New Punjab

Fifteen years ago seven Hindu-and/or-Sikh monotheists from Punjab got together and designed a space (kilo)station. They called it "Hyperion" in homage to their Greek cultural roots. The basic design is the torus; which they stack, so as to keep it from tumbling chaotically like the Saturnine moon of that name. They had clearly thought deeply on the topic, and the NSS agreed awarding their proposal a grand prize.

The plan was to put this station at TLL4. As to scale: 900m radius (=1.8km dia), staffed by 18000 people.

As to L4 and not L5: interplanetary dust. We call this the Kordylewski Cloud after its 1961 discoverer and, yes, it is more visible in L5. The authors did not know this at the time but a Magyar crew has verified that L5 captures more dust than L4. This is caused by Terra-Luna-particle not being a perfect Lagrangian system, as the Sun also hits the particle; and that Terra-Luna orbit their barycentre with an eccentricity (Brave AI sez: 0.026 to 0.077, higher than Earth's own) and inclination relative to the Sun. For my part I don't rate this dust-delta as so important.

If we must have a megastructure at our own L4 or L5, and I repeat I am very skeptical, a trio of Japanese evaluated the cost: 20MT of material. If they brought it from Earth even with that fancy Starship they'd be looking at ten million million 2025 dollars and over fifteen millennia (Egyptian history is said to be five of these/a third of that). But the Punjabis probably figured as much which is why they wanted to feed their station from Luna... maybe by coilgun. Nitrogen and phosphour might have to be fed from ambient passing asteroids.

I hadn't noticed Hyperion being referenced much since 2011. Janhunen's dumbbell is smaller so cheaper and safer, for TLL4 (or L5... or L1). Same holds for Orion Ruzicka's reinforced torus if they keep the mad lad in check. Miklavcic's spinning bag of dirt and since-then Jensen's various schemes were always meant for in-situ mulching of asteroids... somewhere else.

Doctor Moreau

I have recently finished HG Wells' Island of Doctor Moreau which I supplemented with a viewing of Island of Lost Souls. The latter is to-date the best cinematic rendition we've had from the book, and might structurally be better than the book itself - I might get to that.

Wells had - famously - burst out the gate with six books 1895-8, five of them SF including our topic the third. They were, I understand, all big sellers, if not at the time then certainly in their reprints. Wells may have felt guilt over his newfound wealth and fame, as he became a socialist. At least four of the SF books remain classics to this day including (I repeat myself) our topic. The man kept writing - which has proved a problem, because it doesn't look like his later projects (which were many) have fared so well. Although there remain apologists for, say, Kipps.

Moreau - I must report - presents "early work" problems to the modern reader. The book wasn't Wells' first; but he may have felt that he needed to put in as many ideas as he could, so he could force them upon a readership which he feared might abandon him. The movie, at a trim 70ish minutes, slashed out a good deal of Wells' philosophical ramblings, and dared have one of the Lost Souls feel an attraction to the character "Perkins" who is, uh, Prendick in the book. Wells could not dare this in late Victorian England, so postpones such "anthro" after Moreau's (sorry) end as remote-observation.

Wells was writing before genetics, and in anycase was not writing a genetic book. If you are looking for Jurassic Park, you should read Jurassic Park. Moreau at heart may or may not be a "Darwinist", but what he absolutely refuses is eugenics. Moreau believes instead in the medical biology: in Biblical terms, that you can change the leopard's spots, right now. Moreau, Londoner, has made excellent strides in this "endeavour", uplifting several species into humanoid form. He's got into their brains, too. And into their minds: to which end, he's instilled a cult.

Wells would become a(n) eugenicist. Wells, I suspect - darkly - didn't really believe that a man, even a genius of a man, could turn an actual @#$% puma into a catgirl waifu. (Indeed, we learn, here Moreau failed; although he does do fairly well with a dog.) Moreau is, Scott Alexander would say, Wells' steelman. Sake Of Argument.

No. Our text is a parable. Wells was more thinking of British idiots, of American Negroes, and of all the tribes for which London had (somehow) ended up responsible as of 1896. He thought that the British might indeed be able to dress up a Kenyan and make a passable Christian of him. But it would end up a shell of Christianity, and that the Kenyan would revert within months of British neglect. Christianity was a joke to Wells at the time - and in all the time G-d provided to him. If a bear could become like a man it would have to take place over the same millions of years as it took the apes.

Second contact

In AD 1022ish, a tree surrendered its life to build a Scandinavian-themed home in Markland. Map Myths reports a possible Danish attempt to reëstablish contact. With the help of a couple of German pirates and the Portuguese.

As you may imagine this has run up against 1930s German nationalism and general we-wuzzery around Europe about "who discovered the Americas". (The answer is "the Navajo". Because screw you.)

Frankly all this is the wrong question for the last decades of the AD 1400s, on account of a few factors long mooted here on this blog. tl;dr everyone already knew about the "Markland" for at least a century. Few in the 1400s cared about cold worthless islands. The great powers - which did not then include Denmark nor England - cared about bypassing the Ottomans and getting to the Indies. Whatever these privateers were doing well north of all that, didn't figure. No northwest passage, no cities of gold in Labrador, nothing but cod.

