective, it isn't a "bee hive", we are all individuals making individual decisions for good and for ill, if that ever changes, we won't be human anymore! I would think developing a collective conscious, where everyone is "good" and no one is "evil" would be a giant step backwards for the human race. The Human race is all o one planet, and that is what's got to change! People like you saying we're all in this together as one collective whole! Well I don't want to be part of one collective whole. I want for one, to get away from certain members of the human race, such as terrorists and the like, that is why I want to travel in space, always have since I was a child. Little did I know back then that the Space Age was to be a non-participatory one, unlike previous technological revolutions, we all don't get to participate in this one. We can drive a car, we can fly in an airplane, but we don't get to fly in a spaceship, at least most of us don't! Even if we build that O'Neill colony of 3000 still most of us wouldn't, we need to build much more than that! I'm not in this to watch a television program from my nursing home in 2053, watching distant astronauts collecting rock samples from the Martian surface for the first time, something we should have been doing in the 1980s. We need to develop the economics of space travel.


GW Johnson wrote:

The B330 is a solid core about 15 m long with a 6 m diameter inflatable wrapped upon it. It'll be a while yet before there's anything any bigger.  Variations on the same basic small item could be available far sooner.  What can you build with tinkertoys like that?   

You and I just differ on what potential there is to assist us in "AI",  which I think is an oxymoron.  There are some awfully sophisticated programs that emulate human behaviors out there,  but that's all that's going on inside the robot:  execution of a program upon whatever data the machine is presented with.

 

What is the difference between the emulation of human intelligence and human intelligence. Suppose we created within a computer an emulation of a human being, lets say is a simulation of a human in a simulated house. Within that simulated house is a simulated video screen, and a real camera takes an image of us, and real microphones pick up sounds, and reproduce that image and sound in the simulated house so that the simulated person can hear in, so you can talk to him or her and she can talk to you. You can interact with one another through this interface. the only difference is the simulated person doesn't have a physical body, but she is quite intelligent, she can figure things out, can help you with your work, since her brain is being simulated in the computer, that simulated has that sim brain do things that real brains can do, and since thinking is a physical process that can be simulated by mathematics, as any other physical process can, such as weather, or stars going supernova, I think by the time we can do that, we'll have machines that can think, invent, and do science!

Not one computer has ever had what we humans (and a lot of other animals) would call a thought,  nor can they,  not as long as we build only the programmable version of Von Neumann adding machines.  And that's all we currently know how to build.  I don't think that will change very quickly.  When it does,  the technology and architecture will come from biology,  not Silicon Valley.

 
Biology is a physical process that can be simulated in a computer, once we capture and understand the biology that occurs in our brains, we can abstract it out, and get computers to simulate the thinking and learning that goes on in the brain, without the need to simulate every neuron. Right now the only barrier is that computers are too slow, but that won't remain the case for very long! As for the problem of colonizing space, I think the only reason we aren't doing it now, is because we aren't smart enough to figure out how to transport millions of human beings into space and keep them alive there cheaply. There is nothing about the Universe which suggests that it is impossible. This is a solvable problem, we just aren't clever enough to figure it out yet, so lets build something that is cleverer that we are, maybe a superhuman intelligence that we create can build these space colonies for is. As the progress in space travel is slow compared to the progress in computing speeds by computers!


I know NSS has been (and still is) pushing for the construction of a large solar power satellite.  Most of the designs I have seen are very much larger than the ISS which we were just barely able to build,  and then only funded by multiple nations.  I don't think projects that large will come within humanity's reach during our lifetimes.

 
Unless we can figure out a way to extend those lifetimes substantially, this in turn requires a more complete understanding of our biology and of what makes us age. if we can reverse that, we can live longer, there is nothing in the laws of physics that says this is impossible, so we either figure out how to establish perpetual youth or we build machines that can figure out how to do that.

Especially not with a fair fraction of our population waging terrorism on the rest,  who in turn still wage wars on each other.  It's just unrealistic to expect otherwise.  Those difficulties will Trump (please excuse my choice of words there,  ha,  ha!) any large space projects for as long as we continue to suffer those difficulties.

 

You think the terrorists can stop us? I do not consider myself a part of the same human race as those terrorists!
I am not responsible for their behavior, they choose to be evil, I don't think we should let those miserable creatures prevent us from colonizing space, but I do know one thing, they aren't us!

