Posts tagged space-constructs
Eskimos in space! Let's say, just for contextual concerns, that a band of water-rich comet miners want to use water-ice found in the outer Solar System as the main structural and functional compone...
Dyson spheres are a staple of science fiction. Solar system spanning megastructures, they represent a significant effort by whatever species chose to build them, and a significant mass moved into t...
I mean in the far future megascale be advanced enough to allow the construction of a ring world around Earth or around a low mass star( a red dwarf for exemple). If yes, how big Earth would look f...
Is it possible to have a structurally self-supporting hollow Earth where the weight of the shell is balanced against the atmospheric pressure inside? It must be human habitable (gravity is nice b...
First, yes I was inspired by this question: "How do you check if a room behind a door aboard a spaceship has an atmosphere/pressure?" I wanted to take the scenario further, instead of asking how t...
Let's say that at an asteroid mining site, the workers live in a rotating wheel space station that can produce 1g. They use Earth's 24 hour day, and for 8 hours a day, people go to the asteroid to ...
In the question Wind turbines in space The user asks about using solar wind to rotate turbine like things in order to get energy. Most answers say that using them to get energy would not work beca...
The development of microgravity cuisine is an interesting topic, especially when it comes to transferring simple processes like the successful thermochemical processing of muscle tissues (e.g. barb...
I've been trying to create a water planet with certain aspects. I wanted it to have a breathable atmosphere and to be a microgravity environment. I'm developing humanoid characters that can breathe...
It is a somewhat common limitation of spaceships in some universes, that they cannot go underwater. They can land on the planet, take off into orbit, hyperdrive into the next star system, but they ...
There was an orbital station; a huge torus, as known from sci-fi. It was a luxurious place for people from dusty planets to relax at, and spend hard-earned money in environments resembling Earth fr...
A McKendree cylinder is a rotating space station that is 920 km (580 miles) in diameter, and 4600 km (2900 miles) in length. This version would orbit the sun at 1 AU (at the same distance as earth...
Inspired by this question about a fantasy World Tree, I thought I'd ask about the science fiction equivalent: a Dyson Tree. Dyson Trees are a living tree planted in a comet, which when fully grown ...
Please reality check my place from which one could watch time outside move faster... A space station constantly moving at near light speed. The space station is created by a race with superior te...
This is a bit hard for me to put into to words, but it is an idea I have been working on for a few days, with input from a few other people. I have actually brought up part of this in a previous qu...
I am trying to create a planet with low gravity that keeps an atmosphere and has an ocean that covers the whole planet. Basically I am developing beings (separately from this question) who can live...
The classic example of a cylindrical space habitat, Clarke's Rama, has a 10 km-wide ring of water at the middle. Most depictions of this O'Neill-style of habitat do something similar, placing a lar...
Some of what I read in How could a 4D organism influence events in our world made me think in a different direction about a question I asked before. I'm trying to create a large sphere shaped fiel...
Inspired by Spaceship orbiting a black hole under the event horizon - a prison where no one escapes, I was wondering if it is possible to make a space elevator that goes down into a black hole. In...
If a Galaxy-wide Civilization like Star Wars were to build a Jupiter brain or Matrioksha brain, would it probably cost more to build then the Death Star? In Star Wars the Darth Star was over a tri...
Imagine that we start expanding the International Space Station until it becomes a ring encircling the whole Earth. Then we started widening the ring until it met at both poles, forming an orbital ...
Using this handy dandy graph, I estimate that by the time climate change forces a response we will need to reverse 2° Celsius of heating. The method for temperature control is described in here ...
In this recently asked question on a large, sun blocking object it is pointed out in the comments that there would be ~10e7 N of thrust from the sun due to solar wind. My question is does there ex...
How would a horizon inside of a ring or a toroid look like? As if a planet's surface was concave, instead of convex, how far away would the horizon appear? Im trying to get a handle on what the in...
In the near future humanity discovers a spatial anomaly at a point located somewhere between the orbits of mars and earth. This anomaly quickly induces delirium in anybody who approaches it and eve...
