And now for something completely different...

[rthorvald]

Just playing...
With something different.

I am sure all the other sci-fi geeks here recognizes this. It is sort of the
holy grail of fictional-celestia

I played around with Marc Griffith??s SSC file for it last night to see if it
was possible to do something real with it, and it is... This one has both a
workable atmosphere and clouds. The only problem is that the shadow
squares don??t cast shadows, and Marcs solution to that is less than
satisfactory when one goes 3D with the surface.

Another problem is, of course, that the scale of the thing is so immense
Celestia is unable to assemble it without seams between the many
segments one will need - i made just one, very quickly as a proof-of-
.concept, and duplicated it up - the seam is invisible from space, but
becomes prominent if i fly beneath the clouds...

If i get the time, i might go forward with it later, but it would be a big
job - and a very memory-taxing work... Just the Great Sea alone is a
project in itself.



And, a comparison: the little bright dot in the red circle is our Earth...:


- rthorvald

[Chuft-Captain]

Hi Runar,

Have you got my Rungworld Addon?

I haven't looked at it for ages, but from memory I think it's at least as big as this beastie (radius comparable to jupiters orbit if I remember correctly).

It doesn't have very realistic textures or atmosphere (developed for 1.4.0), but I don't recall having any issues with seams.. can you post a picture showing what you mean?

CC

[t00fri]

Since I have no idea about ringworlds or the literature that deals with such constructs, let mw ask the experts:

I suppose ringworlds are artificial habitats that rotate such that the centrifugal force acts as a replacement of the gravitational one. Then people living on the inside surface of the ring are pushed towards the "ground". Right?

Probably it is strictly forbidden on such ringworlds to drill too deep holes into the "ground" that might eventually lead to the other side of the band. Then people would be sucked through the hole into open space?

F.

[rthorvald]

I suppose ringworlds are artificial habitats that rotate such that the centrifugal force acts as a replacement of the gravitational one. Then people living on the inside surface of the ring are pushed towards the "ground". Right?

Probably it is strictly forbidden on such ringworlds to drill too deep holes into the "ground" that might eventually lead to the other side of the band. Then people would be sucked through the hole into open space?

Heh, Fridger, Larry Niven??s Ringworld from 1970 is a scifi classic, you must know that

And since it is scifi, the foundation is of course made of a material that is indestructible... But a major feature of this ringworld is an asteroid hit that created an enormous mountain with a hole on top that the protagonists use to escape the Ringworld, of course (They carry their spaceship up to the top and drop it through!)

If i remember correctly, the centrifugal force was delivered by a 770mph orbital speed.

- rthorvald

PS to chuft-captain; a seam will absolutely show if you pile on enough models, which would be necessary to create something of this detail (continuos foundation / landscape / cloudmap / rim walls).

[t00fri]

I suppose ringworlds are artificial habitats that rotate such that the centrifugal force acts as a replacement of the gravitational one. Then people living on the inside surface of the ring are pushed towards the "ground". Right?

Probably it is strictly forbidden on such ringworlds to drill too deep holes into the "ground" that might eventually lead to the other side of the band. Then people would be sucked through the hole into open space?

Heh, Fridger, Larry Niven??s Ringworld from 1970 is a scifi classic, you must know that
...

No, sorry, I don't read any scifi. I did when I was an adolescent until I realized that most of it was crap.
Also generally, I tend to live NOW, not in the future.


F.

[rthorvald]

No, sorry, I don't read any scifi. I did when I was an adolescent until I realized that most of it was crap.

I know, but this book is almost 40 years old, so i thought you might know of it... BTW, we are in total agreement, most of it is crap. But so is 90% of everything else, too...

- rthorvald

[Cham]

Yeah, and what is the problem, with "crap" ?

As Paul Davies once wrote, studying the "impossibilities" (as we often do in physics anyway) can teach us a lot of things about what is possible.

So SF isn't that useless, after all, even the "crappy" SF (and why is it crappy, in the first place ?). No wonders why many of the SF writers are scientists (I. Asimov, C. Sagan, etc. Even Kepler wrote the first SF novel).

