Pre-Christmas Chat with Aaron

[Baron Munchausen]

Suicide Junkie said:
A ring around your planet... falling into the atmosphere...

Ok. First question: Why are you using your cables to hold up the ring when it would be easier and safer to have the ring spinning in orbit and holding its own weight up? Just imagine the mechanical stresses on the sections between the cables.

First of all, the theory of 'space elevators' and the stations that could be at the top of them is that they are held in place by centrifugal forces. The excess force is necessary to allow things to be sent up the cables. If you have a complete ring -- which would be a really huge structure but we are already used to thinking of stellar Ringworlds and so it doesn't seem so huge by comparison -- it wouldn't be stable anymore than the Ringworld around a star. A solid ring around a star or a planet would be pushed and pulled in all sorts of inconveniant ways just by virtue of being a single piece instead of a free floating body that can vary its orbit somewhat without hitting things. The cables are still needed to hold it in place or it would lose 'center' on the planet. For the stellar Ringworld Larry Niven had to invent those 'thrusters' that figured in one of the later stories.

[Suicide Junkie]

If you've got cables connecting to the surface, you can easily use them to nudge it in the right direction and keep it in the right spot.
The point being that with your ring spinning, and a small net inward pull by the cables, the pieces of the ring will drift to a slightly higher orbit and the rubble will diffuse from there.
It will take a lot of energy to deorbit the ring parts. The enemy force might as well glass you with "conventional" weapons designed for the task instead

[Kamog]

Instead of cables, if you had solid towers supporting the ring, then you won't have to worry about the ring moving around.

[Baron Munchausen]

Kamog said:
Instead of cables, if you had solid towers supporting the ring, then you won't have to worry about the ring moving around.

That's even more difficult than the cables, though. The stresses on cables for just a planetary space elevator are getting close to the maximum possible that ordinary matter can handle. That's why they need to develop carbon nanotubes so they can have the molecular bond itself as the strength of the cables. A rigid structure would be much more demanding. Niven had to invent a fictional material (scrith) to explain how the stellar Ringworld was even possible.

[Baron Munchausen]

Suicide Junkie said:
If you've got cables connecting to the surface, you can easily use them to nudge it in the right direction and keep it in the right spot.
The point being that with your ring spinning, and a small net inward pull by the cables, the pieces of the ring will drift to a slightly higher orbit and the rubble will diffuse from there.
It will take a lot of energy to deorbit the ring parts. The enemy force might as well glass you with "conventional" weapons designed for the task instead

In the sense of decelerating the ring parts so they 'fall' out of orbit, yes that would take a lot of energy directed in just the right way. But if the ring loses its centering on the planet then the ring will simply collide with the planet at full speed.

[Suicide Junkie]

So, simply hit the self destruct button, and chop it into blocks that orbit freely.

Or better, just unlock the pieces so you can put 'em back together when you have a chance to rebuild.

[Fyron]

If anybody has any questions they would like to see asked, but will be unable to attend the session, feel free to post them now, and they will probably be asked.

[HEMAN]

Thanks Imperator Fyron,if you could ask the question;
(1)Will sev operate on low end systems,Like my P300mhz 64ram 16mb graphic card voodoo.
(2)Will there be a addon AI Modder?.Like,david g se4 modder 1.74.

[Timstone]

The DavidG modder isn't an AI modder. It's a component modder.

Edit:
I've send my questions to David E. Gervais already. I hope he can ask them for me.

[Ragnarok]

HEMAN said:
Thanks Imperator Fyron,if you could ask the question;
(1)Will sev operate on low end systems,Like my P300mhz 64ram 16mb graphic card voodoo.
(2)Will there be a addon AI Modder?.Like,david g se4 modder 1.74.

Heman, the common reply to your first question is that it will most likely take similar specs to Starfury to run SEV. Those requirements are: System Requirements Pentium 500MHz or better class machine
Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP
32 megabytes RAM or better
1024x768 or better screen resolution
16 bit color display or better
DirectX 7.0 (or better)
A video card with 3D acceleration
400 megs hard drive space
A sound card capable of supporting MP3 and DirectSound playback. Sound card must be DirectX 7.0 (or better) compatible.

You will most likely need at least those requirements if not a little bit more to run the game smoothly.