Space Colonization Options (Orbiting Stations, planets/moons)

Feel free to copy my idea as long as you give credit where it's due =D.

I really don't care for money, just recognition ^_^.

I was thinking Zero G corridors to transition between layers.
This way you don't have to waste resources making an elevator to go up or down layers.

The only transit you need is a Sky Tram on the Zero G inner center layer to get you from one end of the 36 km tube to the other end.

A little bit of Zero G a day shouldn't hurt you as long as you're not spending all your time in it.

If it's brief moments during the day (a few minutes), it should be fine and not affect your long term health.

And with each layer moving in opposite directions, it should be easy to figure out what section you want to climb up to or dive down towards since it's Zero-G environment and you can pull yourself up or hop down.

 

Oh no not going to copy your idea but I just thought of something funny.

If you had two structures rotating opposite to each other you could do a real life version of the movie Upside Down haha.

 

=D

 

That wouldn't work, would it? Each person would be standing on the inner surface of each drum with their heads pointed toward the centre of rotation. It would work for two counter-rotating drums side by side.

 

Oh right my mistake...... I just watched that movie before posting that and regret my movie choice

 

Many of you are no doubt familiar with this site:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

Download it while you can....as the site's founder Winchell Chung---Nyrath to those of us at Starship Modeler---has been stricken with cancer: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/winchell-chung.37904/

This is a bigger blow to my soul than even the loss of Thomas Sasser. I at least met him once.

 

I don't see why your nested cylinder wouldn't work but there is a quality of life matter that it abandons. 40 meters is high, but it's like living under a bridge. People tend to not want to live under a bridge.

One of the advantages of O'Neill cylinders and Bernal spheres is that they both provide plenty of sky. You don't live your entire life under a ceiling. And inside that large open skyzone you can have wildlife, pollinating birds, honeybees, carrion eaters. You can have hpv-aircraft since the gravity falls off greatly at altitude allowing an entirely new form of exercise and rec.
The only advantage I can see for the nested cylinder is that the inner layers won't need rad shielding. However inner cylinder's masses will not equal the outer cylinder, so contrarotation will still not solve the instability problems of an O'neill.

 

It's the angular momentum (J=mvr for a thin-walled cylinder) of the cylinders that's important but yes, the inner cylinders would have to be made more massive per square metre of floorspace although if they all rotated in the opposite direction to the outermost cylinder, this would help keep the mass down. I think it's possible to achieve or at least approach zero net angular momentum pretty closely depending on the configuration of the cylinders. As for the instability problem, a spinning habitat is effectively a gyroscope that will precess under an applied external torque. The worst case scenario is chaotic tumbling. Reducing the net angular momentum to near zero should allow for easier corrections to the habitat's orientation.

 

Most O'Neill cylinder drawings show his initial idea of equal parts land/water area and vast windows with truly gigantic reflecting mirrors. I know some have proposed eliminating that glass and mirros and using large fiberoptics to bring light in. It increases surface area, removes some of the visual disorientation of seeing the earth and moon tumble around slowly, and probably simplifies construction and maintenance as well as increased rad-shielding.

I started thinking about the Liter of Light project. https://literoflight.org/ The idea is to provide daytime illumination in homes not served with electicity by using old water bottles filled with a mix of water and bleach as a simple light pipe. Obviously bleach would not be needed in this case, as this would be cometary/astroidal water with no chance of algae growth (one hopes!) as a light pipe reaching across the long axis of the cylinder. It might require the cylinders be a little more stubby but that has been the trend anyway, on some of the more recent variations.

The light pipe thus can also be the station's reservoir for fresh water. With a shutter system, an appropriate gentle day and night cycle could be created. Artificial lighting could supplement as needed, especially further from the sun.

