Proposal Discussion Something That's Started To Bother Me About Orbital Space Stations.....

[Commander Mick]

I've have only just recently had good look at the Coriolis, Dodec and other stations like them and thought that they appear way too small for the cities inside them as well as the large amount of space-traffic they can hold.

They only look bigger enough to hold perhaps at a guess half a dozen score of ships and those cities must be more like small towns. Like really small.

If they were anywhere near the size they are supposed to be they would almost seem the size of small moon. Something like the size of the Star-Wars - Death-Star and the ship entering one would be a mere speck against one side of it.

If the entrance tunnel is to be scaled to the size of the ships entering it. Then it would be so small compared to the rest of the orbital station. The entrance would be quite difficult to find without some sort of powerful lighting. That's if ships were expected to match it's rotation to enter. Otherwise, the tunnel would be big enough to be able to allow large amounts of ships in at the same time and they wouldn't need to match the orbital stations rotation at all.

Just a thought.....

I hope Frontier Developments[ have thought more about scale this time.

 

[Bambi]

The Death Star is several hundred kilometers in diameter. A city-station would only need to be a dozen at most. Closer to the size of a super star destroyer. Not accounting for any compactness compared to an open air 2D city which would make it even smaller.

 

[BoldRover]

Wouldn't space stations have to be considered more as ports or airports (or oil rigs)? Kind of transit zone for goods and travellers?

As such there would be hotels and storage facilities, and a "few" shops, bars and restaurants. But permanent living would probably not be a core functionality. Non essential personnel would probably not be allowed an neither would facilities to support them.

 

[Commander Mick]

From What I Read OF The Novella From The Original Game.....

They housed entire cities on each of it's inner walls.

Each facet had a different section.

I think one of the facets was the space-port where you parked your ship and from there you could catch a flying-taxi or bus to any of the other inner-faceted city sections. One would be the....

Buisness district,
Market district,
Red-Light district,
Hotel/Motel district,
Entertainment District,
Slums District,
Government district,
Military district,
Botanical/wildlife/farms District,
Suburban Homes District.

Yeah, well that's ten sides there and I'm not sure if I went over the limit of inner facets. How many sides exactly?

I guess some of those district would be combined.

Maybe a.....

Space Port district
Buisness, Market district
Red Light, Hotel/Motel District, Entertainment, Slums district,
Government, Military District,
Botanical/Wildlife/Farms District,
Suburban Homes District.

Well that's six sides now. Is that correct?

 

[Hamerstein]

Maybe a.....

Space Port district
Buisness, Market district
Red Light, Hotel/Motel District, Entertainment, Slums district,
Government, Military District,
Botanical/Wildlife/Farms District,
Suburban Homes District.

Well that's six sides now. Is that correct?

You'd still only need a cube (for simplification) of 16 km length. A 16 x 16 km side for a cube gives an area of 267 km^2. That's the same as Birmingham and it's suburbs.

The city could also extend inwards by 8 km before hitting the "city" coming from the opposite, it provides an area 8 times the size of Birmingham allowing for a population of ~8 million per city or 48 million per station - that's at Birmingham's population density, permitting some facets to have a much lower population density (Farms/Botanical) than the domicile areas (they could be sardines in there).

 

[Commander Mick]

I Will Think On This......

You'd still only need a cube (for simplification) of 16 km length. A 16 x 16 km side for a cube gives an area of 267 km^2. That's the same as Birmingham and it's suburbs.

The city could also extend inwards by 8 km before hitting the "city" coming from the opposite, it provides an area 8 times the size of Birmingham allowing for a population of ~8 million per city or 48 million per station - that's at Birmingham's population density, permitting some facets to have a much lower population density (Farms/Botanical) than the domicile areas (they could be sardines in there).

Now that does make more sense to me

In the mean time and for those of you who thought the floating cities were nothing more than a space-port with a hotel....

A Coriolis station is nothing less than a vast city built on six planes and spread, around the wide empty sky of its interior, facing inwards. From South City, the roof on the world is North City. At night, the lights that glow above your head are the lights of streets and buildings.

Alex checked out of the ship's berth and took a sky taxi across the void. The tiny automatic ship slid delicately and smoothly between the incoming and outgoing ships. Alex watched in fascination as the towering buildings of South City dropped away below and the grey sky edged closer. To his left, he could see the pattern of streets and parklands on the inhabited plane known as Commander City. Facing the entrance to the station, on that particular level lived the high ranking officials and various planetary envoys and ambassadors. They enjoyed a landscape which included lakes, rivers and ski-slopes with real snow.

Below him, the Nemesis became a tiny dart-shape on the broad landing pad. Above him, the towering offices and living blocks reached down towards him like geometrical stalactites.

