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justifiedsinner
Posted 2014-04-02 11:27 AM (#6817 - in reply to #5937)
Subject: Re: 2014 Masterworks Reading Challenge		Quote Reply



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I don't see how Ringworld has design hints for an enclosed space habitat. Ringworld was inspired by Freeman Dyson's 1960 paper ,"Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation" in which he outlined the concept of the Dyson Sphere which in turn was inspired by Olaf Stapledon's "Star Maker".
Dyson's original concept was for a swarm of habitats blocking the sun which was morphed by Robert Siverberg in "Across a Billion Years" into a solid sphere and by Niven into a ring. Both ring and sphere rely on unobtainium, a material of greater tensile strength than would be required to build a terrestrial space elevator whereas space habitats are possible with current materials even though building them is at present prohibitively expensive.

Of more relevance is J. D. Bernals' "the World, the Flesh and the Devil" published in 1929 which described the space habitat known as the Bernal Sphere which influenced both Staledon and Dyson. Of course the whole idea of the space habitat may have derived from the concept of the space station which dates from 1869 (that one was built out of bricks).

If you look at the art work for Island One from O'Neills book and from the NASA Study you will see that they directly influenced the graphics of Elysium (actually it's more like they ripped them off).


Edited by justifiedsinner 2014-04-02 11:31 AM

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