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#1 2013-11-17 06:11:12

karov
Member
From: Bulgaria
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 953

Gasbags

Guys,

Put together:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Storrs_Hall  's ::

1. http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/peopl … r-machine/

&

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_fog

each foglet to be a foamlet too, to be buoyant, but interlinked. Selfreplicating cells but smartly interacting and with "Hayflick"-like cells number control mechanism... 

+

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_window

&

P Birch's and H Moravec's material strength amplification systems.

...

it seems we could built, or rather seed-to-grow SUCH walls material gasbags around each lump of mass no matter how low the "surface gees" or even in  totally empty space to hold 1 bar ot atmosphere, water mega-"drops" etc. Utility fog will "cure" "punctures" in split second, the impact outbursts will re-merge ... , this such bubbles of gas and liquid suspended in open space to look and feel like "open sky" ones. Utility fog could provide watertables on super-low or even zero gees environment, as well as kinda artificial gravity without rotation, as well as radiation management ... . The plasma windows deployed on micrometer scales would require minuscule amounts of energy. ...

Terraforming asteroids...

Last edited by karov (2013-11-19 03:33:57)

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#2 2015-03-21 15:07:29

Antius
Member
From: Cumbria, UK
Registered: 2007-05-22
Posts: 1,003

Re: Gasbags

Interesting.  A 50m diameter near earth asteroid could be completely enclosed within a spherical carbon or glass fibre composite dome weighing just a couple of hundred tonnes.  A plexiglass shield 1mm thick would be enough to protect it from solar UV.  That would allow the 100,000 tonnes asteroid to be mined in a shirtsleeve environment.

A dome 100m in diameter would have an internal volume of over 500,000m3.  Rotating buildings hanging from the interior of the gas bag would provide habitation for colonists and hanging micro-gee gardens would provide food.  Maintaining a moist atmosphere would dampen down any dust created by mining the asteroid.  With a surface area of 31,000m2, the gas bag could support at least 300 colonists.

Musk's super heavy launch vehicles make establishing such a base a plausible short term prospect, as total weight for the dome is in the region of a few hundred tonnes.  Additional equipment would be more, but could be added incrementally.

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