The absolute madman

I was considering to raise a mamerostationary hard Triton yesterday, perhaps using elevated Phobos as base. I mused about Lagrange, for satellites-to-the-satellite, starting with L2. I then recalled Neil Comins' (better) 2010 book, where he discussed alt-Earths within Earth's orbit. He posited "Dopple II" as stable, in mutual Lagrange L4 / L5.

My first thought was - oh PLEASE, no way, 24.96 times difference. And indeed Comins didn't explain himself very well - because in that chapter, he had to busy himself excluding L3 (thanks, Gor fans...). And-and, nobody's talked about Dopple II in any Google-able blog or website since then. UPDATE 5/26/22 - Oh dear, NOW they have. . .

Except that... some bloggers have. Specifically Sean Raymond has. He didn't credit Comins - he did better, with contemporary Smith and Lissauer doi 10.1007/s10569-010-9288-0. They all think we could chain forty-two Earths together. So much for librations! Even Gor is possible with this bad boy. UPDATE 6/18/22: Should fix the tidal problem, too.

We don't have the mass of nonvolatiles to do any of that, of course. And at 1 AU I'd not even bother, considering how the Sun is going to burn us all out in 500 mil. But I'd give serious thought to chaining planets or at least O'Neills around Mars' orbit starting 1.3814 AU from the Sun. We'd fit more of 'em too.

In our "real" solar-system, I think this means we dismantle our own good Earth and shift most of its components out to SML5. Toss the scrap (our Moon counts as scrap), and let's add Vesta, at Mars proper hopefully making it more Earthlike in mass and magnets. Let's dismantle Mercury too and add it to this new bigger Mars. Aim all these Marsbound rocks at angles such that its orbit isn't as stupidly elliptic as it is. Since we won't have Earth to kick around no more we can maybe semimajor Mars and nu-Erf at Mars' current-perihelion 1.3814 AU. Should keep it out of Jupiter's way.

We keep Venus because, hey, central location. Add a big heat-shield, to keep its gas from running out too fast. Once we're all done mining this world for propellant we'll terraform the remainder. UPDATE 11/16/2021: I don't think we're keeping Venus unless we need a different moon. L Neil Smith lives!

Yeah, okay: all of this was vespertilion-foecal NUTZ. Except my plans for Venus, those are always dead serious [you guys].

In the meantime, all this means there's no real weight-limit to whatever we run in Venus L4/L5, given the components available elsewhere in this Solar System. Freaking Mercury could be shifted to SVL5 without undue harm to Venus (although how to pull it out there remains a trick; I'd start "small", with Hilda). Also means we can swing additional satellites to Mars-stationary orbits, maybe up to five more at Triton masses each. Which means, no real weight-limit there, either.