A Topopolis would be a tube-shaped space habitat that would loop into a
ring with a star at its centroid, or could be looped several times
around the star to create a “Torus Knot.” Inhabitants would live on the
inside of the structure, with gravity provided by the tube rotating
along its radius, instead of rotating around its centroid like in a
Ringworld. Another way to imagine a Topopolis is as a set of thousands
of O’Neill Cylinders formed into a chain. Bend the chain to form a
circle around the star, and the individual cylinders would rotate the
same way a standard O’Neill Cylinder would to create gravity.
If the Topopolis’ inhabitants looked along the axis of revolution, they
would see what appeared to be a cylinder going off into infinity. In
fact, the cylinder would gently curve as it traveled farther from the
viewer, but the size would be so massive that you wouldn’t be able to
notice the curve. A train traveling in a full hundred-million-kilometer
circle could be set into the middle of the land.
And if you like this sort of artwork, please check out my new book project "Megastructures: The Visual Encyclopedia" here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/artofsoulburn/megastructures-the-visual-encyclopedia-book-project
No comments:
Post a Comment