Bishop Ring (habitat)
A Bishop Ring
Because of its enormous scale, the Bishop Ring would not need to be enclosed like the Stanford torus: it could be built without a "roof",[1] with the atmosphere retained by artificial gravity and atmosphere retention walls some 200 km (120 mi) in height. The habitat would be oriented with its axis of rotation perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, with either an arrangement of mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the inner rim or an artificial light source in the middle, powered by a combination of solar panels on the outer rim and solar power satellites.[2]
Also unlike the 1970s NASA proposals, where habitats would be placed in
Bishop rings in fiction
- Bishop Rings are a common type of habitat in the fictional universe of the Orion's Arm worldbuilding project;[4] their radius varies from as little as 100 km to as much as 1000 km (62–620 mi).
- The Halo video game seriesare essentially Bishop Rings with slightly divergent proportions.
- Orbitals in Iain M. Banks' The Culture novels are a similar concept but much bigger and thus would require much stronger materials.
- The Echoes of the Eye expansion of the video game Outer Wilds is primarily set on this type of habitat.
- The torus of the film Elysium is open-'topped', allowing space-capable vessels to freely travel into the atmosphere and living space within.
See also
- Halo Array– Series of video games
- Island Three– Space settlement concept, another name for O'Neill cylinders
- O'Neill Cylinder– Space settlement concept
- McKendree cylinder – Hypothetical rotating space habitat
- Orbital (The Culture)
- Ringworld, 1970 Larry Niven science fiction novel
- Rotating wheel space station
References
- ^ a b Rain Noe, "Space Colony Form Factors, Part 3: The Stanford Torus and Beyond", Core77, Aug. 07, 2015. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
- ^ a b c d Forrest Bishop, "Open Air Space Habitats", Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering, 1997. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
- ^ Adam Hadhazy, "Could We Build a Ringworld?", Popular Mechanics, Sep 4, 2014. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
- ^ M. Alan Kazlev, Todd Drashner and Steve Bowers, "Bishop Ring", Encyclopaedia Galactica website, October 8 2001. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
External links
- "Bishop Ring" in the Encyclopedia Galactica at Orion's Arm
- Worldring
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Notes: † Never inhabited due to launch or on-orbit failure, ‡ Part of the Almaz military program, ° Never inhabited, lacks docking mechanism. | |||||||||