We continue our series Project 2124: The World In 100 Years. Today we look at a WLBOTT Space Habitat: the Wab-i-tat.
Think back to Easter as a kid. Chocolate bunnies. Some were solid, some were hollow, all were good. Today we’re going to look at WLBOTT 2124 Space Habitat (Wab-i-tat) based on the hollow bunny concept.
But before we proceed to our Wab-i-tat, we must address a disturbing social trend. Is nothing sacred? These kids today….
The Wab-i-tat: Some Background Science and Engineering
Remember the Steve Martin skit “How to Become a Millionaire and Pay No Taxes”? It goes something like this:
Step One: Make a Million Dollars
Step Two: Pay No Taxes
Our first large-scale WLBOTT Space Habitat (Wab-i-tat) follows a similar chain of events:
Step One: Find a suitable asteroid and bring it into a geocentric orbit near the space elevator receiving station.
Step Two: Surround the asteroid with a giant nano-tube fishnet stocking
Step Three: Slowly spin up the asteroid while simultaneously blasting the crap out of it, thus flinging smallish particles outward, but being caught by the stocking.
Step Four: Add docking ports, seal the fishnet stocking, pressurize the interior, spin the whole thing up to create an artificial gravity of 0.3G, finish out the interior with homes, businesses, infrastructure, parks, transportation, putt-putt golf courses (oddly popular and competitive in the year 2124), and invite about a million people to come hang out.
This idea is presented in a fascinating article by Loz Blain in the New Atlas. First, a bit about Loz….
Loz spent a remarkably unfocused eight years getting an attention-deficient arts degree from Melbourne Uni, pursuing more than 30 different areas of study across the humanities and sciences on a series of whims before settling on a Psych major, back in the days when this kind of behavior didn’t spell eternal financial ruin.
[ed. note: Loz has WLBOTT Managerial Timber written all over him (figuratively, of course)]
Some folk baked a lot of bread during lockdowns. [ed. note: and some started WLBOTT] Others assembled a team of scientists and figured out a practical way to turn asteroids into space habitats, by spinning them inside out and creating giant rotating, Manhattan-sized city-rings.
You can’t build space cities on the surface of asteroids, or even inside them, really, but you could turn them inside out to become the ground layers of spinning ring-type space stations, says a Rochester team, and it’d be a relatively cheap and easy way to build yourself a space habitat for humanity.
As the asteroid spins faster and faster, its rubbly mass flings outward to fill and expand the nanofiber bag.
Some form of artificial gravity is necessary for long term human space settlements, for two reasons:
under prolonged zero G, bones and muscles grow weak, and other health problems arise.
there’s a whole lotta barfing going on in zero-G
The New Atlas and the Rochester team suggest the asteroid Bennu as a possible candidate:
Bennu is considered a fairly “loose” asteroid, but that’s no judgement on its character – it just means that it’s essentially a pile of rocks bound together by gravity.
Instead, the results indicate that some parts of Bennu’s interior are more densely packed together than other parts. And interestingly, some of the least dense areas appear to be around the bulge at its equator, and in the core itself.
“It’s as if there is a void at its center, within which you could fit a couple of football fields,” says Daniel Scheeres, co-lead author of the study.
The WLBOTT Pantheon: We Welcome Wabitria Piscis-Rete
Wabitria, the patroness and protectoress of Wab-i-tats, space construction workers, gravel, rocks, fish and nets, is found in both classical art, temples, and modern representation.
Temples to Wabitria Piscis-Rete
References:
One reply on “WLBOTT Space Habitat: The Wab-i-tat”
One reply on “WLBOTT Space Habitat: The Wab-i-tat”
I love minigolf! I see I will fit right in here