“One Revolution per Minute”

johnwalker · 1 October 2023 13:03

It takes place aboard the “SSPO Esperanta” - a planetary orbiter that spins around itself at a rate of one revolution per minute (1 RPM). With a radius of 450 meters, the spin generates artificial gravity with an effect of approximately 0.5 g along its main deck.

With the “Esperanta” I wanted to create a leisure-like environment, like a hotel or a cruise ship, and explore what the views could be like from inside when it visited some of the worlds in our solar system. I was also particularly interested in finding out how light and shadows from the sun played around in the interior as it spun around.

For those reasons I decided early on to keep all artificial lights off - with the exception of some emergency lights to avoid complete darkness - and only let natural light illuminate the interiors. As this made the place appear quite desolate, I found it interesting to imagine someone being onboard…

jabowery · 1 October 2023 16:42

That should be compared with an O’Neill Island One habitat to take it beyond a mere novelty CGI video and become educational.

As it stands, it merely makes one nauseated at the thought of space habitats.

jabowery · 1 October 2023 17:19

Prof. John Hickman is a real piece of work as evidenced by:

The Political Economy of Very Large Space Projects

John Hickman, Ph. D.
Associate Professor of Government
Department of Government and International Relations
Berry College
Mount Berry. GA 30149-5010
jhickman@berry.edu

Abstract

While popular science writers typically describe the benefits to be derived from their favorite very large space development project in detail, their treatment of the crucial initial capitalization of such projects is typically sparse or implausible. Capitalization is a crucial problem for these projects because the total capital investment required is very large and the investment takes a very long time before producing economic returns. “Chunky” investments are unattractive to most private investors and lenders. Very large space development projects are best understood as massive public works projects which are necessary to open frontiers. Despite the libertarian sentiments in much of the popular science writing on very large space development projects, government would likely have to play a large role in capitalizing such projects.

This “political economist” never mentions* my 1992 proposal to “libertarians” (largely motivated by my attempt to privatize launch services) which is to replace the 16th Amendment with a single tax on liquidation value of net assets and replace the welfare state with a citizen’s dividend.

With political economist “enemies”, like John Hickman, of “libertarians” who needs friends? “Libertarians” can continue to pretend they’re on the side of privatization of government services while continuing to centralize centralize centralize in the private sector thereby feeding the entirety of Western Civilization to the collectivists.

* He also never mentions O’Neill’s economic basis was Space-based Solar Power, which, even if one disagrees with O’Neill’s expected valuation of SSP, cannot be ignored in critiquing O’Neill’s “Political Economy”.

johnwalker · 6 October 2023 11:15

Here is a detailed drawing of the Esperanta station by video creator Erik Wernquist. The image is 4096×2304 pixels—click to enlarge.

Wernquist envisions this as “a leisure-like environment, like a hotel or a cruise ship”, not a space colony. It is depicted as cruising the solar system using replaceable nuclear thermal propulsion modules docked to the station core. Power for the station is generated by a nuclear reactor at the end of a long boom which, along with shadow shields, prevents irradiating the station ring.