OT: Ceres more interesting than previously thought
 

Found this interesting link at Adastra. I've always felt a little sorry for Ceres. Just because it's in the same orbit as the asteroid belt ppl call it an asteroid. I think it should be a planet, and now astronomers are coming round to my way of thinking:

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/new.../2005/27/text/

OK, lets strap some boosters to that baby, drag it into a more sensible orbit, let all that ice melt, install a bit of atmosphere and then build ourselves a planet-wide low-grav water park and whale sanctuary!

Re: OT: Ceres more interesting than previously tho
 

Let's not forget the most important reason - Slushie Mining Port.

Re: OT: Ceres more interesting than previously tho
 

Interesting...thanks for the link.

At 580 miles diameter, Ceres makes a mighty small planet, and size-wise it's more like many planetary moons. But I suppose, being that it's in orbit around the sun rather than one of the planets, it might qualify. The question then becomes: How big is big enough?

Re: OT: Ceres more interesting than previously tho
 

It's about big enough to be circular. It orbits the sun all by itself. Even has a thin atmosphere (probably). It's a planet, I tell you.

I wonder how much of an atmosphere it could hold if we were to introduce one. What if we were to spin it up to get Earth-like gravity? Would that help, or would we have to dome the entire planet to prevent the atmosphere from escaping? It being only a few hundred Ks across, could we put the entire world into a some kind of giant "buckybubble" instead? Engineering on larger scales- ie thousand-kilometre space elevators- are (apparently) feasible with fullerenes. Bubbling Ceres ought to be relatively easy.


youu'd have to genetically engineer ocean-dwelling bacteria or something that produced blue, rasberry flavour goop...

Mmm... genetically-engineered goop-flavoured blue space-slushie...

Re: OT: Ceres more interesting than previously tho
 

Except pluto is 14 times bigger, and it's status as a planet is often debated. With several objects larger than this outside plutos orbit not getting planetary status, it's unlikely that Ceres will get it. The only thing it has going for it is it is on the same orbital plane.

Re: OT: Ceres more interesting than previously tho
 

Well, 'spinning' to generate artificial gravity works because a mass is reacting against centripetal accelleration... so if you hollowed out the inside, this would work. But then, using gravity to hold in atmosphere becomes a moot point, doesn't it? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: OT: Ceres more interesting than previously tho
 

Oh yeah, that does make sense.

It fits in with the bubble idea though. I hereby present:
Crazy-assed "it would never work" scifi mega-engineering project #16b: Dogscoff's Orbital Mega-Aquarium.

1- Move Ceres into a nice, warm orbit. Earth orbit would be nice and convenient, as long as you don't cause any nasty tides back home or anything.

2- While Ceres is in transit, tunnel underneath the ice and start mining the rest of Ceres' material. Store this material in orbit for use in step three.

3- Build a huge, transparent, coin-shaped 'bubble' that completely encompasses Ceres. Dimensions are up to you, I have no idea what you'd need. Your bubble can't be spherical, because you're not going to have any gravity at the poles. The coin must be orbitting in such as way that neither the 'heads' nor 'tails' faces are ever exposed to direct sunlight. Build your docking points and airlocks on the 'heads' and 'tails' faces. If you know how deep your ocean is going to be, you'll know how far from the rim to put these. Meanwhile, the sun is melting Ceres' ice into a vast ocean.

4- Spin the whole affair up to a speed where centripetal force exceeds gravity. Your axis is through the centres of the heads and tails faces. All the water will fly off the surface of Ceres and stick to the curved inside edge of your coin, creating a doughnut-shaped ocean. If you were swimming in this ocean, you'd notice that sunlight is coming up from underneath you and the surface of (what's left of) Ceres itself is hanging ominously above your head.

5- Pull a few appropriate chunks of rocks off of what is left of Ceres, blast them into tiny bits (so they dissolve quicker) and then dump them in the water. This will give you salt water (there's nothing wrong with a freshwater ocean, mind you) but more importantly it will also release some of the water's oxygen to give you something to breathe. I think. You will probably have to tinker with the atmosphere quite a bit to get it breathable.

6- That's it. What you've got is effectively a miniature, enclosed Banksian Orbital, although the way it spins and collects sunlight isn't quite the same. Build yourself a few boats, introduce some plankton and fish and stuff and you're away. If you wanted, and if there's actually anything left of it, you could probably put some upside-down buildings up on the lump of Ceres still hovering in the sky above you. (you fly up and dock on the bottom of the the penthouse, then take the lift up to the ground floor http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif). Alternatively, just remove what remains of it completely, bit by bit, using the material to build luxury liners, surfboards and spaceships. This will make your coin seem lighter and airier, much more Feng-shui than a huge, ugly, scarred and pitted rock o' Doom hovering perpetually in the sky.

