- scruss
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- Exalted Mythic Member
You've got to think crazy, of course, because you only get innovation by refining insanity. - Jason Jones
Posted by: Twinfire0
Posted by: scruss
Sure it might be our future kids or there kids or even there kids kids that get this thing in space, but shouldn't we start now? And if you think about it, it really isn't as hard as people make it sound. I mean, we know how to make gravity in space kind of! One way would be to make the entire space vehicle spin. Imagine a ball on a string: you can twirl it around and feel the string tugging on your arm. If you have a bucket of water on a string, you can twirl it around and if you twirl it around fast enough, the water stays in the bucket even if you spin it so it goes upside down during part of the swing. The same thing could be done in space: take two space vehicles and connect them on a tether and make them swing around each other to generate a sense of gravity. Theoretically, this is a very attractive idea; early tests with Gemini XI and XII showed that, while it was possible to generate microgravity (too weak for the astronauts to feel), stationkeeping of two tethered spacecrafts was very difficult. NASA has also flown a couple of shuttle missions attempting to deploy a tethered satellite. There were several goals with the tether system, but at least one was to work out how to deploy tethered systems in space. So in theory all we would have to do is to get the outer shell to spin at a high rate of speed, which it could spin on large ball bearings and wouldn't have to be powered by a huge force, just enough to get it started and then we can use a system of magnets such as they do on new roller coasters and rides, some of these rides can get up to 150 mph within seconds. Some trains have this as well. So once we get the outer ring moving we can engage the magnets so that they can pull it the rest of the way and keep it going. And then we could just have a hollow empty shell of a ring on the inside portion and fill it with dirt and rocks and what ever we want from a nearby planet.
This thing could be taken up in sections, such as the space station was. Sure there will be a lot more sections for a halo, it just takes time. But i really dont see why this wouldn't work. Im sure there are things i cant see that will impeded the progress but thats the same with many things people dont think could be done, humans always prevail.
Link to magnet use
Alright buddy, we all know that you can use centripital force to simulate gravity, but in space it would not be economical. Zero-G is a lot easier to deal with than gravity, so why spin a ring in the first place? Even then, you would need enormous amounts of fuel to keep it spinning, and even worse, the tension that the structure would feel would be beyond comprehension. If you have ever read Ringworld, you would know that simulating gravity on a structure like this would be impossible, because you would need a material the size of a human hair strong enough to withstand, oh, on the order of billions of tons of weight.
Ain't gonna happen, I'm afraid. This project just seems like a useless novelty that would cost trillions of dollars. Why don't we just build a thousand foot tall staue of the Incredible Hulk instead?
I have been trying to get to booksamillion to get ringworld, cant wait. But to address your concern of fuel. We wont use fuel, we use magnets. Have you seen the way they are used in coasters and trains? just use them like that only switch them on and off in the proper order to get it spinning, it will take a few minutes but once its going it wouldn't be hard at all to keep it going and we dont even use any fuel. Granted the size of the magnets would be ginormous but its possible. I hate when people rule things out without giving them hardly any thought. Just because you never have seen it happen and it looks impossible dosn't mean it is. I use a line from team america world police that deals with a man eating his own head. Just because you have never seen it dosn't mean it isn't possible.
I guess the world has two kind of people, the ones who think something is impossible and those who ask how can we beat the impossible. But its your opinion and your entitled to it, im not haten lol.