Timeline for Why not build smaller Ringworlds?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
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| Jul 7 at 20:38 | comment | added | itai | So far I've learned about O'Neil colonies (from Mark Olson's answer) and about Iain M. Banks's Orbitals (from Anton Sherwood and Mike Scott's comments), so I'm having fun. It is possible that something like Orbitals are what Dyson had in mind. | |
| Jul 7 at 16:40 | comment | added | Mike Scott | @AntonSherwood Smaller rings rotating in one day are Ian M Banks’s Orbitals, and feature very prominently in his Culture series. | |
| Jul 6 at 7:33 | comment | added | itai | On reading the answers and comments so far, it is becoming clear to me that my original question should have also asked: "What is Freeman Dyson's (presumably safer) suggestion?" Without knowing what did Dyson suggest it is difficult to tell how Niven countered it. (I had some idea of Dyson's suggestion in mind, but I now see there are other alternatives.) | |
| Jul 6 at 4:08 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Jul 6 at 0:10 | answer | added | Mark Olson | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jul 5 at 22:07 | comment | added | Anton Sherwood | @EikePierstorff, both those problems go away if the sun is not within the ring. I assume Dyson had in mind rings 12 light-seconds across (so that rotation in one day makes 1g), orbiting the sun at around 1AU. | |
| Jul 5 at 22:02 | comment | added | Anton Sherwood | I took Niven's remark to mean the Ring's ability to manipulate the magnetic field to (e.g.) make its sun act as a rocket, since speed in getting away from the Core was a priority. (That the Core is in the plane of the Ring is a problem for this interpretation, though.) | |
| Jul 5 at 21:30 | comment | added | Eike Pierstorff | One thing is that the Ringworld is famously unstable (brannenworks.com/GE253/ringworld.pdf). Without a big enough radius to keep it's distance long enough to allow for attitude jets to correct the orbit, it might brush the sun from time to time. That is a problem addressed in Ringworld Engineers, but I have no idea if that's what is meant in the dedication (after all the better reason for the radius is to put the surface into the habitable zone). | |
| Jul 5 at 20:55 | history | edited | fez | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 5 at 20:45 | history | edited | itai |
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| Jul 5 at 20:28 | answer | added | Andrew | timeline score: 8 | |
| Jul 5 at 20:24 | history | edited | itai | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 5 at 20:12 | comment | added | Valorum | Something something paging Dr. Freud. | |
| Jul 5 at 20:10 | comment | added | itai | Yes, precisely. | |
| Jul 5 at 20:09 | history | edited | itai | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 5 at 20:09 | comment | added | DavidW | Hi, welcome to SF&F. Just to clarify, you're wondering what in The Ringworld Engineers answers Dyson's question about why build one large ring instead of many little ones, correct? | |
| S Jul 5 at 20:07 | review | First questions | |||
| Jul 5 at 20:08 | |||||
| S Jul 5 at 20:07 | history | asked | itai | CC BY-SA 4.0 |