You have to think much smaller,  or else be forever frustrated by nothing at all ever getting done.

 
How can I ever be satisfied with less than space travel for the whole human race, and not just a handful of us, who happen to have the "Right Stuff" to be selected for our government's elite astronaut program, whenever the taxpayer is feeling generous enough to fund it! So long as there is life, there is hope, and I'm still alive, and hopefully expect to live another couple decades or more!

On the other hand,  the growing awareness of asteroid defense presents an opportunity to go out there and do some real things,  as long as the scale and costs are of a size where we can handle them.  It provides a real reason to have a government space program outside of competition with other nations.  And it presents the possibility of doing this as the public-private partnerships that were so successful 500 years ago,  since we now have some private entities interested in mining those same asteroids. 

GW

You know why the Europeans colonized the New World, and not China, nor the Muslims to the South? China was united under one stupid Emperor that decided to burn all of his ships, the Muslims were more concerned about the hereafter rather than the here and now, but the Europeans, a factitious bunch compete against each other to settle the New World, not all the nations of Europe held hands and participated together to combine resources to colonize the New World, it was instead the Spanish competing against the Portuguese, and the French, the Dutch and the English that settled colonies in the New World. Europe as a collective whole did not! These little countries ran circles around the big Empires like China, and even managed to colonize the continent next door, Australia, right under their noses. o what do you think, do we follow the Chinese Model or the European one for colonization? Which one worked better?

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#20 2016-07-02 09:53:43

GW Johnson
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Posts: 5,423
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Tom:

Your own perceptions and beliefs are preventing you from reading what is actually written.  You are reading far more into what I said,  than what I actually said.  You do that an awful lot. 

You and I will never agree about what robots might be able to do in the next few-to-several decades.  But I have some fairly hard science/technology things upon which to base my beliefs. 

It does not matter how sophisticated the emulation of human behavior (or any other biological process) might be in the program,  it is still nothing but a program being executed on this or that set of data.  There is no thought there,  no way to "learn" anything outside the programming.  If programmed to do so,  it can adjust to new additions to the data sets that it processes.  As long as we are limited to binary code in chips arranged in a Von Neumann data-processing architecture,  then the I in AI is an oxymoron and only science fiction. 

We cannot yet connect things the way neurons work,  because we do not really understand them yet.  We don't know how any of that really functions,  cell-to-cell,  except that signal passage is mostly chemical,  not straight electric.  We don't even know if it's binary encoding.  Once we know those things (and more),  and we have invented a technology to implement it the way biology does,  then we can build robots that can think real thoughts,  and that can learn new things,  the way we do. 

My only point about wars is that,  while not exactly a zero sum game,  there's only some amount in the way of resources available to each country.  There are basic needs to spend those on,  and there's defense or wars against enemies.  Those uses are going to come first,  because they have to.  What is left over is what you can spend on discretionary things like science and space travel.  The more wars,  the less there is to fly into space with.  That simple,  nothing more.  And that is exactly where we Americans are,  right now. 

My point about the model for joining with some others to explore space is based on the moon race experience.  Our intense competition with Russia got us flying,  yes,  even to the moon,  but once the arbitrary race was "won",  motivation evaporated,  for all concerned.  It has been almost half a century,  and no humans have returned,  from any nation.  Such "space race" things seem to be a brief pulse of activity,  but apparently do not sustain over time.  It's therefore the wrong model. 

500 years ago,  there was competition among the European powers to explore and colonize the new world,  but it was not a do-or-die crash-program race.  The most successful of those powers split the work into government-sponsored exploration,  and a mix of private and public-private arrangements to actually do the colonization. 

The exploration was (1) find out what is there,  and (2) exactly where it is. That is something that requires multiple visits to multiple places,  and digging rather deep to find what is hidden.  Apollo did almost none of that,  which is a small part of why the motivation to continue died so quickly.   

What you or I might think of today's Russians,  terrorists,  or Muslim countries has nothing to do with this assessment.  But I see you like to bring those issues up in multiple conversations,  relevant or not.  I would invite your attention back to history,  because the behaviors of these peoples and groups does change over time.  It depends on where you look,  not all the history made it into schoolbooks. 

