If your Hard SF setting doesn't have one of these, you don't have class

If your Hard SF setting doesn't have one of these, you don't have class.

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Not entirely sure what I'm looking at, but gut instinct says its too fanciful for Hard scifi.

I don't really know what I'm looking at, but have this pleb's explanation:

>the mass of the asteroids creates a soft gravitational pull, keeping the habitats suspended internally
>the constant falling motion creates atmospheric conditions
>the balloons are each small "colonies" filled with people in sustainable environments

It's a balloon. The interior is filled with air, the pressure of which keeps the balloon inflated. The exterior asteroid coating is for protection from punctures.
Then, plebs can stick rotating open-air habitats throughout the interior volume. Patricians genetically engineer themselves for life in an air-filled freefall volume.
It's an unusual habitat design, but I don't think it would be any more technically challenging than an O'Neill cylinder.

I get it, though it's the sort of design you get from people that don't understand the stresses of a pressure vessel or how durable a sphere of considerable size filled with air would have to be. It's hard to see any advantage this would have over a traditional O'Neill colony.

What's an O'Neill colony?

This thing. Type of hypothetical space colony.

This is actually far less practical and far more technically challenging than an O'Neill Cylinder. The whole point of an O'Neill Cylinder is how straightforward it is.

Exterior view of a synchronized pair.

But where does it get the spice to flow?

You should read Sun of Suns, it's a kind of swashbuckling story set inside one of these colonies where the inhabitants limited to pre-computational technology. Weird post-singularity stuff is happening on the outside.

Where you’ll live in ninety years

I have, it's how I recognized the thing. (I'm , btw)

gravitationalballoon.blogspot.kr/search?updated-max=2014-12-04T21:32:00-08:00&max-results=7&start=14&by-date=false
Here's the blog of the absolute madman that came up with the idea.

This looks functionally retarded, just like this thread

>Hard sci fi
>Being set any further than a couple of years in the future.

...

Actually, looking at the guy's blog posted it looks like the asteroid rubble is serving some additional structural purpose beyond shielding, but I don't get what that is.

Way more challenging. Those little internal habs are basically O'Neill cylinders , and then you have to get it all to orbit properly without bouncing around inside the ballon. Seems like a nightmare that would need constant maintenance. Cute, but really only something like the culture would bother building for the kicks. It does look like a fun environment.

>Those little internal habs are basically O'Neill cylinders
Who says they can't be smaller?
>you have to get it all to orbit properly without bouncing around inside the balloon
They will be fixed in place by tether nets, which are not shown in .
Counteracting the air that is trying to expand.

Cylinder template done by the madman.

>>the mass of the asteroids creates a soft gravitational pull, keeping the habitats suspended internally
Wrong; look up the shell theorem.

>Counteracting the air that is trying to expand.
Does that put less stress on the envelope than letting it expand?

Depends on the properties of the shell. Some materials are extremely weak under tension but amazing under compression and vice versa.

Bump.

why are hard sf projects crazier than anything 40k ever pulled off yet remain unpopular ?

Because they're just like the Soft SF projects, except less fancy and more wordy.

As a OA-fag I have to tell you, that you are wrong.

Thats not how gravity works at all.

So is each unit its own spun-up living space? Am I getting that right?

>hard scifi setting
why should I even bother? 90% of the discussion is going to be about why something violates the laws of physics or not

Yes. You pair them and spin them in opposite directions to cancel the gyroscopic effect so you can more easily move change rotation as needed the large external panels are reflectors/ shades to control and create a day/night cycle.

Each O'neill Cylinder is is paired with another and, if I'm remembering right, they counterspin from each other to keep them from falling out of synchronous orbit or something. Each cylinder is supposed to be 20 miles long and 5 miles in diameter and house millions of people. Only issue would be the coriolis effect but I assume people living on huge space stations would adjust in time.

This. Hard sci-fi is lame and aimless. You're better off just coming up with some bullshit technology and then taking it to its logical conclusion.

Oh fuck off. Thats the kind of giga-structure futurism that always makes me want to punch whoever came up with it. Its super fucking easy to come up with cool shit when you ignore logistics entirely, like moreso than normal fiction rightfully does.

> the pressure of which keeps the balloon inflated
Internal pressure only "keeps it inflated" if it's surrounded by a higher-pressure medium. If there's a higher-pressure medium around it, then you're in a gravity well, so you don't have a "freefall atmospheric environment" inside it.
> outer shell of fragments
If the outer shell isn't intact, the whole thing will fly apart. Don't bother with the ball-bearing illustrations, you need a solid shell.

Why rotate the internal habitats? that just causes turbulence and consumes energy.

The whole thing's a waste of resources -- so much volume that can't be used.

>5.3MW to maintain rotation

Why? Surely once the it's spun up it would require little-to-none energy to maintain, since there's no atmospheric drag in space?

It's in an atmosphere.
>Internal pressure only "keeps it inflated" if it's surrounded by a higher-pressure medium.
I thought it only did so when surrounded by a lower-pressure medium.
>If the outer shell isn't intact, the whole thing will fly apart. Don't bother with the ball-bearing illustrations, you need a solid shell.
The gravity holds it together. That's why it's a Gravitational Balloon.
>Why rotate the internal habitats? that just causes turbulence and consumes energy.
Turbulence can be managed by flow dividers and tethers. I do agree with the energy consumption part, though.
>The whole thing's a waste of resources -- so much volume that can't be used.
I agree with this part as well.

Also, have this.