04-22-2018, 05:09 AM
A few quick thoughts on this:
1) Re day and night - Is it really necessary to spin the hoop to get day and night? If you've got the tech to build it in the first place, you've likely got the whole local solar system industrialized anyway. Depending on the available tech level, you might use self-replicating machines to create a 'mechosystem' of machines that, as a side effect of their existence, create and maintain arrays of active shades and mirrors to generate a day night cycle. The arrays would be in a series of orbits that would act to periodically block sunlight from hitting the hoop or reflect light to the backside to give that light.
An alternative option would be to use Weather Machine technology to essentially roof over the entire habitat and generate day and night from the top of the atmosphere. A somewhat less advanced version might use a literal worldhouse roof.
The upshot of this is that trying to spin a solid body for day night might be overly complex and that simpler options that just use the mass of the construct for gravity might work better.
2) Re issues with orbiting a star and stability - If you can build something like this in the first place, is it really necessary to put it in orbit around a star? Even if we assume just fusion technology (rather than OA style total mass-energy conversion), you could place the hoop in deep space and use fusion powered light sources (either orbiting around it or on tall poles or whatever) to provide light and heat, probably for vastly longer than the lifetime of a natural star. If water is used to make up the bulk of the structure, you could have it double as a fuel source or ship in ice from the local Oort Cloud/Kuiper Belt or bring in fusion fuel from a relatively nearby gas giant or the like.
Hope this helps,
Todd
1) Re day and night - Is it really necessary to spin the hoop to get day and night? If you've got the tech to build it in the first place, you've likely got the whole local solar system industrialized anyway. Depending on the available tech level, you might use self-replicating machines to create a 'mechosystem' of machines that, as a side effect of their existence, create and maintain arrays of active shades and mirrors to generate a day night cycle. The arrays would be in a series of orbits that would act to periodically block sunlight from hitting the hoop or reflect light to the backside to give that light.
An alternative option would be to use Weather Machine technology to essentially roof over the entire habitat and generate day and night from the top of the atmosphere. A somewhat less advanced version might use a literal worldhouse roof.
The upshot of this is that trying to spin a solid body for day night might be overly complex and that simpler options that just use the mass of the construct for gravity might work better.
2) Re issues with orbiting a star and stability - If you can build something like this in the first place, is it really necessary to put it in orbit around a star? Even if we assume just fusion technology (rather than OA style total mass-energy conversion), you could place the hoop in deep space and use fusion powered light sources (either orbiting around it or on tall poles or whatever) to provide light and heat, probably for vastly longer than the lifetime of a natural star. If water is used to make up the bulk of the structure, you could have it double as a fuel source or ship in ice from the local Oort Cloud/Kuiper Belt or bring in fusion fuel from a relatively nearby gas giant or the like.
Hope this helps,
Todd