Stanford Torus

[Elim Garak]

I'm not sure how many video gamers we have here, but Mass Effect actually managed to work in some hard SF elements into its universe; I remember re-watching Contact and thinking "so that's where the mass relay comes from."

Anyway, on of hard SF contacts utilized is the Stanford Torus. DS9 could technically also be considered a Stanford Torus.

The fact is, one of these days, Earth will no longer be capable of supporting human life, and will also be french-fried by the sun. So our possible survival, as well as our first step toward interstellar travel, will be dependent on our ability to build these things. By depositing a Torus somewhere between Mars and Neptune, we would be able to harness the sun's rays, but also be safe from it's wrath when it does mutate into a bloated planet-killer.

How many years/centuries do you think will go by before we have the technology to build one?

 

[sojourner]

Millions of years before Sol turns into a red giant.

 

[T'Girl]

How many years/centuries do you think will go by before we have the technology to build one?

With both difficulty and money we could build one (many) right now.

The technology is actually a quarter century old.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Millions of years before Sol turns into a red giant.

Try billions. At least 3. Maybe 5 or 6.

Life has only existed on this planet for 3 billion years.

It's pretty difficult to conceive of what life will look like--if there even is any life by then.

 

[sojourner]

^yea, knew I should checked that number.

 

[Christopher]

DS9 could technically also be considered a Stanford Torus.

Not really, because its gravity is artificial and oriented parallel to the axis, rather than being generated by rotation. Just being roughly toroidal does not a Stanford Torus make.

The fact is, one of these days, Earth will no longer be capable of supporting human life, and will also be french-fried by the sun. So our possible survival, as well as our first step toward interstellar travel, will be dependent on our ability to build these things.

Not just those. Stanford Tori are among the smallest, simplest space habitats. They'd just be the first stepping stone to bigger, more advanced megastructures such as O'Neill Cylinders or maybe even more ambitious, advanced artificial worlds such as Orbitals.

How many years/centuries do you think will go by before we have the technology to build one?

We could've theoretically built a Stanford Torus using 1970s technology. These were designed as practical engineering proposals for the near future. The only reason we haven't done it already is lack of will.

Millions of years before Sol turns into a red giant.

Try billions. At least 3. Maybe 5 or 6.

But Earth will be uninhabitable long before that. The Sun's luminosity is steadily increasing even while it remains on the Main Sequence, so its habitable zone is gradually migrating outward. Earth will become uninhabitably hot within 1 billion years unless future technology prevents it, whether by moving the Earth outward or using star-lifting (extracting sufficient mass from the Sun to make it a slightly cooler, longer-lived spectral type).

Life has only existed on this planet for 3 billion years.

At least 3.5 billion, actually.