[Tuefish]

Technical question;
how do you get the atmosphere to work on an unconventional environment;
say, inside a dyson sphere?
Fantastic work, by the way.

[rthorvald]

Technical question;
how do you get the atmosphere to work on an unconventional environment;
say, inside a dyson sphere?.

You make a lot of small ones instead of one big one, and place them in an overlapping pattern. And make sure the hole in the middle is invisible. In the case above, the oblateness of the hole is set to 90%, there are 360 separate atmospheres overlapping all around the band (one per degree), and the holes, which is nearly flat, hidden inside the floor mesh.

- rthorvald

[rthorvald]

So SF isn't that useless, after all, even the "crappy" SF

SF is not more crappy than other literature, but 90% of all literature is crap, including SF. Of course, the good ones would not exist if not for all the others... So i guess you could say the bad ones are necessary too...

- rthorvald

[ajtribick]

Personally I wouldn't count Ringworld as "good SF".

But it does have a couple of nice-looking (but not particularly feasible/sensible) ideas.

[Johaen]

So. Uh. It does look neat. But what exactly is it?

[rthorvald]

So. Uh. It does look neat. But what exactly is it?

A thin slice of Dyson sphere...

- rthorvald

[Tuefish]

Like a Dyson fillet.

[t00fri]

Yeah, and what is the problem, with "crap" ?

As Paul Davies once wrote, studying the "impossibilities" (as we often do in physics anyway) can teach us a lot of things about what is possible.

So SF isn't that useless, after all, even the "crappy" SF (and why is it crappy, in the first place ?). No wonders why many of the SF writers are scientists (I. Asimov, C. Sagan, etc. Even Kepler wrote the first SF novel).

Intelligent crap is fun, but unfortunately most crap is dumb crap.

Actually our house is totally "overgrown" with books that are NOT crap. Only it's getting increasingly hard to buy such books in bookshops, since these also want to make money. We are now considering to install special bookshelfs along the walls of our staircase that leads from the ground floor to the first one That's the last space in our house that still could function as a storage for books.

The other day, I got home with 20 volumes (!) of the Nobel library: all Nobel prize winners in Literature since the first Nobel prize until the seventies. One of our Russian postdocs got his next job in Japan and didn't have space and money to take them along . Who got them as a present? me .

F.

[rthorvald]

We are now considering to install special bookshelfs along the walls of our staircase that leads from the ground floor to the first one That's the last space in our house that still could function as a storage for books.

That is a common problem... I habitually go through my shelves and sort out the overflow and give it away, always removing the ones that has collected the most dust, (ahem, figuratively, of course). I manage to keep a single wall, more or less, this way. The only downside is that often i end up buying the same book several times As a side-effect, the library does not grow much, but constantly becomes better. Or more nerdy, as anyone else that sees it will say

- rthorvald

[ANDREA]

Well, same problem, books under the beds, a 3x5m bookshelfs filled up to the ceiling, books in the bathroom, on the chairs, and so on, and moreover continuously increasing in number.
But finally some years ago the final solution: a Public Library opened very close to my house, and now we can read almost all the books we wish to read, without buying them (and this saves money), and after this giving them back (and this saves space).
Obviously I still buy books, but way less than before!
Very satisfied of this solution.
Bye

Andrea

[eburacum45]

My own work is very basic compared to yours- Runar; but for what it's worth, here is a related concept- the Banks Orbital.
http://www.orionsarm.com/civ/Banks_Orbitals.html

Iain M Banks realised that if you make a ringworld about 3 million kilometers across, it will rotate once a day while producing one Earth gravity centrifugally. He called them Orbitals; and of course, so do we. Orbitals orbit the star, just like any other planet, rather than surrounding it.

The orbital model I made does have a separate cloud layer, but no atmosphere. Interesting idea to make a very flat atmosphere- doesn't it pop out of the back as well, though?

[Tuefish]

rthorvald,
another technical question,
how do you get the clouds to remain smoothly rendered on the inside of the ring?

[danielj]

Do Ringworld have something to do with Rama?Why Ringworld is the "holy grail" of sci fi modeling?