Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Assembling planet 2.5

Unlike Hollister David's permashuttles, the 13:10:8 station doesn't skim a major planet. How do we build it?

A station needs: protection from radiation, air to breathe, and water to drink. This being nowhere at first, we import metallic canisters full of volatiles, and keep the canisters. The canisters should possibly be designed to be easily split lengthwise.

Just to fire the engines and let them cool down, will require radiators; and the station itself needs to reflect and otherwise-handle 1.35 flux. The station can import radiators too.

One bit of good news is that also had here, is hydrogen. It'll be rushing past with much energy. This could be used to reduce oxygen off of imported rocks, and of rusts as happen inside the station. This industry should happen on the sun-facing shield protecting the livable parts of the station; the water drains toward the station which catches the water.

The solar-wind will push us outside this orbital position. To mitigate that, we chose this position for its resonance. Maybe (somehow) we can shift angles, not to get pushed out, when Venus sails into place to pull us back in. And as a rule we should prefer to radiate heat away from the Sun and not toward it.

How do we slow an incoming craft? I don't know that we want to be losing volatiles - or even tungsten. Consider: an Orion as doesn't eject a tungsten plate, but ejects ceramic plates. They handle the heat better than any metal; besides, metals are heat-conductors which we'll want for the radiators.

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