Problems:

A- Step one- moving something as big as Ceres from one orbit to another is probably not quite as easy as I make it sound. However I believe it is theoretically feasible, given access to insane quantities of energy and decent spaceflight technology.

B- Step two isn't actually too hard. We might even have the tech to do this now, if someone else could help with the tricky bits (ie steps one, three and four)

C- Step three could be a problem. Materials strong enough for this (and transparent to boot) might not even be possible, let alone obtainable in such massive quantites. Remember your bubble has to support the weight of an entire ocean, it must be rustproof, and be able to withstand the kind of abuse that space throws at it on a regular basis. (radiation, impacts etc)

D- Step four is kind of tricky too by our current standards, but if you can manage steps one and three, this one really is a doddle. In theory, the minimum necessary rotation speed to shed all the water ought to be slightly lower than the speed that would tear Ceres into little pieces, smash your bubble into atoms and give the Earth a pretty planetary ring.

Assuming you've carried out steps one to six successfully, you'll still have some problems.

E- Light. How deep would the ocean be? Too deep to allow any sunlight up to the surface? If this was the case, you could always let some water out until you reach the desired depth. However, you'll always have the problem of keeing the ocean floor clean: As crap builds up down there, it blocks light.

F- Radiation. A certain depth of water would be required to filter out unwanted solar radiation. (That's why you don't want the coin's "heads" or "tails" faces exposed to direct sunlight). This is fine and dandy, but it doens't stop cosmic radiation coming through the heads and tails faces. Maybe these faces could be made opaque. Also, while solar radiation will keep your aquarium's "glass" clear of light-blocking algae, deep-diving creatures (whales, for instance) introduced into the ocean might well get sunburned- not to mention confused- by the sunlight below them. Microwaved Mutant Humpback blubber, anyone?

G- Gravity. I don't know how fast you'd have to spin up your coin to get comfortable gravity, but it's likely to cause some interesting tidal and wind effects.

H- Weather. So the ocean is getting warmed from the bottom up, which ought to create some wierd tidal effects. Also, any water vapour released is going to go... where? Would it all drift inwards and collect in the coin's centre of gravity, freeze and sit there indefinitely, or would it condense and rain back down before it got that far? It all depends of the temperature distributions inside the coin, I guess.

I- Day and night. Is it "day" when the sun is closest to you (ie under your feet) or when it's overhead, with a thousand odd miles of atmosphere, possibly the shrivelled remains of Ceres and a more distant layer of ocean between you and it? How much light would there be on the surface anyway? I think a perpetual (but delightfully sparkly, especially if you introduce some of those luminescent algae) dusky half-light is most likely. You're probably rotating far too fast for any clearly defined day/ night cycle to be comfortable anyway, so maybe this is for the best.

My brain hurts now.

Re: OT: Ceres more interesting than previously tho
 

Step 3 and 4 can be simplified by just reducing the spin.

All you really need is enough spin to keep the water from splashing the remnant of ceres, and with a very slow spin rate you minimize the forces on the outside.

Also, you don't need to spin ceres itself.
Try placing solar sails and/or solar powered ion drives around the outside of the coin for nearly free spin-up thrust.
Use a pump to push water up from ceres to near the edge of the coin, so it catches and starts spinning. The angular momentum will be taken from the coin, but the sails and drives will spin it up again over time.

As you continue to pump, it gets easier and easier to move the water, since the gravity of ceres is decreasing.


If you build just a thin strip of the coin first, you can then winch rocks up from either side of Ceres for use in building more parts of the coin. Cheaper than rockets.
You should also be able to pick out elements to fuel a solar powered ion drive. You'd certainly need a lot of them, but ion drives have great specific impulse, and you have lots of time to work on the project.

Re: OT: Ceres more interesting than previously tho
 

Hell, you mean my crazy-assed idea might even work? Nice one S_J, I'm going to start on it first thing tomorrow. Well, after breakfast, obviously.

Anyone got a stellar manipulation barge I could borrow?

Re: OT: Ceres more interesting than previously tho
 

Oh, and as for the radiation thing... It shouldn't take too much water to block the rads.

What if you just build a double-coin, and fill the space between them with water?

As a bonus, that water barrier will help shield the inside habitat from small asteroid impacts. AND keep the sun-facing surface cool!
You can then let the coin face the sun if you like.

Alternatively, what if you set your coin so that it is not quite edge-on to the sun? Align it so the shadow of the sun-ward dirt bottom does not fall on the far edge of the coin.

At "noon" you'd see the sun just to the left of the skyring.
At midnight, you'd get a few rays glancing up from below only if you are on the far right side of the ring.