 

Unfortunately, water absorbs light so after a few tens of metres the light intensity would be reduced significantly. The attenuation coefficient is a minimum of about 0.02m^-1 at 500nm (blue-green): i.e. the intensity decreases by a factor of e (2.71828...) every 50m. For red light, it decreases by this factor about every 20m and for violet light every 2m. It's too dark in the ocean below a depth of 200m to support photosynthesis.

 

Ah well. did not think that one through as I was typing it out.

 

How about having the outter armored Shell/Cylinder spin at whatever speed is necessary to compensate for any net Angular Momentum remains to balance out the combined angular momentum of all the various layers on the inside that are spinning?

My outter Armored Shell layer can be rotating armored cylinder panel to protect the Zero-G Multi-Floor Storage Layers, so having the armored shell rotate to counter balance at < 1g would be fine actually.

 

I expect that would work. Keeping it unused does seem to waste a lot of potential real estate but maybe old people's retirement homes could be situated in the lower gravity conditions. There could also be recreational areas where it was possible for humans to fly as mentioned in Arthur C Clarke's 3001. If plants can tolerate such an environment, perhaps it could also host agriculture.

 

The outter Zero-G Storage sections is just bulk storage of resources, if you're going to need to move alot of resoures, Zero-G environment should make it easier to move ultra heavy stuff.

I just noticed, I made a slight error on the specs that I described, the Cylinder's Diameter is 9 km.

But since I have a DiTrigon structure holding everything together on the outside, the overall final Diameter should be 11 km when you factor in the 3x outter support structures that are holding the Cylinder together.

The OverAll Length of my O'Neil Cylinder is 36 km, but 32 km is sub-divided into 128x ¼ km thick Habitable Bands

1869 meters is used for the 129x 14 meter thick Partitioning Structure in between each Habitable Bands & 2x 31.5 meters thick End Cap structures
Each 14 meter thick Partitioning Structure has 2 meters on each side to hold onto and rotate each Cylinder Band section with 10 meter wide reserved for Zero-G Core section / Passage Way / Super Structure to allow citizens to freely move up/down between layers that rotate.

The 2131 meters remaining Length budget
- 2000 meters for Primary Power Plants section
- __31 meters for AESA style Main Shield Dish on the Front of the structure
- _100 meters for Navigational Deflector Dishes mounted on the end of each of the 3x main protruding Structural Prongs on the front of the vessel

Imagine 3x Trapezoidal Outter Support Brace Structures, like the outter spine on B5, but "Wider & Larger"

All Equiangularly distribute on a DiTrigon shape from the Front/Back Orthographic Perspective.


The 3x Trapezoidal Support Braces should make a good foundation to hold together the modular sections of the Cylinder that I want to stack together and nest within each other.

For all the layers:

Central Zero-G MonoRail-like shaft located at dead center has a 10 meter Transparent Aluminium casing surrounding it to prevent people in Zero-G Zone from messing with mass transportation running across the 36 km of Cylinder.
The MonoRail track is Octagonal in Shape, allowing 4x sets of rails to flow in one direction and another 4x sets of rails to flow in the other.
2x revolver like end rail sections can rotate to allows the MonoRail Cars to move onto the other track that is going in the other direction, ergo allowing MonoRail cars to take a passenger across the length of the Cylinder in short order.

Layer ZGA = Zero Gravity Area is also contiguous and is located at Radius of 50 meters

Layer LZA = Lunar Gravity Area is one large contiguous zone and is located at Radius of 152 meters

Layer 0 = Dedicated Park Zones which has 45.257 km² of Land Area dedicated for it's usage, split into 64x Seperate different types of Parks in ½ km long bands with a radius of 225 meters, the bare minimum radius needed to maintain a comfortable 1g. (NOTE: For Reference, Manhattan has 59.1 km² of land)

Layers 1-85 = Habitable zones
Total Surface Area for Habitatable Zone 1-85 ~= 48,325.074 km²
(This gives you the land area of somewhere between the state of Alabama & North Carolina)
(NOTE: Agriculture = Vertical Farms for Plants would be part of the outter layers dedicated to industrial production)

Zero-G Mass Storage = Between Layer 85 and Outter Armor Shell

I had a 100 meter budget for outter Radius for Zero-G Mass Storage, so I split that zone into:
9x 10m High Storage Levels + 9x 1m High Storage Floor Structure

Each Level is at most 6,535.735 km² or smaller so you get tons of Zero-G storage rooms for raw materials / supplies / repair parts for long term outter space living.

