Bishop Ring

Astraeus

A
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Ring_(habitat)

384px-Culture%27s_orbital3.jpg


Megalomaniac engineering project fit for the 33th century.:cool:
 

roryscarlett

roryscarlett
Ringworld

That's awesome. Straight out of Larry Niven's 1970 novel 'Ringworld'. I'm currently reading it and if anyone is interested, it's well worth a read.

The basic premise is a constructed ring of material that completely encircles a star, but does not totally encapsulate it (that would be a 'Dyson Sphere'). The builder aliens take up residence on the star-facing inner surface.

I was wondering how much land that would create so crunched some numbers...

If we take our own Solar system as an example with the Ringworld constructed at 1 AU...

Earth's orbit - 1 AU ~ 149,597,871 kilometres
Total length of Ringworld ~ 939,951,145 kilometres

In Niven's novel he says the Ringworld is around 1 million kilometres wide

Surface area of inner surface ~ 939,951,145,000,000 square kilometres
Surface area of Earth ~ 510,072,000 square kilometres

That's 1,842,781 Earths

That's a lot of land. House prices would be nice and low!!!!!
 

Dead Fred

Dead Fred
I'll have two!

Yeah I think Larry Niven was the first to do it but orbitals are much smaller and orbit the star like a planet while rotating like a wheel to simulate days.

I suspect they look equally cool when you blow the crap out of them with crews and cam.....:D
 

Mars

Mars
That thing is a blatant terrorism target, just blow a hole in the wall at the side and watch all the atmosphere **** off.
 

Geraldine

Geraldine
There was this "thing" a good while ago that one of the Pioneer devs were working on, but I have no news of it since then. They might have hit some snags working it into the game.

screenshot-20111012-222148.png
 

Astraeus

A
Mars said:
That thing is a blatant terrorism target, just blow a hole in the wall at the side and watch all the atmosphere **** off.
Click to expand...

The wall is over 100 km high and at least a few km thick. And in the Eliteverse it would probably have additional protection form shields.
 

popuptoaster

P
Mars said:
That thing is a blatant terrorism target, just blow a hole in the wall at the side and watch all the atmosphere **** off.
Click to expand...


Even if you could make a hole in something made of a material strong enough to hold togther when it's that massive and spinning, the size of it would negate that i think.

Near the hole would be windy and low pressure but i suspect that it would take so long to empty you'd have time to repair a hole, even if you only stuffed it with spaceships to slow down the flow temporarily even a big nuke doesn't make that much of a crater, remember this thing is (100s of?) kilometers thick as well as millions of K wide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdF4ln6610w


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1f6vbiuUt0
 
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Perseus

Perseus
Such a beautiful object and idea. I wonder if our distant future children will build such things?
I'd love to see them in ED. :)
 

Astraeus

A
By the way, are all stations/colonies going to be procedurally generated and positioned or are there going to be "special" structures?
 

laforge

L
Imo the technology needed to build such a thing exceeds the possibilities of the human civilization in elite. Perhaps another alien civilization more advanced could have build something like that.
 

Memnoch

M
Perseus said:
Such a beautiful object and idea. I wonder if our distant future children will build such things?
I'd love to see them in ED. :)
Click to expand...
I doubt there is enough matter in the entire solar system to make one of those things. Can you imagine the job of going around collection planet sides chunks of matter to construct something like that! It would have to be the job of automated, self-replicating and repair machines. Just set them going for thousands and thousands of years.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Memnoch said:
I doubt there is enough matter in the entire solar system to make one of those things. Can you imagine the job of going around collection planet sides chunks of matter to construct something like that! It would have to be the job of automated, self-replicating and repair machines. Just set them going for thousands and thousands of years.
Click to expand...

How about we get DNA to synthesise itself with added carbon to form nanotubes?

A single molecule unwinds to around 1 metre IIRC. Grow enough of it and you'd have a superlong, superstrong, essentially inexhaustible supply of the stuff :) Could maybe even build something with it!
 
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