At the time of Marco Polo,  there were two "silk roads" between Europe and China,  not just the one he traveled,  through Asia by land.  The other was a seaborne trade network run largely by the pre-Islam Arabs,  and in their earliest Islamic form as the Moorish empire.  It stretched from the middle east through the Indian ocean to India,  and on to the Philippines/Indonesia/SE Asia area,  where goods then went by a land route through southeast Asia into China.  The Portuguese actually made contact with this route and used it,  before they turned their attention west across the Atlantic. 

The Moorish empire was more tolerant of Jews and Christians in their midst than were any of the European countries tolerant of Jews and Muslims at the time.  Yes it was the Christian monasteries in Europe that saved Roman knowledge from being lost in the Dark Ages.  But it was the Moors who saved the Greek and other eastern stuff for us. 

Although,  I must agree with you that none of those empires since,  in that part of the world,  has been worth a damn. 

A great deal of our modern troubles with the terrorists trace to our allies the Saudis spreading their corruption of Islam throughout that part of the world for 50+ years now,  financed by oil revenues.  This is most formally called Wahhabism,  the most evil of the many corruptions of Islam,  that is the state religion of Arabia.  It will eventually be the House of Saud's downfall,  because they do not practice it,  and their people who believe it cannot tolerate that.  It was originally given to them as a human-sacrifice corruption of Judaism by an apostate Jew,  actually.  Plenty of fault to go around. 

When you combine a fundamentalist-extremist corruption of a religion with a never-outgrew-tribalism culture,  you get what we are currently fighting.  It is particularly a problem with Islam in the third world today.  But the effect happens in any religion and locality.  We've seen it before.  A corruption of Christianity was a part of Nazism,  who used its crosses for their insignia on their vehicles.  There's many other examples. 

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-07-02 10:34:38)


GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#21 2016-07-02 17:06:59

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Well I see the threat from the other as motivation to go into space in order to survive, get off this "big blue marble." I often wondered what our political world would have looked like had Gerard O'Neill been right. What if there was a constellation of O'Neill habitats and solar power satellites.
possible_stages_in_the_development_of_a_space_solo_by_tomkalbfus-da8307c.png
See the dates up top? 200,000 to 20,000,000 people living in space! Still that is a small percentage of humanity. Probably there would have been a great deal of SPS construction going on during the last 8 years with the high price of oil and all. Perhaps a better shuttle design would have helped, something which actually would have revolutionized space travel. The trouble is space travel is still a big deal, it is a news item. SpaceX is moving in the right direction, I am hoping that in another 20 years space colonization becomes a reality rather than science fiction. I'm getting tired of living in the "extended 20th century!" A century should have only 100 years in it, not 116!

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#22 2016-07-03 13:55:37

GW Johnson
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From: McGregor, Texas USA
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Posts: 5,423
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

What was envisioned in the 1970's simply didn't happen,  and for a variety of reasons that would be futile to argue with. 

Like I said above,  think small.  But plan for later expansion.  If you do,  the odds are far more likely you will actually get something done. 

GW


GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#23 2016-07-03 20:19:42

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

GW Johnson wrote:

What was envisioned in the 1970's simply didn't happen,  and for a variety of reasons that would be futile to argue with. 

Like I said above,  think small.  But plan for later expansion.  If you do,  the odds are far more likely you will actually get something done. 

GW

Did not happen yet, O'Neill's timeline was too optimistic obviously, so the task then becomes to make it happen, eventually what was predicted will happen, its just a matter of when. So why the big slow down after the dawn of the space age? It didn't happen like the dawn of powered flight, starting with the Wright Flyer and cumulating with the Jumbo Jet. The Wright Brothers used to put on shows and the public sat in stands watching him fly his little airplane around., shortly after that was the flying circus, then World War I aviators, then mail carriers, crop dusters, then were those sea planes, the Pan Am clipper, then World War II, the B17, the B29, then intercontinental passenger service, and finally the Jumbo Jets, all within a single human lifetime.