I do however find this of interest for several other, if I may say better, reasons. Cod wasn't worthless in this Catholic age. And the fisher fleets were improving. Perhaps the Danes were starting to care about those "islands" again.

It may witness the fifteenth century in Greenland; when the old towns were abandoned. The island might not have been abandoned. These Danes coming toward the end of the century thought some "pirates" might have lingered there. If so: what was their prey? Basque fishermen? the Welsh and Cornish?

Evaluating the large temporary laboratory

ToughSF's actual link, for which we were planning those mammoth toroidal habitats, was to "Tackling a Mars Cycler Design Head-On" (pdf but badly encoded). Let's abstract it out.

These habitats aren't asteroidal mines. For the trio who wrote that paper, they're temporary housing - shuttles. That allows them to be designed smallest, first. The smallest torus they'll allow fits maybe high-fifties of people. There's a lot of room per person, because this is a 180 day mission until the cycler drops them off at Deimos. Once at Deimos they're Mars' problem; their emptied shuttle then cycles back to Earth where it's Earth's problem.

The trajectory this paper assumes is the classic Aldrin, maintained by solar-electric propulsion. They want to build it in LEO where the SEP paper proposed much higher: TLL1. I'd rather the far-side lunar base with assembly at TLL2... but that might be harder now.

This doesn't have to be a T/M cycler. It could be Hohmann, with less outgoing delta-V. But to Mars/Deimos that takes longer and then it would have to brake and stay there. It could also be a temporary lab in space but then, why not just use a Janhunen or an asteroid-colony to be worked indefinitely. So, we hohmann it out to Deimos or some isolated nearby rock, which we then dock and exploit.

The lab of 55 dudes isn't a colony. Whether it stay there or cycle back, its crew-and-cargo are not staying at Deimos or Atíra or wherever. This is a mission to say they were there. What they might be able to do is patch together some infrastructure for the next shuttle - which will host hundreds.

The design overall might be better for shifting into other orbits. As noted the outgoing Hohmann is less delta-V than the insertion into Aldrin. If the shuttle can take that, it can certainly take the deceleration to dock Deimos. Can you do that with a Janhunen or a big rolling bag of Bennu? I am pretty sure once you have an orbiting Janhunen, it's not going anywhere else.

How planets (can) lose (half) their crusts

On topic of lavaworlds, last April four people wrote "Coupled orbital and interior structure evolution of lava planets" and, on the 20th, posted it. But the pdf says 22nd. Dude! Whoa.

The claim is they ain't natural. Planets born to that heat should have all their material blasted out on formation. Where planetary systems are known to have stayed in-situ, like the Trappist-1 system, are no lava planets. The lava planets instead are around K2-141, K2-360, TOI-141, TOI-431, TOI-2431, HD 3167 and GJ/Gliese 367 all marked "b". (No 55 Cancri e?)

The thought is that they formed in systems where are much larger planets further out. These, as our planets have done to Mercury, pulled their orbits into eccentricity. As they skirt their stars, they raise tides - on the star and on themselves. Now another equilibrium can assert itself. These shattered worlds (like in Star Control 2) reform themselves this close to their stars, in a circular orbit which outer planets cannot much touch. Then they lock tidally. Inner side melts; outer side re-hardens.

The process happens over billions of years so is not done for, say, TOI-431 which isn't even 3Gy yet.

A hundred tonnes at a time

TransAstra proposes to shift 100 tonnes of rock from near-Earth space to Earth space (or Lunar).

ToughSF prefers this over sending humans over to the rocks. Longterm I agree. What's a Bennu orbit compared to a planetary orbit, or a Lagrangian or even the 13:10:8 Laplacian? People should live on natural ports-of-call.

And some of those rocks are eminently movable. 740 missions by such robots and they could disassemble all Bennu, or at least the parts colonists want; and bring its pieces to, oh, STL4 or to a soft landing on the Lunar equator. In the other direction Casey Handmer can yeet Lunar regolith and maybe even Lunar-assembled critical parts - somehow; and catch them at TLL2.

Cooling the halo

This morn we posted Orion's answer to the Halo: the spinning wheel is supported by a nonspinning magnetic shell. Like a lobster is boiled in its own shell.

You see, the older, simpler, thicker shell can offer something Elliot Orion Ruzicka hasn't considered: heat exchange. The outer shell gets outfacing radiators pointing in any direction. But... if there's a vacuum between the habitat and the outer shell, how's the habitat getting its heat to the outer shell?

Perhaps the separative medium is an efficiently-conductive gas. Like hydrogen. Superheated hydrogen between our oxygen-infused habitat and the outer shell, which spin we maintain by some turbine in the hub of the spokes. Oh the humanity.

Nah. The outer shell has to be a half shell, reflective on the outside. The radiators are then attached to the inner shell orthogonal to the direction of spin, or maybe tilted slightly outward.

As they say, amateurs study engineering; professionals study thermodynamics.