Monday, 13 December 2010
Planetary engineering
5 comments:
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Even more amusing than Gerard O'Neill's L-5 fantasies. He never got around to explaining how you can plant a pressurized habitat in a Lagrangian point without the cloud of space debris that naturally congregates there turning it into a large-economy-sized sieve.
ReplyDeletecheers
eon
Gotta start small: http://www.iase.cc/openair.htm
ReplyDeleteAs for how to avoid the space debris, build all the components on the Moon and then assemble them in orbit. Leave the detritus behind.
David
ReplyDeleteIf I recall Larry Niven did develop a means to prevent the Ringworld from drifting into the sun. He believed any changes in the Ringworld orbit could be offset by use of Bussard Ramjets thatg would be strategically placed around the structure (see Ringworld Engineers).
George Everson
Jason;
ReplyDeleteThe debris I was referring to is natural. It's already there, and has been for millions of years. Orbital dynamics and gravity in action.
Putting anything big and fragile in a Lagrangian point is sort of like a duck making a low pass over
a bunch of guys with shotguns on opening day.
cheers
eon
eon, that's what active meteor defense is for! Which, conveniently enough, will double nicely as a defense shield for near-space interdiction:-).
ReplyDelete