"Real" ringworlds

[Aloofi]

Maybe a ringworld should occupy the 8 sectors around an star......

.

[Dingocat85]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
Maybe a ringworld should occupy the 8 sectors around an star......

Yeah, that would be cool...instead of 8 planets in a circle, it would actually be one planet occupying 8 sectors . The sun would become part of the Ringworld when it was generated (to prevent solar bombs/supernova-ing stars)...but since the ringworld doesn't really block Solar light, the Ringworld should still generate solar effects - meaning Solar Panels, and that Crystalline stuff that's sun-dependent, would still work.

However, a Sphereworld - which totally encompasses a sun - would totally surround a sun, so it'd look like a big Sphere in the middle of your Galaxy ....Unfortunately, since the Sphereworld completely encompasses the Sun, building one should "disable" the sun, and keep solar panels/those crystalline generator things from working ...UNLESS you have a bi/trinary solar system.

That brings up more problems ...if you have three suns in a system that are very close together, and built three Ring/Sphereworlds, they'd overlap - not good. So, if a ring/sphereworld will ever take up the 8 sectors surrounding a sun (including the sector with the sun), there will have to be a hardcoded requirement: *NOTHING* can be generated within 8 sectors of a Sun, not even another sun.

(Another option with bi-trinary solar systems, is to give them the ability to build binary & trinary Ring/sphereworlds - but I severely doubt anything that huge would ever be implemented

[ May 13, 2003, 02:15: Message edited by: Dingocat85 ]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

niven did a nice listing of various big stuff in one of his books, including how to get a ringworld to move, magnetic, spinning, sun for fuel. am i to brief sometimes?

[ May 13, 2003, 04:31: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Aloofi]

Maybe an sphere world should be as big as a Red Giant, but then of course it would overlap the other planets.....
One question, when an sphere world is build, isn't it suppose to block the sunlight completely, thus making all the other planets in the solar system too cold to be habitable without domes?

[Primogenitor]

A bit of background on ringworlds etc.

Niven did write 3 very good books based on a ringworld, including all the physics required etc. Also spawned an RPG and several other books.

It basicly works out that the RW needs to be made of a material as strong as an atomic nucleus (imposisble). To generate gravity its spun at 770 million miles per second around the sun. To do this requires as much energy as our sun produces in several billion years and is therefore impossible. Day/night is generated by panels (Shadow squares) on an inner orbit. Both these panels and the ringworld are not in stable orbits; i.e. if an asteroid hits either panels or RW they would eventually drift and crash into the sun, or each other. This also happens if there is a gravity disturbance, by another planet for example. Corrected by giant thrusters of some sort. Atmosphere is held in by walls 1600 km high at the endge, however if anything punctures the bottom, all the air is forced out and the resuting thrust crashes it into the star. Again.
It has a mass that is only about 350 times that of earth, it is about a million miles wide and about 600 mllion miles long, all habitable. Thats about 3 million earths! Big, very big.

[Desdinova]

if you can put one more impossible in there we can all go have breakfast at Milliways.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

we couldn't do it, but someone with 90 million years of research probably could. if you could find some way of lowering inertia....