I have that book somewhere. Nice illustrations.
I remember that image from somewhere as a kid. Do you remember the name?
I don’t remember the image having a name, but it’s from Gerard Oneill’s book The High Frontier, Human Colonies in Space. - see OP’s link.
Looked like O’Neill’s work. That’s the same book O’Neill Cylinders are from
aaaand i just learned who i stole that joke from. i’m going to have to thank him.
The neat thing about them:
First, the pair of habitats can be rolled by operating the cylinders as momentum wheels. If one habitat’s rotation is slightly off, the two cylinders will rotate about each other. Once the plane formed by the two axes of rotation is perpendicular in the roll axis to the orbit, then the pair of cylinders can be yawed to aim at the Sun by exerting a force between the two sunward bearings. Pushing the cylinders away from each other will cause both cylinders to gyroscopically precess, and the system will yaw in one direction, while pushing them towards each other will cause yaw in the other direction. The counter-rotating habitats have no net gyroscopic effect, and so this slight precession can continue throughout the habitat’s orbit, keeping it aimed at the Sun. This is a novel application of control moment gyroscopes.
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder
Thanks!
The novel Neuromancer also prominently features an O’Neill Cylinder space station.
Looks nice until you realize it is full of Flood.
Reminds me of the Presidium from Mass Effect 1 and the Stranger from Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye.
Mass Effect is cool, but people need to play Outer Wilds.
It’s cool, but it would never look like that.
Maybe more valuable in the way it shows what we think the ideal situation on earth would look like…
Even for earth this is way too suburban imo. Does not make sense to have everyone spread out that way for multiple reasons.
Solarpunk development in my view should be as green as our suburbs today but much denser to save on cost, keep people connected, and save room for wild nature.
Agree, for sure. Still, the dream of chill accessible green space is real and should not be ignored. I think low-medium rise, high density with lots of interspersed green spaces is the optimal for cities. I think it can be done such that most land is much greener and more connected than modern suburbs.
Yeah I think we are largely advocating for the same thing. Central business districts that are all concrete and glass are pretty dystopian. But medium dense cities with car infrastructure replaced by green space would be perfect.
and save room for wild nature.
Arguably space habitat is the ultimate way to achieve that goal on earth :-)
Well, if you assume that the air recycling will be done by plants, you are going to have a need for a huge biosphere and probably for a lot of oceanic biome. If you plan on having an agriculture, if you plan on having pollinating insects, you are going to need a huge biomass.
You’re going to have far more nature than you will have humans.
This setting usually assumes that you have a fast transport network built in the core infrastructure. So being spread out is less of a problem, especially if you have free electricity through solar panel. That means that moving stuff around on electric motor is going to be basically free.
I still think O’Neill was probably right, we could do this if we decided we needed or wanted to bad enough. There’s issues to figure out, but that’s just science. I got hooked on the idea of space colonization when as a kid in the 70s reading an article in a National Geographic issue exploring the idea, using a fictional opener of someone writing back home about living on one. They used some of Davis’ works there.
I think the issue for space colonization is there’s no real practical reason to do it beyond that it’s cool and interesting. There’s still absolutely tons of largely unused land in deserts, polar climates, and even the ocean that are far more accessible and habitable than space is.
Due to low gravity and few pathogens, it might be something people will do for retirement. You can probably expand the time of healthy active years well into your 80/90ties that way.
Maybe… or would your body simply rot away faster since you aren’t using it as much? I would be inclined to think the latter.
I suspect they’d need to do some power lifting to avoid accelerated osteoporosis in the lower gravity, as the bones do indeed require to be put under strain and shock to stay healthy.
Depends on how active you are and how low the gravity is. A lower gravity like on Mars would be probably be more helpful than harmful for elderly people.
Even with the technological issues of space colonization solved, how long before the unsolved social issues cause it to come crashing down?
Given the way society is currently set up, if we pursue space colonization then it’ll become a luxury for billionaires to escape an unlivable planet. Worse, the hoards of the capital will have even less desires to fix things.
(This is not some doomer or accelerationist take, just hating on billionaires.)
This is my assumption about what’s likely to occur as well. And a song about it: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Mars for the Rich
Ringworld!
Firing Terbinafine Lasers
Outer Wilds feels
That has a strong Minecraft vibe
Your mind went to Minecraft first before Halo? Huh.
Mine went to
Tap for spoiler
outer wilds
😁
I don’t remember a ring world in the outer wilds. Maybe a slight similarity to the twin hourglass plants.
It’s in the DLC, but frankly it wasn’t that good imo. The base game was easily top 10 games I ever played, the DLC I didn’t even finish.
I always meant to buy the dlc. Was wondering how they would even incorporate new stuff as the original is just one long puzzle. Good to know i didn’t miss much. Maybe I’ll catch it on good deal one day. I did very much enjoy the base game. That ending lives rent free in my head. Falling through the nothing was a tripp.
Personally i really enjoyed the outer wilds DLC and would really recommend it, yea it’s not quite as good as the base game but it’s like a self contained puzzle world that is still clearly made in the same style as the base game and if you want more of that type of puzzling you can’t really go wrong with it imho.
Yeah but that self contained is just what makes it feel confined to me, I’m missing the “there’s a whole interconnected world to explore” vibe of the base game.
It’s not bad by any means though, maybe I shouldn’t have played them in succession and left a break instead.
Yeah I don’t regret buying it to sponsor the devs, but I missed the “one long interconnected puzzle” aspect. It does feel a little tacked on afterwards (because of course, it can’t be any other way).
It’s not bad, it just feels too confined to me after playing the open world base game.
Less depressing version of Zone of the Enders be like
I mean unless you’re the lucky one who gets to find Jehuty…
Seeing such a post upvoted on solarpunk gives me hope.
I don’t think the space race and space habitat is the way forward, but there is a future timeline that is sustainable and technologically advanced.
I am happy that some people still believe in it.