Rain happens when the pressure of moist air drops enough to form droplets and the droplets get heavy enough to fall. The trouble that I see is that the pressure will probably drop off slower than ...
I'm writing a roleplaying game scenario set on a space station, and was wondering how the lifts (elevators) would work? Specifically, the people who built the station are very health and safety con...
For a SciFi project I work on I have a space-station orbiting earth that uses an 8 hour 3 shift system for its staff. Each shift is assigned to one-third of the countries and organizations on earth...
Using only existing technologies, can we shoot 4-5 kg bullets into a stable, specific Low Earth Orbit (at least 1000 km)? The bullets don't contain "hardware" such as electronics, so acceleration ...
My graphic novel involves a large flying city on a Venus-like planet. Yes, I have done my research, and for various reasons it will be an aerostat-hibrid megastructure: a metaphor for the elaborate...
Everyone loves a Dyson Sphere or a Ring World, so much more room to enjoy than a traditional round planetoid, it's all about space efficiency for the advanced civilizations. There are however a nu...
Imagine alien prospector wanting to build "space highway" through our solar system. There could be another route, but the one leading to our system is "the best" Such prospector also wants to use ...
Let's say you've either cloned yourself a native population (the ethical option) or taken a bunch of volunteers and wiped all their memories of modern technology and society (the slightly more mora...
The purpose of a magnetic field is to shield against solar winds, which are relativistic ions produced by our Sun. This is a typical O'Neill cylinder with 4 islands. I'm looking for a cost effectiv...
I have always wondered if a kind of blimp-like spacecraft would not be our answer for some kind of futuristic spacecraft design. Imagine this: a blimp-like spacecraft is loaded with cargo on the g...
Suppose you want to mine material from, and eventually completely disassemble, a neutron star. Presumably, you would be extracting heavy elements from the crust, and expecting the neutron-degenerat...
I am wondering how possible (and also, how it might work) something like nanobots would be. The technology level definitely would be higher than it is currently, to the point of pocket universe tec...
Enter Iaeptus - A million man mission born on a fleet of ten thousand ship to the outer solar system. Their commander : Minevera, a brain-in-a-vat super computer. With a weight of 5 tons, a neuron ...
This is a follow-up to Neutron Star mining. Assuming that problem can be solved, it would eventually degenerate to something similar to this case. And if it can't, white dwarfs seem like the next b...
YA fantasy novel set 350 years in the future under a corporate dictatorship which reanimates dead people to use as disposable slave soldiers. So the setup is a medical/research station orbiting a ...
In science fiction secret space stations typically seem to exist inside of a nebula or an asteroid. However it occurs to me that in warfare space stations hidden in nebulae would likely be discover...
Like this: If we were to build stations in deep space meant exclusively for human habitation, would chunky floating cities like this be a feasible design or would we be more likely to create som...
There have been several questions about the construction, operation and destruction of a Dyson sphere. I'm interested in something a bit less exciting: how far out can you still see it from? Assum...
I was reading this question and realized that I didn't actually know enough to give the answer that I wanted. Obviously in the near term, all our raw materials come from the Earth. The only oth...
In my space western setting, I went nuts with the time scale, so now I have a faction living entirely in space stations (with planets used for transit and agriculture, but that's irrelevant for now...
My worldbuilding involves a reasonably near-future, high-realism space station research outpost, and I'd like it to be powered by a nuclear reactor. However, I need as much detail on the actual rea...
I was wondering about feasibility of small 'shell' world build around something very dense, like black hole or some 'artificial mini star' that could also be source of energy, and of course gave us...
I'm working with the idea of a 'ring station' encircling a planet, as a tightly connected belt of structures that connect in orbit around the planet's equator. I'm curious to know what would happen...
My habitat ring is constructed in orbit around a planet with disconnected sections: (not to scale, obviously) The sections are connected by cables and winched together. As the diameter gets sma...
In Sci-fi, space fighters often look like exotic versions of fighter jets: wing shape is often different but the general shape is most of the time kept. However this seems unrealistic: the shape o...
