Turning an asteroid into a spinning space habitat

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funkervogt
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Turning an asteroid into a spinning space habitat

Post by funkervogt »

To create some gravity, you could hollow a decent-sized asteroid out, potentially, and spin it up like a ring-station, using centrifugal force to create that 0.3g. Then, you could build your city entirely within the spinning asteroid; sure, it'd be dark in there, but the rock would protect people from harmful space radiation. That might have a chance of working if the asteroid was made of solid rock with high tensile strength throughout.

But most asteroids aren't solid rock – at least, not most of the ones in our solar system. The team looked into the composition of our local "flying mountains" and found that most are more or less giant piles of rubble, collections of big and small rocks held together weakly by their own mutual gravity. Hollow one of these things out and spin it up, and the "ground" you're trying to create inside the asteroid would just fling away into space and disappear.

So how could they practically build a human-friendly city on a pile of space rubble? By sticking it in a gigantic bag, they decided. A cylinder-shaped bag a fair bit bigger than the asteroid itself, made from a flexible, ultra-light, ultra-strong carbon nanofiber mesh. This, says lead author and Ph.D candidate Peter Miklavčič, "would be extremely light relative to the mass of the asteroid rubble and the habitat, yet strong enough to hold everything together. Even better, carbon nanotubes are being developed today, with much interest in scaling up their production for use in larger-scale applications.”
https://newatlas.com/space/space-habitat-ring-plan/
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caltrek
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Re: Turning an asteroid into a spinning space habitat

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Scientist Unveils a Bold Plan to Turn an Asteroid Into a Space Station
by Adam Tomaswick
August 9, 2023

Introduction:
(Science Alert) The basic idea of turning an asteroid into a rotating space habitat has existed for a while. Despite that, it's always seemed relatively far off regarding technologies, so the concept hasn't received much attention over the years.

But, if you're retired and have an underlying interest in researching space habitats, developing a detailed plan for turning an asteroid into one seems like a great use of time.

And that is precisely what David W. Jensen, a retired Technical Fellow at Rockwell Collins, recently did. He released a 65-page paper that details an easy-to-understand, relatively inexpensive, and feasible plan to turn an asteroid into a space habitat.
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientist ... ce-station
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wjfox
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Re: Turning an asteroid into a spinning space habitat

Post by wjfox »

2312

https://www.orbitbooks.net/2312/

^ Great animation! :)
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