Sunday, July 10, 2011

Moonbase, Part III

Well, the previous exercise was a thought experiment on what might be achieved from a lunar base.  What exists today that might be useful in creating something similar to an O'Neil colony?  That's a big stretch.  But here's an idea.  Since 31 pieces of 500 feet each can make a torus of 1 mile in diameter, why not connected 310 pieces of 50 feet each to do the same?

It so happens that Bigelow Aerospace is making space habs about 50 feet long.  String 300 of these together and you get about a mile in length.  Connect them into a circle and spin it up and you've got artificial gravity of 1 g.

It would take 300 launches of a heavy lifter to get these to a Lagrange point.  That would probably rule this option out.  They accomodate 6 people apiece.  At most, you could get a small community up there, but probably at too great an expense.   Besides, these habs aren't designed to do what I'm suggesting.

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