There was an abrupt moment's disorientation and suddenly the roof was the ground and now the
Nemesis was a single, winking light in the heavens. The taxi dropped swiftly to street level, between the grey and black monolithic structures. Lights of different colours blinked and shone, and when the atmosphere began, a strange dusty shimmer seemed to envelop the city.

The streets were crowded here and it took Alex only moments to realise that the South City of this particular Coriolis station was the 'down town' area. Illegal trade abounded, in narcotics, robots, slaves, sensuastims, prostitution and frozen organs. Spacers walked slowly, cautiously, most of them still wearing near-full suit, a certain sign that this was the rough quarter. Hookers, of all sexes (the Galaxy counted seventeen at this time) and races, but mostly humanoid, solicited from hovering platforms, ready to escape fast from any over-welcoming, unwelcome client. Advertising hoardings here were almost completely devoted to proclaiming the illicit pleasures which were available in South City. Police cars and remotes roared overhead, as did med-ships. The streets were alive with noise and bustle and filth.

There...... although some people might agree that this novella isn't really cannon to the game. The idea of a city that is on six different inner surfaces facing inwards reminds me of the world in this movie.

Upside-Down

Being only two worlds, it's not quite the same, but still gives me some idea about how it may look. Just two worlds, just two cities.

 

[Memnoch]

Did you create that shot yourself? It looks like some kind of Discovery program footage!

 

[Yaffle]

As Tinman popped this on a similar thread, here's the concept art for the interior:

This is a sort of central cylinder I think, the rest of the station surrounds it. It would preclude the MC Escher-esque buildings, but makes lots of game-sense.

My only worry, and somebody who actually gets physics, angular momentum and whatnot could put me right I am sure, would be that near the centre of rotation the apparent gravity would be lower, as the centripetal force required to stop an object passing through the "floor" would be lower. So walking along the hangar bay shown would be akin to walking on the moon (say) but right on the rim may be like trying to carry heavy boots.

 

[Memnoch]

Looking at that shot with it apparently rotating along the axis that passes through the hangar door, no matter when you stand on that surface the gravity would be the same. However, if you were to climb a very tall ladder and jump you might find you just keep on going, and travel "up" to the other side which is now rotating above you fast enough to possibly kill you on impact or cause serious injury.

 

[Yaffle]

Going OT, and I apologise, but

Something about this whole gravity business has confused me for a long time and this is it, only in reverse.
Imagine it were possible to drill a hole right through the earth and out the other side so I could look down it like a deep well and see out to the sky over New Zealand somewhere. I decide to drop (not throw) a coin in, to make a wish. Would it ever emerge on the other side, or (all other things being equal) just oscillate up and down and eventually come to rest "floating" in the middle of the hole's diameter in the centre of the earth?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I've have only just recently had good look at the Coriolis, Dodec and other stations like them and thought that they appear way too small for the cities inside them as well as the large amount of space-traffic they can hold.

I think that's just because without many reference points - and especially with the featureless surfaces of a wireframe object or even an FE2/FFE station - they just look small. They're - according to the original Elite manual - a kilometre a side. From memory that's about how big the ones in FE2/FFE were. A sidewinder is ... 65x35x15 feet, according to the same manual.

So a Sidewinder fits into a box with a volume of about 1000 cubic metres. You could fit a million of them (okay, slightly less, since it's a cuboctahedron, not a cube) inside a Coriolis. Even allowing for the Sidewinder being relatively small on the scale of spaceships, there's still going to potentially be room for thousands of ships and plenty of other facilities beyond the docking bays. And the Coriolis was one of the smallest stations in FE2/FFE - there were stations several kilometres to a side around the more populated systems.

I hope Frontier Developments[ have thought more about scale this time.

They'll have to, given the plans to have walking around ships/stations, sophisticated internal damage models, etc. But I think they'll get away with it for the stations.

 

[Memnoch]

Imagine it were possible to drill a hole right through the earth and out the other side so I could look down it like a deep well and see out to the sky over New Zealand somewhere. I decide to drop (not throw) a coin in, to make a wish. Would it ever emerge on the other side, or (all other things being equal) just oscillate up and down and eventually come to rest "floating" in the middle of the hole's diameter in the centre of the earth?

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question373.htm

Removing air resistance, yes, it would just keep oscillating rather than stopping at the centre.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

My only worry, and somebody who actually gets physics, angular momentum and whatnot could put me right I am sure, would be that near the centre of rotation the apparent gravity would be lower, as the centripetal force required to stop an object passing through the "floor" would be lower. So walking along the hangar bay shown would be akin to walking on the moon (say) but right on the rim may be like trying to carry heavy boots.

That's correct. Given the wide variety of planetary gravities people will be born in, that's probably a feature - have the docking bays in microgravity, and then floors of increasing gravity out from there to the rim, with facilities duplicated so that people can go for the ones most suited to their physique.

