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9 votes
1 answer
212 views

Ocean tides on a Banks Orbital

Consider a Banks Orbital, a space station three million kilometers in diameter, rotating once per day for 1g artificial gravity, intermediate in size between a Bishop Ring and a Niven Ring: https://...
rwallace's user avatar
  • 4,906
3 votes
1 answer
148 views

Meteorological consequences of walls reaching into the sky, enclosing a large area

Suppose we walled off a 1000 km square. These walls would be made of unobtanium (so they don't break), and have no cracks or holes that go all the way through. They are also around 15 kilometres high, ...
Mark Gardner's user avatar
  • 2,884
12 votes
4 answers
1k views

Hurricane-force winds or gentle breezes in an O'Neill Cylinder?

Let's consider an O'Neill cylinder with a radius of 3.2km and length of 20km. In the classic O'Neill design, we have three large axis-aligned windows in the shell, alternating between purlins of ...
David's user avatar
  • 119
9 votes
1 answer
578 views

How, and for how long, could a permanent storm be maintained on Earth by a stationary mega-structure?

Suppose you had a tower-like mega-structure, rooted all the way into near-infinite geo-thermal energy of the Earth's crust, connected to the ocean such that water is not a limiting factor to the super-...
Irving Washington's user avatar