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Old 04-November-2009, 07:58 PM
GOURDHEAD GOURDHEAD is offline
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Location: Auburn, Wa.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eburacum45 View Post
Here are some non-planet based habitat designs.
The Stanford Torus
The Bernal Sphere
The O'Neill Cylinder
The McKendree Cylinder
The Bishop Ring

All of these could be built using real materials, rather than the imaginary ones used in some science fiction. Admittedly this would take a lot of time, energy, effort and money to acheive, but in each case less time, energy, effort and money than terraforming a planet.
None of these designs seem to address the major subsystems needed to get them designed in orbit nor the energy required to initiate and maintain the process nor how to protect them from collisions with various forms of debris with which they will collide. My guess is that when more detail is "fleshed out", the level of expense will be astonishing.
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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?
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