Layer OAS = Outter Armor Shell = Outter most Layer, which is necessary for the protection of the inner Cylinders.

 

Two cylinders side by side perhaps?

The nested cylinder concept for an ark ship in deep space.

This is horrible
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx53xn/scientists-want-to-build-mars-bases-out-of-human-blood

 

What the fuck?

 

John Carpenter's next movie...

[SIZE=6]Hydrogen production and carbon capture in a single step[/SIZE]
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-hydrogen-production-carbon-capture.html
Hydrogen production takes place using natural gas as the raw material, combined with a very special ceramic membrane. Both hydrogen production and CO2 capture are achieved in a single step, which makes the method highly energy efficient. This is why the technology has been the subject of an article in the research periodical Science.
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-catalysts-hydrogen-fuel-cells.html

Silicon battery
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-rechargeable-silicon-batteries.html
A team of researchers from the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology has developed a proof-of-concept for a novel rechargeable silicon (Si) battery, as well as its design and architecture that enables Si to be reversibly discharged and charged.

Some more good news
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2021/09/15/visionary-tech-concepts-could-pioneer-the-future-in-space/

Getting extra-large spacecraft off Earth takes lots of planning, as the size of what can go to space depends on how much a rocket can fit. Multiple launches and in-space assembly have proven successful in the past, but there could be another way. Assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University Zachary Manchester is considering ways to integrate recent advances in mechanical metamaterials into a lightweight deployable structure design. Such a structure could be launched inside a single rocket fairing and then deploy autonomously to a final size of the length of 10 football fields.

Space agriculture
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-space-agriculture-boldly-food-grown.html


Suit test
https://wonderfulengineering.com/na...imate-test-by-shooting-them-with-a-giant-gun/
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-soft-tough-biohybrid-material-cartilage.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-health-wearable-battery.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-stickers-body.html

How space can help with disasters
https://disasterscharter.org/web/guest/home;jsessionid=B25F0314CC496367A37A7A805213F92F.APP1
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-bioremediation-material-chemicals.html

The Woz is getting into space!
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2021/09/13/that-other-apple-guy-woz-is-up-to-something-in-space/
Data security
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-twin-physically-unclonable-functions-pufs.html

Low-energy computing
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-hardware-faster-artificial-intelligence-energy.html

LIDAR
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-quantum-inspired-approach-lidar-resolution.html

Microbatteries
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-dual-plating-strategy-rapidly-microbatteries.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-electron-room-temperature-devices-efficient.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-atomically-smooth-gold-crystals-compress-nanophotonic.html

Anti-reflective coating--sound absorber
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-anti-reflective-coating-blocks.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-eco-friendly-absorbers-seaweed.html

Synhelion
https://interestingengineering.com/...a-catalyst-for-a-major-synthetic-fuel-upgrade

Knots in the resonator
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-resonator-elegant-math-humble-physics.html
"The resonances twist around each other. It's awesome," Harris said. "It means any time you tune an instrument, you're making a braid. And if you tune it so that you keep two of the resonances equal, you're making a knot."
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-music-making-aerosols.html

The universe model
https://wonderfulengineering.com/sc...tion-of-the-universe-and-you-can-download-it/
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-merger-black-hole-neutron-star.html

Vacuum standard
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-primary-standard-vacuum.html

Simple actuators for complex tasks
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-deformable-soft-robots-heart-mimic.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-tiny-motors-big.html

https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-complex-motions-simple-actuators.html


Designer matter next?
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-chemists-bonds-atoms-molecule.html

A team of researchers from IBM Research Europe, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela and the University of Regensburg has changed the bonds between the atoms in a single molecule for the first time.
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-technique-physicists-interactions-neutrons-atom.html

Carbon Disulfide and silicon dioxide weigh about the same---maybe one can be shook into another.

