cks you designed to be ~exotic~ or whatever, and those rabid jerks at Disney can only grit their teeth now!
Pretty pics I've found while researching for Sufficiently Advanced. (Big pictures. Dial up users beware.) · 10:45pm Feb 1st, 2014
I've been researching a few things for Sufficiently Advanced and I came across a couple of neat O'Neill cylinder pics on Wikipedia.
What is a O'Neill cylinder you ask?
This pretty 'little' thing:
And this last is my favorite.
I'm debating if all the stations of The Rock Farm will follow this pattern, but at least two of them will. (Residential and the public one.)
It isn't often I see something in Sci-Fi that takes my breath away... but I'd like to look up and see a 'sky' like that before I die. It is rare for such beauty to be so sublimely fitted with function and I'd like to witness it myself one day.
Here's hoping.
Oh, and good news, bad news regarding SA. The next chapter is being edited right now, but a experiment of mine didn't pan out so I'm going to need to rewrite quite a bit.
I love those types of things. Elysium had a really cool Stanford Torus that was open to space, weirdly enough. Mass Effect had an O'Neill, um, Starfish? Then there's Halo.
I think the Stanford Torus would look cooler than O'Neill Cylinders, personally. Especially Elysium's.
moon245.3dtotal.com/admin/new_cropper/gallery_originals/2391.jpg
patrickmccray.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Elysium-interior-2.png
blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/files/2013/08/original-1024x428.jpg
The open atmosphere is the coolest part. While technically impossible, in Sufficiently Advanced I think it could be done with "HORN arrays" or something like that. A force field to keep the air in and radiation out.
1784783
Oh, pretty!
Actually, I don't remember the name but I came across a open space station design while researching that had a novel solution to keeping the atmosphere in.
You build it so utterly ginormous that gravity does the rest.
*Edit. Found it! Bishop Ring More or less the same thing as a Stanford Torus, but using newer materials to expand the design until it will retain its own atmosphere.
And although you could have some kind of field keeping the atmosphere in...
rhjunior.com/QQSR/Strips/QQSR00030.png
Imagine that, but with a asteroid in the wrong place and all your air.
1784844
Those would probably be Ringworlds, from the Ringworld Cycle and eventually the Culture series and other stuff. Halo is a Ringworld. Even more impossible to build than Elysium, though, and probably out of the hands of Sufficiently Advanced's humanity.
The real problem with that comic was that the forcefield was controlled from inside the prison cell. Seriously?
1784898
I was thinking of a Bishop Ring, but those also have that.
The species that designed that cell are called the Fedorks and are a paper-thin parody of The Federation in Star Trek. The worst thing is that I think there was a New Generation episode with almost that escape method.
The comic's name is Quentin Quinn Space Ranger in case you got curious. It gets a bit preachy in part, but it has some really decent ideas and humor.
1784954
It looks interesting. What does it get preachy on, the places Star Trek got it wrong?
1784997
The author is a man of strong opinions and it tends to shine through a bit. It can get a bit annoying if you read between the lines, but on the whole it is a good bit of Sci-Fi.
I'd recommend it, but I'm fairly certain it isn't for everyone. One of those things.
1785022
Oh dear. I see, a capitalist-type who thinks socialist-types are childlike.
I like Abalakin myself, an orbital Torus
(Looks like 1784783 beat me to it...)
chadfisher.net/public/The%20Broken%20Armistice%20over%20Abalakin.jpg
i.imgur.com/ZOmAm.jpg
Just change it to a Stanford Torus and you're golden
Most of the hard sci-fi tales I have read that are set out as far as you have the Rock Farm use the O'neil design, since that concentrates the comparitively dimmer sunlight into the habitat. -what isnt used directly for power, anyway... so I think those are GTG as a first choice.
I would like to mention offhandedly there should be a Pinkie Pie in a Dalek suit
1785209
Bingo.
It's still a good story, but that undercurrent can be more then a bit draining.
1785242
Oh, so a combined space elevator and habitat ring? Nifty.
That first pic is gorgeous by the way.
1786261
Truth be told I mostly picked the O'Neill because off being a bit sick of near every space-station in fiction either being a torus or another geometric shape with blinking lights all over it. Finding a 'old' design that has fallen by the wayside seemed like a interesting way to spice things up... and I found the beauties above. Sometimes it pays to follow your hunches.
As close to Earth as TRF is a torus design would probably make more economic sense, but style should count for something, yes?
1786406
"Par-ty! Par-ty!"
...You know what? I'll see if I can crowbar that in somewhere without it sticking out.
Reminds me a lot of Rama from Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama. From the description he gave it, Rama was a lot like your second-to-last cylinder, only with artificial lighting strips where the windows are and a cylindrical sea midway down the interior. Good book that.
I look forward to seeing what you do with these cylinders, there are so many possibilities.
1786406 "Come Doctor, we will have the biggest party of all time!"
Beautiful.
In SA maybe add a few pegasi for weather management, when they join forces.
"It's the Final Frontier... Where Friendship and Technology are Magic!"
1803063 1786406
Three words. Dancing Pink Cyberman.
1792184
I'll admit, I had to look that one up. The Ranma (and the books) seems quite nifty, I'll grant it/them that.
And I'm glad I've gotten your interest! Hopefully, I'll manage to retain it.
1803068
Considering how self contained such a weather system would be, I don't think there would be any need. Want probably, but that's different.
I do however now that you brought it up think any such cylinder might be seen as a fascinating tourist spot for just pegasi. Considering that there's a spot in the middle of the 'sky' with zero-g they'd just have to fly up to I could imagine them finding it utterly fascinating.
Kinda like us humans and the Dead Sea. Your not supposed to just float, and yet in that place...
1803441 I have seen equilibrists, I have seen moonwalking, but this beats everything!
Before I have seen that I literally could not imagine that a human body could bend that way.
Your idea with the tourist spot made me somehow think of seaponies.
They would also make a cute encounter of the third kind.