With the Space Age, we had Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and then a pause, and then the Shuttle from 1981 to 2011 (30 years), and then the space station, and what do all these programs have in common? Space Travel remains a show for spectators, most people aren't affected by the space age except for communication devices and weather reports, we have GPS navigation, but they are all secondary effects, practically no one travels in space. Not even millionaires, and very rarely a billionaire, and when they do go, it is a stunt. We have pretty much made close to no progress in space travel over the last 50 years. Oh there has been some progress, we have sent probes to all the major planets plus Pluto, mostly do to persistent use of the same old technology that never changes, same old chemical rockets slightly improved, of course electronics and miniaturization did most of the heavy lifting for space travel.

I think I'll probably see a human walk on Mars in my lifetime, on a video screen, maybe in 3-d perhaps, maybe with VR goggles, that human and his companions would be very famous, meet with the President, sign autographs. We have not progressed in sending people to Mars without making them famous, that would be the real advancement. I would like to see 3000 people on Mars, about the population of that O'Neill habitat. Even 3000 is a tiny amount of people, hardly amounts to a village. Most people even after that happens would still be stuck on Earth, fighting those wars against fanatics that think we life in Bible-Land. I am waiting for a revolution, some tipping point where progress will be radical and exponential rather than glacial and almost nonexistent. I care very little about Mars for its own sake, it is a possible future place for humans to live, but so is space and the Moon. Mars is more like a benchmark, it represents what can be accomplished. Low Earth Orbit is halfway to anywhere in the Solar System, and it appears to be the more difficult half to achieve.

What would a humans on Mars new story mean for most people? It would be something to watch, like a sporting event, and then it would be back to the same old grind, it is not exactly a Lewis and Clark Expedition until we actually open up the frontier to the common man, and so far that has not happened.

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#24 2016-09-03 00:20:31

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Kalpana-exterior-7-1920.jpg
Suppose we stretched the Kalpana space colony, or combined this idea with an O'Neill cylinder.
cylinder_with_solar_panels_by_tomkalbfus-da8bx82.png
We could build one of these around the sun half-way between the orbits of Venus and Earth, as both have fairly circular orbits. Venus has an Aphelion of 108,939,000 km, and Earth has a Perihelion of 147,095,000 km, Averaging these two numbers together we get 128,017,000 km.
The orbital period at that radius is 289.092 days. Since we are operating on such a large scale, lets make the cylinder 20 miles in diameter, about as thick as a standard O'Neill cylinder is long. It would spin at 561.8233412310315 meters per second and rotate once every 6 minutes to produce 1-G of centrifugal force. Since we have no means to hang a light tube in the center since there are no end caps, we use the same trilateral geometry, using have the floor space with illumination panels. There is a solar collector which beams power to the rotating cylinder, and radiator panels to dump excess heat an regulate internal temperature. the entire length is equal to the circumference around the Sun or 804,354,533 km The surface area of the Earth is 510,072,000 km^2. The surface area of this cylinder is 50,539,085,864 km^2 or 99 times the Surface Area of Earth.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-09-03 00:26:02)

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#25 2016-09-03 21:03:58

Tom Kalbfus
Banned
Registered: 2006-08-16
Posts: 4,401

Re: What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?

Just an errata correction. I forgot to convert the diameter from miles to kilometers in making the calculation of surface area. the surface area is actually equal to 160.9 Earth's worth of surface area, this is more than on Saturn. As for where we get the construction material to build it, the closest convenient object is Earth's Moon. So lets see how much mass we are talking about for this calculation, I'll assume 2.5 tons per cubic meter. the cross section is 32,216.88 meters, the interior cut out is 20 meters less to allow for a 10 meter thick hull making it 32,196.88. The outer circle is 815,141,707 m^2, the inner circle area is 814,129,926 m^2 subtracting the inner from the outer we get 1,011,781 m^2 multiply this by 2500 kg for a 1 meter cross section and we get 2,529,452,500 We'll call this 2.5 billion kilograms. Multiply this by 804,354,533,000 meters and we get a mass of 2,034,576,584,383,182,500,000 kg 2*10^21 kg. the Mass of the Moon is 7.342×10^22 kg. So this would require 0.0277 of the mass of the Moon, much less than one of my proposed linear accelerators to Alpha Centauri, and what to we get for this small contribution of mass from the Moon? About 160.9 Earths worth of living space, that's what, all conveniently located at the half-way orbit between Venus and Earth. Of course we'll also need volatiles from the asteroid belt and Jupiter's moons to make an atmosphere and soil for plants to grow in.

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