Imaging the small
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-sustained-stable-raman-imaging-large.html

Electronics in stones
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-future-smart-homes-powered-electronics.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-nanoparticles-historic-porous.html

New polymers and batteries--add water
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-simple-method-versatile-porous-polymers.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-disposable-paper-battery.html

Hyperloop
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-musk-hyperloop-captivates-decade-setbacks.html

Thermoelectrics
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-efficient-stable-eco-friendly-thermoelectric-material.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-thermally-regenerative-battery-ample-energy.html
Thermally regenerative ammonia batteries can produce electricity on demand from low-grade waste heat. A new process for creating these batteries improves their stability and affordability and may help address the country's growing grid-scale energy storage problem, according to a team led by Penn State researchers.
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-thermodynamic-geometry-optimize-microscopic-finite-time.html

Getting the heat out for miniature electronics
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-dont-hot-thermal-conductivity-switching-bottleneck.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-necrobotic-spiders-dead-legs-puff.html

Catalysts and green energy
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-catalysts-efficient-precious-metals.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-nontraditional-sources-green-hydrogen.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-fully-scalable-all-perovskite-tandem-solar.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07...itting-photoelectrodes-solar-to-hydrogen.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-focusing-oxygen-reduction-reaction-efficient.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-autonomous-synthesis-magnetic-materials.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-stand-alone-solar-farm-crete-graphene.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-methanol-biotransformation-enables-efficient-production.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-bread-beer-microbes-ferment-carbon.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-sustainable-electro-synthesis-esters.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-adding-layer-metal-fluoride-solar.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-evidence-deuterium-metallic-state-high.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-catalyst-chemicals-sunlight.html

Bubble---bubble--boil
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-gas-nanobubbles-solid-liquid-gas-reactions.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-surfaces-efficiently.html

Electrons and light spin together
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-electrons.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-quantum-technology-constrain-particles.html

Nano-freezer
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-nanokelvin-microwave-freezer-molecules.html

Acoustic cloak--for rocket bodies perhaps?
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-acoustics-underwater-carpet-cloak.html

Robot assembly lines
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-assembly-line-robots-shift-gears.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-soft-robotic-actuator-scaled-centimeter.html

Friction--the enemy
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-friction-unavoidable-enemy.html

Sensor computer tech
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-08-silicon-image-sensor.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-08-bits-p-bits-closer-probabilistic.html

coatings
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-durable-coating-covid-virus-germs.html

quantum heat pump...equations
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-quantum-tool-physicists.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-master-equation-boost-quantum-technologies.html

Light source
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-strategy-blue-material.html

The wall
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-eye-popping-saudi-prince-unveils-mirrored.html

House these caves over
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-pits-harbor.html

No nuke damage?
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-evidence-genetic-legacy-children-uk.html

 

I adjusted my design so that you don't need to build a second cylinder to balance it out.

Just one Cylinder can do the job just fine with proper balancing of all rotational forces from all the nested cylinders for zero net angular momentum.

 

It might be nice to have two—with the back-ups you mentioned…what with the redundancy….the view…and political divisions

 

What to do with bodies on a Mars colony does have to be addressed though. The materials are too valuable. Cremation would take too much energy, burial would be very difficult, and decomposition is not going to happen any time soon.

As far as humanure and other waste, i'm sure they can find better uses than building materials. If people are devout followers of religions that have specific ways of handling bodies, they're going to have to learn new rules or stay on Earth and party like it's 99.

But as usual, I find the idea of early settlement of Mars to be extremely difficult and probably unappealing to almost anyone who could actually afford the trip.