Oolite Bulletins

winston wrote:

The big problem with Coriolis space stations is that the sides are flat. If you were any distance away from the centre of a side, the 'ground' would feel tilted. Rotating stations really need to be cylindrical.

I agree. The literature might say that there are separate faces, but in a real life station there couldn't possibly be, it wouldn't sufficiently simulate Earth-like conditions. Even high rises would result in lower gravity in the higher levels.

I think I might design a cylindrical station where you dock from the end of the cylinder just to test the feel of it in-game.

P.S. Has anyone read Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series?

Galileo wrote:

P.S. Has anyone read Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series?

Has anyone not?

There was an adventure- game for Apple][ based on it, great fun... (Never played it on og. hardware, but some yrs ago on an emulator, heehee.

Galileo wrote:

Has anyone read Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series?

I held it in my hands in a bookshop a few hours ago, considering it..

There are a lot interesting station-designs out there.

Anyone ever watched Gundam?
There they have scores of tube-habitats with mirrors.
I'm sure many designs were thought of by a single science-guru (like Neumann), but I can't recall his name.

But to put them in Oolite?
Heck why not. It's a large universe afterall.

Remember though, that Galcop worlds follow a standardised space programm. Most alternative stations will therefor be found outside Galcop space. (where we cannot go boldly.)

Be sure to limit any special stations to a limited number of planets and not a whole class of systems. That way we have more variety, but still the Elite-feeling of Coop-space.

Another interesting source about space habitats (namely o'neill cylinders à-la Rama) is the Paratwa series by Christopher Hinz. Another interesting thing to try out would be a dyson sphere or a stanford torus or a halo-like ringworld. there's a lot of stuff about these issues on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megastruct ... structures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_sphere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

ringworld is described earlier by larry Niven. He got it from Dyson:
a ringworld is a lowbudget version of a dyson construct.

A dyson would either be
-a zero G solarwind/light collector.
-b livingsurface, requiring a magical gravity generation method.

A ring could be spun up to create gravity, but would also need a near indestructable material to take the strain (of centripedal force).

Don't confuse habitats with Dyson constructs: the scale is totally different.
a habitat would take the materials of one or two asteroids, a Dyson object ould require the resources of nearly an entire solarsystem.

IIRC

Rama is a biiiig spinning cilinder, not a torus. I forgot how the other, even bigger things looked in the last of the sequel, though...