"Real" ringworlds

[Primogenitor]

The problem is, if you can build one of these, why do you need it? You would probably have mastered mass-energy convserion, intergalactic travel, and many other things. So why go through all the effort? Yes one of these has the area of 3 million planets, but thats only a fraction of all the planets in the galaxy.

[Primogenitor]

sphereworlds: a how-to guide

A typical sphereworld is a solid shell, however without anti-grav everything falls into the sun. If you spin it then all the atmosphere moves to the equator and it bulges. You could cover the inside with solar cells and inhabit the outside.

Another aproach is to use a large network of orbiting platforms, like satalites. They dont have gravity and you would need a lot to completly block the sun complelely however. Also if one crashed then you would get a chain reaction.

My personal favourite would be to build a set of ringworlds, all at diffferent angles within each other.

[Primogenitor]

In a game context, the size of a ringworld would vary depending on species and/or sun. A cold species would want a larger ring/cooler sun etc. Ideally you would only have the ringworld and one sun in a system, plus warp points. However, the ringworld should have no mineral content. After all you only have what you put there in the first place!

Ive experimented with pre-generated ringworlds in a system. Its not too bad but either they have to be gas/none (they apear in other places otherwise) or you have to re-write all the systems that have planets of any/any/any type to be more specific. I cant find any appropriate pictures though, Ive resorted to copying the star background and drawing a circle on it with paint!

[Gwaihir]

One reason to build one is to have 3 million very high quality, custom-built planets, all conveniently located in the same solar system, so that you can do whatever you want to do on a massive scale without needing to waste time and energy shuttling stuff back and forth between 2 million star systems. Also, you can do as Niven's Ringworld engineers did, and build in a bunch of ecosystems, installing all sorts of living things in a huge zoo, where each exhibit is a whole planet in size, with plenty of geography to explore.

Plus, if you can, why not? Having mastered the universe, sounds like a fun project to keep you busy for a while. You're already able to play god on a little scale, creating custom living organisms and such, so why not go all out and make a custom planet, only make it bigger and better than the planets! Be good practice if you want to start building netowrks of stars, too - start small

or better yet, neworks of black holes - i bet you could get a lot of energy (or *something*) out of an orchestrated system of black holes, somehow.

[Dingocat85]

Originally posted by Gwaihir:
[Responding to why an empire would build a ringworld in real life:] If you can, why not? Having mastered the universe, sounds like a fun project to keep you busy for a while.

Your empire would never get the chance...there would always be some sort of problem or another facing the empire, and unless you had a "purpose" to building a Ringworld, you'd ***never*** get it built.
Every single living organism on this planet (so naturally, every single living organism in the universe aswell) wants to do only one thing: Find and fix problems. Evolution long ago realized that the universe was very, very far from perfect conditions for any living organism...so, the only way to have an organism maintain (and maybe even proliferate) its species' survival, would be to have it endlessly looking for, and fixing problems.
So, no matter how happy your population got in real life, there would always be someone that was unhappy, wanting their problem to be fixed. If you stifled their unhappiness, feelings of discontent would build up, until - you guessed it - Revolution time.
Look at it this way: Your ears are designed to hear, so if there's no sound, they won't work. Your tastebuds are designed to taste, so if there's nothing to taste, they won't work. Organisms are designed to fix problems - so if there are no problems to fix, the organism won't work.

Here's a quote from The Matrix, that backs me up:

Agent Smith: "Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program...Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from."

Originally posted by Gwaihir:
or better yet, neworks of black holes - i bet you could get a lot of energy (or *something*) out of an orchestrated system of black holes, somehow."

The only thing physicists see as a use for black holes (besides a big trash can ) is going forward in time, in a sense. Assuming you have enough fuel to do this, if you approach a black hole at a specific angle (and at a fast enough speed that you avoid getting sucked in), you'll get whipped around the black hole (very fast, since the gravitational pull of a black hole is so high), and get slung away from it, traveling at incredible speeds.
The faster you're traveling in space, the slower time moves for you - in other words, 1 second for you on your fast ship, would be longer than 1 second on Earth - in this example, 1 second on your ship would result in a good deal of time passing on earth.
When your ship finally slows down and starts moving at more reasonable speeds, you will have hardly aged, while the rest of the everyone & everything else will have aged considerably.

[ May 14, 2003, 12:19: Message edited by: Dingocat85 ]

[dogscoff]

OK, so apparently a Niven-esque ringworld is technically impossible since the materials required cannot physically exist.

How about an Orbital from the Culture novels? They look like ringworlds, except that they don't encircle the star, they just orbit it in the same way a planet does. They are much smaller (only a few hundred thousand or million miles across, if memory serves, although that still offers many multiples Earth's surface area) and because the star isn't at the centre of the ring, all the night/day problems are avoided straight off.

[Primogenitor]

I havnt read the culture novels so im not too sure about this but here goes. I got some background from the site below, by banks himself (apparently)
culture orbitals and stuff

A bit of basic research shows that it would have to be as strong as a ringworld. I like the idea of building it from pairs of plates and cables(sound familiar?), you could apply that to ringworlds too, to a degree. An orbital would be useable if unfinished, you would just have to have temporary walls around the edge. Ringworlds could be built from orbiting plates, but couldnt be spun at full speed untill completed.

Each orbital holds 20 earths surface and 1 earth can be made into 1500 orbitals. By contrast a ringworld is made from 250 earths and has 3 million times the surface area. So by orbitals 1 earth => 30000 earths and by ringworld 1 earth => 12000 earths. So orbitals are more efficient (in terms of surface area/mass ratio) and easier to make (cos smaller).

I have found one reaseon for contruction, going back to the original dyson sphere. Since all known energy is derived from the sun (eventually) to achieve maximum efficency you would have to cover all the sun with solar panels to harness it to maximum capacity. This is a sphereworld (without being lived on). It wouldnt have to be very large, only to about the orbit of mercury at most. Surely it would be easier to start a small star separatly though? cold fusion, for example