The larger the station is, the slower it has to rotate for the same simulated gravity at the rim, so if you want an easy time docking, pick a big station.

Something about this whole gravity business has confused me for a long time and this is it, only in reverse.
Imagine it were possible to drill a hole right through the earth and out the other side so I could look down it like a deep well and see out to the sky over New Zealand somewhere. I decide to drop (not throw) a coin in, to make a wish. Would it ever emerge on the other side, or (all other things being equal) just oscillate up and down and eventually come to rest "floating" in the middle of the hole's diameter in the centre of the earth?

Ideally, if you also extracted all the air from the hole, the coin would accelerate towards the centre of the earth, and then decelerate having passed it, coming to a halt at the end of the hole on the other side, whereupon it would fall back down the hole and return to a stop in your hand.

In practice, air resistance would slow its travel, causing it to eventually slow down to a stop in the centre after a few oscillations. Additionally, with the earth not being a perfect sphere, the extra gravity from the side with more mountains on [1] would slowly drag the coin into the side of the hole, which would again cause it to lose velocity.

[1] There are particular sensitive experiments which can't be performed successfully near a mountain because the mountain's gravity is too much.

 

[Commander Mick]

Ever Since Frontier Developments.....

Have introduced docking with the Coriolis-Stations. Thye have either been upgraded to a larger size or I'm just imagining it that way.

I certainly very impressed with the humungous scale of them and the size of the entrance tunnel on them. One of the reasons they are much easier to dock with. I swear I can fly my Side-Winder in side that thing vertically to it's horizontal opening. Not really sure about the Cobra-Mark-Three which is supposed to be wider than the much bigger Python, Boa and Anaconda class ships.

The amount of detail on the surface of them. While one has small towers, another has larger high rise building set within the indented confines of each side where I swear I can almost make out a network of road ways and canyons of metal. That almost remind me of the -dare I say- the Death-Star or more accurately the underside of the mother-ship from Close -Encounters-Of-The-Third-Kind. Perhaps not so much, but there is something about that reminds me. When ever I remember these films.

I was just watching the remastered version of Star-Wars-Four-A-Brand-New-Hope hours ago.

I like the inclusion the automated adverting holos floating out side some of the stations. Some of them arranged differently, but nearly all of them are alike. I do hope there will be more varieties of these in different shapes and sizes. Just quoting from the The-Dark-Wheel.....

And of course, there were advertising Droidships, their catchy light displays blinking out information about ROHAN'S REAL EARTH ALE WITH HONEY, or KETTLE'S CLONE-YOUR-OWN
FUNGAL CURES. Or even offering the 'last real food before Witch-Space', small restaurant ships designed to dock and supply instant nourishment (PRIEST'S PERFECT PROTOPOLYPS, TUTTLE'S TASTY
THERAPSABLADDERS) to space-weary travelers.'Here we go . . . Hang on to your seat . . .'

Would love to see more variety here like this. The space equivalent advertising blimps flying around the space stations. Not just hovering. Maybe huge vid-screen screens being dragged behind tug-ships.

Some thing like traffic lights, other floating beacons, and floating billboards.

While I was impressed with the interior to the space stations. I would like to see more variety inside as well. Indicating of different Faction, Government, Tech Level, and anything typically meaning it's just a place that's faraway from the one you came from.

I was thinking of something like drive-in theatre for some of the ships allocated to a certain section of the stations interior.

How about that?

 

[Yaffle]

And of course, there were advertising Droidships, their catchy light displays blinking out information about ROHAN'S REAL EARTH ALE WITH HONEY, or KETTLE'S CLONE-YOUR-OWN
FUNGAL CURES. Or even offering the 'last real food before Witch-Space', small restaurant ships designed to dock and supply instant nourishment (PRIEST'S PERFECT PROTOPOLYPS, TUTTLE'S TASTY
THERAPSABLADDERS) to space-weary travelers.'Here we go . . . Hang on to your seat . . .'

Is that Tuttle or Buttle? Such things can be important.

 

[Dave Leestir]

Topical (world cup)

Is that Tuttle or Buttle? Such things can be important.

This is Information Retrieval, not Information Dispersal.



(can't rep until I spread some more)

 

[Bomber]

Let me give you a hand

Going OT, and I apologise, but

Something about this whole gravity business has confused me for a long time and this is it, only in reverse.
Imagine it were possible to drill a hole right through the earth and out the other side so I could look down it like a deep well and see out to the sky over New Zealand somewhere. I decide to drop (not throw) a coin in, to make a wish. Would it ever emerge on the other side, or (all other things being equal) just oscillate up and down and eventually come to rest "floating" in the middle of the hole's diameter in the centre of the earth?

Here just hold onto this big rock as I dunt you over the edge. Remember to shout nice and load as you reach half way, if not say hello to New Zealand...dunt