Quote pyramid deconstructed.
-snip-
Tons of energy was employed to stop the challenger from smashing into the ground. All from friction via air resistance.
Um...unless I'm misunderstanding you, the energy came from the air resistance and not from fuel. Throw in a parachute and you're pretty much good. How much energy does that cost us, humanity?
the difference in supplies in the space station vs. a settlement would be no need for motors to land. And you can get resources by meteor mining via space station. This also allows potentially unlimited expansion.
That requires a fair amount of movement and probably also orbiting in the asteroid belt, where there is less sunlight for use in generating solar power. Seems like a big hassle. Yes, theoretically possible, but probably not ideal. And since I'm arguing that space stations can't replace planetary colonies,
and nothing more, that's all I need to show.
Sure the middle spins, once a day [assuming 1 mile diameter and 1 g]. The spin is minor.
How fast is the docking and how close to the center are we talking?
centripital force (not centrifugal force) is the issue. Every part of the ship wants to go straight. But to do that it has to fly apart which would take too much energy so it pushes at a 90 degree angle -- energy conserved -- but you, not being attached feel this force as a push to the "ground"
I used "centrifugal" a while back, with a parenthetical that I wasn't sure if it was that or centripetal; why did no one correct me then?
More on-topic, I think I see now.
Building a settlement underground is a potential solution but that's a lot of energy before being able to settle. And they planned their missions in non-meteor shower times.
You know what else requires a lot of energy? Boosting ore, or even metal, into space to turn into a massive space station.
i saw someone talking about ejecting waste. while that is done here, where they dont have to worry about maintaining water levels because resupply is at hand, for longer trips it is probably best to use the human waste and reclaim the water and nutrients.
oh sure, I wasn't talking about sewage, I was talking like radioactive byproducts or whatnot. The "I don't know how to recycle this at all and storage is dangerous or pointless" waste.
I would advise against nuclear power for any long-term space station. Not because of radiation--any halfway decent engineer could copy the designs for Earth power plants and modify them as needed to stop that from being an issue--but fuel. It would be easier to just set up a bunch of solar panels, especially because you don't have to worry about space in space.
