What would happen to a man-made orbital ring/belt, if a portion of it was destroyed?
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 if a portion of that structure were destroyed (say, 10-20% of the structure), in particular what effect it might have on the surviving majority of the station.
Would the remaining structure continue to orbit relatively undisrupted? Alternatively, would there be some stresses introduced to the structure, or some decay introduced to the structure's orbit?
EDIT: Thanks so much for the great responses, this has given me a lot to think about! I appreciate I haven't offered much in the way of detail (orbital distance, mass, structural details) however at this stage I'm still just rolling the idea around a little to see what's viable for my story.
As I picture it, the structure would be a rigid or semi-rigid, continuous man-made 'belt' around the planet, equidistant from the surface on all sides. Much like the structures in the Halo game series, though on a scale that would comfortably encircle a planet. The belt would be perhaps 100-200 metres wide/deep - enough to allow inhabitants to set up habitation and other facilities, and traverse the circumference via some means of transportation, such as a rapid transit rail network.
I'm more than happy to hear of any obvious or significant limitations on whether this is remotely possible, and make the call from there on whether it's still hand-wavingly plausible to proceed with in my setting.
Thanks again!
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1 answer
I think it depends on what orbit it is at. For instance if it is at a low orbit and spun up to create artificial gravity, then once the ring is broken the remaining pieces will fly away by their own momentum.
This wouldn't be the case if they are at the right speed for their orbit.
Another thing to consider is how the ring is broken. If a large explosive is used, then the shock wave through the rest of the ring could cause problems; the part of the ring "after" the blast will be given more acceleration, and the part of the ring "before" the blast will be given a push backward. This would cause the ring to flex, part would slow down and fall further into the atmosphere, part would speed up and be pushed away. More twisting would happen as wave propagated around the ring, and could cause the whole thing to fly apart.
Assuming that the ring has some big stability thrusters in place to keep it in a proper orbit due to the instability of a solid ring (as others have pointed out) you might be able to cancel out the wave and save the rest of the station.
You could actually solve both problems by not having it be a solid ring, but instead a series of stations in the same orbit. Take a bunch of O'Neill cylinders or other rotating ring stations and build them in the same orbit a couple hundred KM apart, with shuttles to transfer between them, and you could have a few blow up without disrupting the stability of the ring as a whole. You'd still have other stations damaged by debris, but at least the whole thing wouldn't come crashing down.
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