In order to successfully have 3 orbital rings around a planet how do you have to orient them?
I am writing a short story about an overworked planet whose civilization has achieved space elevators and orbital rings.
The planet, which is earth-sized, has three complete orbital rings in stable orbit, each one 200 meters in width, which is about an eighth of a mile.
The rings are used for heavy construction and other industrial uses.
Where do you have to put the rings relative to each other for them not to have any issues or break, and should the rings be fixed onto the ground or allowed to orbit freely?
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1 answer
Any way you want.
It depends on the energy you have available.
To not tether them requires that you have thrusters of some kind to enable them to maintain position (ie. not crash into the planet).
The most energy efficient way to orient them would seem to be in line with the ecliptic plane, because this will require little energy to maintain.
Another possibility is that one could be as stated above requiring low energy to maintain, another could be in an orbit (since there are three) at 60 degrees to the first, another at 120 degrees. This arrangement would potentially require no energy to sustain it's orientation either. The reason why would be gyroscopic stability, It would mean that your planet would revolve beneath these layers, and the layers would stay on their own planes, relative to the stars (ie. not relative to the planet or sun). This would mean that the latter two rings would precess around the planet once a year, but since the planet rotates once a day, it would allow you to select which ring at which time you need to land on to be closest to any destination on the surface of the planet.
However: You can have them in any orientation you wish if you have the energy to counter the forces that would prevent their precession (Which would be quite prodigious BTW).
Ultimately, the whole thing would be a trade-off between the energy required to keep them from crashing into the planet versus the energy (if tethered) to stop them from deforming because of gravitational forces caused by the planet's rotational axis being not tidally-locked to the sun, not to mention the moon's pull on their bodies. It depends on the materials, the flexibility and the energy available to make them behave.
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